Text/Liuyuan? Photo provided/BMW Cultural Journey Miao Wei Xianxiang Art Studio
In the outskirts of Kaifeng, the Bianhe River has beautiful waves, boatmen are working hard, and scholar-bureaucrats are strolling leisurely; The houses along both sides of the river stretch endlessly, and the shops and restaurants are all a busy scene; the towering city towers, the majestic Hongqiao, bustling pedestrians, and all kinds of shop signs... This scene is not unfamiliar to people - Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
For most craftsmen, "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" has become a symbol of extremes, so that no matter what handiwork is done, whether it is two-dimensional or three-dimensional, it will take a long time to accumulate skills, financial resources and energy. After a certain level, try to create a "Riverside Scene during Qingming Festival". For those who engage in Bian embroidery, embroidering this painting is more than just a way to express the ultimate state. While they are embroidering Zhang Zeduan's generosity, they are also embroidering their own history; while presenting historical scenes from more than a thousand years ago, they are also thinking about where they came from and where they will go.
Interestingly, touching Bian embroidery is actually a way to open the long history of Chinese painting.
Another expression of famous ancient paintings
When you walk into Kaifeng, you can feel the long history and profound culture here as long as you pay a little attention. "Bianjing" and "Bianliang" are still bustling with traffic after thousands of years, and today's prosperity is almost the same as that of other big cities. However, this place once ruled the land of Kyushu with its illustrious kingly style, and its long-standing handicraft culture also flourished in their respective fields.
"Bianjing" gave birth to "Bian embroidery". Nowadays, Su embroidery, Hunan embroidery, Shu embroidery and Guangdong embroidery are known as the four famous embroideries, "Bian embroidery" is not well known. The good people even want to squeeze Bian embroidery into the first square of embroidery, calling it one of the "Five Famous Embroideries". As everyone knows, as early as the distant Northern Song Dynasty, Bian embroidery was already famous all over the world as a favorite of the royal family. At that time, the other four southern embroidery species had not yet formed a major climate.
In the fourth year of Chongning (1105 AD), Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, the imperial court established the "Wenxiu Academy" and recruited 300 of the best embroidery craftsmen from across the country. In this way, the people who are good at embroidery all over the country are basically concentrated in Kaifeng. In the past, folk embroidery was not systematic. If the court needed embroidery products, it would be done by folk embroiderers, and the labor would be paid after the work was completed. Now, with a first-class royal embroidery institution, the imperial court is constantly changing patterns and making large-scale productions. Over time, "Bian embroidery" has developed the characteristics of calm color, simple and elegant, dignified and elegant, and has a royal temperament. In terms of subject matter and content, he is famous for embroidering famous ancient paintings, which has become a tradition.
Cheng Manping, deputy director of the Bian Embroidery Research Institute and a master of arts and crafts in Henan Province, said that in terms of production, Bian embroidery pays attention to flatness, neatness, light, brightness, harmony and smoothness. The so-called "flat" means that the embroidery surface is flat, the edges are neat, the picture is bright, the colors are soft, and the silk texture is smooth. From the perspective of acupuncture, the acupuncture method must be just right, which is the so-called "Yingwuxiangxiang".
Strolling through the exhibition hall of Bian Embroidery Factory is like walking through a corridor of wonderful paintings. These paintings are all made with needle and thread, showing the texture of silk thread, "better than paintings": Tang Zhoufang's "Lady with Hairpin Flowers" mainly uses "ancient gossamer silk drawing", making the picture bright and elegant, the characters plump and bright, and the whole The embroidery is more colorful and has a more dancing feel than the original work; facing Tang Yan's "Stepping Chariot Picture", the embroidery workers overcame the shortcomings of the original work's outdated and monotonous colors and used "flat stitch embroidery", "scattered embroidery", Needle techniques such as "counter-needle embroidery" and "rolling needle embroidery" express the graceful and elegant texture of the characters' clothing; in the work "Hundred Horses" by the Qing Dynasty painter Lang Shining, the embroiderers drew on Western painting techniques and used them on hillsides and grasslands. "Chaos stitch embroidery" and "seed embroidery" are used to express the dense feeling of trees, while "flat stitch embroidery" and "scattered embroidery" are used for horses to vividly express the fatness and strength of the horses.
In addition, Zhang Xuan's "Spring Outing of Lady Guo" and Gu Hongzhong's "Han Xizai's Night Banquet" from the Five Dynasties are also representative themes of Bian embroidery. These famous ancient paintings were redesigned by painters and expressed by embroiderers with silk threads. The paintings presented have a unique charm. Famous ancient paintings seem to have found another way of expression through Bian embroidery.
The real big leap is of course "Along the River During Qingming Festival". In 1958, after repeated exploration of colors and stitching techniques by designers and embroidery workers, the monumental "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" was successfully embroidered and became Kaifeng's National Day gift for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. After more than a thousand years of accumulation, Bian embroidery has appeared in front of the world with a pinnacle attitude.
It is 525cm long and 25.5cm high. The three parts of the countryside, Bianhe River and Chengguan include more than 800 people, more than 90 livestock and more than 170 trees. It is necessary to "move" such a painting to embroidered cloth. , the difficulty can be imagined. "The original stitching techniques were far from enough. The embroidery workers and designers brainstormed, held many meetings together to study, and went to parks, rural areas, and riversides for careful observation and speculation. After many experiments, we finally succeeded," Cheng Manping said. This incident is like telling a glorious legend in my own family.
In the blink of an eye, more than 40 years have passed, and Bian embroidery's "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" has become a visual symbol and a geographical indication, just like the ligers and tigers in Hunan embroidery and the cats and dogs in Suzhou embroidery.
The foundation of Bian embroidery handed down from generation to generation
It is a pleasure to watch the flying needles in the Bian embroidery workshop. On the huge embroidery cloth, the needles and threads shuttle back and forth, which is simply dazzling. Tu Long, a historian of the Ming Dynasty, wrote in "Kao Pan Yu Shi·Song Embroidery Paintings": "The boudoir embroidery paintings of the Song Dynasty include landscapes, figures, flowers and birds on balconies, and the needlework is fine and the seams are not exposed. They use velvet to stop one or two threads, Use a needle as thin as a hair, so that the eyebrows are complete, the color is eye-catching, and the color is vivid, and the color is blooming, which is better than painting! The skill of female red is beyond the reach of the spring breeze." The fineness of Bian embroidery can be seen.
Cheng Manping introduced that when embroidering a work, you must first select a drawing, and then perform a line drawing to outline the original painting as a draft for the embroidery. Put the silk satin on the trampoline and draw the white sketch on it. "Then select the thread and determine the needle method. Sometimes one embroidery thread has to be split into 36 thin threads, which are thinner than hair."
For some realistic works, the color of the embroidery thread may not be enough. It is necessary to use two or three types of lines crosswise. "For example, when embroidering green, you don't necessarily use green silk thread, but cross blue and yellow." In this way, green has a layer from dark to light, showing the effect of oil painting, and not lacking the charm and silk beauty of embroidery. .
In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Kaifeng Bian Embroidery Factory was established. "At that time, there were only more than a dozen stitches, and some embroidery girls even used only a few stitches." Cheng Manping said: "In the 1980s, We conducted a survey on acupuncture techniques in the early 1990s. We traveled throughout the countryside in Henan to collect folk embroidery acupuncture techniques. Later, we summarized 36 new and old acupuncture techniques. Among these 36 acupuncture techniques, one is called "Diecai." Embroidery", especially suitable for embroidering animal fur. "Embroidering a deer is not only vivid in image, but also has a strong three-dimensional effect and is particularly lifelike. A Suzhou embroidery master was full of praise after seeing it, saying that he had never seen such a unique stitching method."
Wang Suhua is A national-level inheritor of Bian embroidery, he is currently the chairman of Suhua Song Embroidery Craft Co., Ltd. Because she was very capable, her boss once transferred her from her embroidery position to serve as deputy general manager of a distribution company. At that time, the decision of the organization could not be disobeyed, but how much she wanted to engage in Bian embroidery. The more Wang Suhua thought about it, the sadder she became. On the way back, she cried while leaning on a telegraph pole beside the ancient city wall.
However, although the power of changing times is powerful, it cannot stop a person who loves Bian embroidery from approaching embroidery. Wang Suhua later continued to be engaged in this industry, and led a group of good sisters to do in-depth cultivation on the basis of predecessors. She compiled and wrote the book "History and Needle Techniques of Kaifeng Bian Embroidery and Song Embroidery", innovating needle rolling, counter-grabbing, and pulling. There are more than ten kinds of embroidery stitches such as embroidery needle, You needle and Meng needle.
Now in her seventies, Master Wang still leads apprentices and provides technical guidance in her beloved embroidery position. She once said: "Bian embroidery is my life." This reminds the author of the aftermath of the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty. , many embroidered girls were captured by the Jin soldiers, and some of them fled to the south. Some old Su embroidery artists today have their ancestral home in Kaifeng. The migration of embroidered girls, whether active or passive, allows a kind of fingertip culture to flow. Although there is no official institution like the Wenxiu Academy, among the people, the inheritance of Bian embroidery skills has never been interrupted. It is precisely because of the existence of these people who regard Bian embroidery as the foundation of their lives that Bian embroidery has been passed down for thousands of years.
Changes in Bian Embroidery
On September 25, 2012, at the "Chinese Contemporary Embroidery Art Exhibition" in Changsha, the works of Miao Wei, a famous Bian embroidery master and a master of arts and crafts in Henan Province "Cold Smoke Green" has attracted countless admiration for its indescribable temperament. This work later won the exhibition's Innovative Technique Award. Immediately afterwards, the work won another gold medal at the "Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Expo" held in October.
This work embroiders a beautiful Huadan, and the overall appearance is elegant and tranquil. At first glance, it looks like a meticulous work of fine brushwork, but it is indeed a Bian embroidery work. There are two most important elements in embroidery: drawing and embroidery skills.
Most of the time, painting and embroidery are separate. Those who can draw cannot embroider, and those who can embroider cannot draw. There are not many people who can master both at the same time, and Miao Wei is one of them.
"Many people think that embroidery is the restoration of paintings, but it is not." Miao Wei believes that embroidery is the re-creation of paintings with embroidery thread, and the final works have the unique language of embroidery. Because he understands painting and mineral pigments, Miao Wei will analyze why the color of the sky in ancient paintings appears like that, and how the colors of mountains, rivers and trees come from. When embroidering, he will skillfully use the colors of embroidery threads to layer one layer after another. Present the desired effect.
Miao Wei is undoubtedly an expert in using embroidery thread as the painting, and she has also become the main force of the innovative school of Bian embroidery. In her opinion, "If a newly created embroidery work can give people a bright feeling, it is actually an innovation." For example, after seeing "Cold Smoke", everyone will ask "Is this embroidery?" ? Its overly elegant and tranquil temperament is due to the fact that it follows the coloring of the meticulous and heavy-color original manuscript, emphasizing the simplicity of the colors without deliberately applying colors, so it well restores the neutral and uniform tones of the mineral pigments.
The famous ancient paintings embroidered by Bian embroidery all use mineral pigments, so the paintings created with embroidery threads present a calm and quiet temperament, which is the tradition of Bian embroidery. Miao Wei just made some slight changes on the basis of this tradition to present a fresh, clean and comfortable feeling, which is refreshing.
In street embroidery shops across the country, the product patterns and styles are all very similar. It is impossible for outsiders to judge the good from the bad. They either do not buy because of confusion, or they have lingering fears because of the rash purchase. Miao Wei said: "The main types of embroidery across the country have similar basic stitching methods and the same embroidery threads. Even the themes and contents are repeated. Machine embroidery is abundant. In addition, with OEMs in some areas of Southeast Asia, what you see in the general market must be The same products. ”
However, the reason why a kind of embroidery is developed in a certain place must be related to the local history, culture and humanistic temperament. These are the parts of an embroidery that cannot be copied and are its differences. The most fundamental thing for embroidery in other areas. The masters of Bian embroidery have long been aware of the problem of market clutter. Now all the embroidery they produce are high-quality products, aimed at business gifts, personal collections or museum collections. For Bian embroidery, which is not ranked among the "Four Famous Embroideries", it seems that these are the mainstream of skills and cultural inheritance.
In addition, the government and private associations are also promoting the inheritance and development of "Bian Embroidery". At the end of 2011, with the approval of the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the "Bian Embroidery" geographical indication certification trademark was officially registered. It is the first geographical indication certification trademark in the national embroidery industry.
The relevant person in charge of the Kaifeng City Arts and Crafts Industry Association said: "The successful registration of the Bian Embroidery Geographical Indication Certification Trademark provides a legal basis for standardizing and managing the currently chaotic Bian embroidery market, and will certainly greatly promote the development of our city. Standardized development of Bian embroidery industry. ”
Government support is quite strong, but there are still many problems facing Bian embroidery, such as the lack of successors. Currently, Miao Wei's Xianxiang Studio is located in Beijing 798, mainly for exhibitions. She is now spending more energy to build a studio in Kaifeng. She said, "I have been doing Bian embroidery since I was a child, and what I have studied is Bian embroidery. I am also from Kaifeng. No matter where I am, the embroidery I make must be Bian embroidery!" But we must cultivate young people in the soil of Kaifeng. We can learn from the model of Hunan embroidery and set up embroidery majors in schools. I can teach them for free, and the studio will be used as a free internship base in the future..."
Yes With such a master, the "change" of Bian embroidery is worth looking forward to.