The Development History of Shu Brocade

From the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to earlier, the "Southern Silk Road" was initially formed. On this road, merchants sold Shu brocade and other commodities to India, Myanmar and then to Central Asia. The section from Chengdu to India is called "Shu Shen Poison Road". Because it originated in Chengdu Plain, where the silk industry is developed, it is famous for its silk trade along the way, so it is also called "Southern Silk Road" by historians.

In the late Warring States period, the capital was built, and a brocade workshop was built around the city in the southeast corner of Chengdu, and a "Jinguan" was set up to supervise the construction, which was called "Jinguan City". At that time, brocade production had become an important industry in Sichuan. This is also the origin of Chengdu's nickname "Golden Crown City".

Pattern characteristics

During this period, the patterns of Shu brocade developed from the rigorous, concise and simple small back pattern in the Zhou Dynasty to large-scale realistic and changeable geometric patterns, flower patterns and auspicious dragon and phoenix patterns, such as "Dancer" brocade and "Dragon and Phoenix pattern" brocade. Most of them are based on geometric patterns, and people and animals are arranged skillfully, compact, uniform and orderly. state of play

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Chengdu has become an important silk producing area in China. According to historical records, Shu brocade is known as one of the "double walls" of silk weaving. With the continuous development of silk weaving technology, the foreign trade volume has greatly increased. After the formation of the Northwest Silk Road, Shu brocade was transported to Chang 'an, the starting point of the Northwest Silk Road, and then transferred from Chang 'an to the western regions, West Asia and European countries.

During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang also attached great importance to agriculture and mulberry, and set up "Jin Guan" to manage the brocade industry, which made Shu brocade develop greatly. During the Northern Expedition, he proposed that "the enemy's capital should be determined, and only praise should be given". Shu brocade was not only a commodity of foreign trade at that time, but also a source of military expenditure. Zhuge Liang also taught Shu brocade weaving skills to the people of the whole country during his southern expedition, which greatly developed the brocade technology in southwest minority areas.

Pattern characteristics

The patterns of Shu brocade in Han Dynasty are characterized by flying clouds and flowing colors. The ancient Shu-Han tapestries unearthed by archaeology have patterns such as clouds, characters, animals and plants, among which the mountain-shaped and vortex-shaped floating clouds are the main ones, which have the artistic effect of flowing clouds and continuous air. Auspicious birds, auspicious beasts and dogwood are distinctive patterns in this period, and dogwood pattern is also one of the earliest plant patterns in China. state of play

In the Sui Dynasty, Chengdu was "made by land and water, but taken by Huo Zhi", and its brocade was of exquisite quality, which was known as "China". In the Tang Dynasty, there were "the rule of Zhenguan" and "the rule of Kaiyuan", and Shu brocade entered its heyday in terms of production scale and skills. Shu brocade represents the highest level of ancient silk weaving skills in China. These exquisite Shu brocade are widely spread at home and abroad through the Silk Road and other trade channels. Shu Brocade flowed into Japan in large quantities at that time, and many "Shu Jiang Brocade" were regarded as Japanese national treasures, which are still collected in Zhengcang Courtyard in Kyoto, Japan and Horyuji.

During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Wang Jian and Meng Zhixiang were masters of Shu, and the brocade industry was still very developed, and the varieties were also increased, such as "Ten Brocade": Chang 'an Bamboo Brocade, Tianxia Music Brocade, Carved Brocade Brocade, Yinan Brocade, Jie Bao Jindi Brocade, Fang Shengjin, Lion Brocade, Elephant Eye Brocade, Eight Halo Brocade, and Pot-stewed Qihe Brocade.

Pattern characteristics

Sui and Tang Dynasties are the most glorious period in the history of Shu brocade development. The patterns and patterns in this period are rich and colorful, and the chapters are colorful, especially the "group nest" and "broken branches". The former is a "male sample of Lingyang" and the latter is a "new sample". "Lingyang Tribute" is a famous brocade pattern created by Yizhou Platform Dou, which absorbed the cultural essence of Persian Sassanian Dynasty and combined with national cultural characteristics. It is characterized by unity as the theme, the outer circle surrounded by beads, and the central part of unity is symmetrical, which means auspiciousness and prosperity. It has been popular for a hundred years. The "new style" was created by Sima Huangfu of Yizhou during the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty. It was mainly based on flowers and birds, and was expressed in the form of symmetrical circles and clusters. It was completely different from the "Lingyang Palace Lane" and was later called "Tang Hua". state of play

During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Chengdu built the "Chengdu Mansion Jinyuan", which mainly produced royal brocade and trade brocade, including eight kinds of brocade, lantern brocade and Qushui brocade. In the late Southern Song Dynasty, the political and economic center moved south, and the brocade center moved with it. Although Sichuan continued to develop, the production scale was not as good as before after the Yuan Dynasty.

Pattern characteristics

In Song Dynasty, Shu brocade was the best in ice embroidery, with exquisite skills and exquisite brocade patterns, which not only inherited the style of Tang Dynasty, but also had innovative development. On the one hand, sketch patterns broke through the fixed format of symmetrical patterns and radial patterns in Tang Dynasty; On the other hand, it has developed and applied a regular pattern in the field and given new content.

What is more distinctive is that the rotation, overlapping, splicing and aggregation of geometric patterns in the framework of circular, square and multilateral geometric patterns, such as "Bada Halo" brocade and "Liu Da Halo" brocade, all adopt the rainbow-like overlapping halo dyeing method of peony, chrysanthemum and baohua, and regular patterns such as turtle back pattern are embedded in the blank of the pattern to fill the brocade, thus achieving the icing on the cake effect. There are also patterns such as "Ziqu water" and "Happy in the world", which is undoubtedly a testimony to the sustainable development of this technique.

Shu Brocade in Yuan Dynasty combines the advantages of the long history of gold foil technology in Shu, and uses a large number of gold threads as thin as hair to weave, which makes Shu Brocade in Yuan Dynasty have obvious characteristics and is called "Master Na" or "Golden Iron Child". state of play

After the Ming Dynasty, the silk industry in Sichuan recovered and developed compared with that in the Yuan Dynasty. However, in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Sichuan suffered unprecedented war, and the city was once empty. In the early Qing Dynasty, there was only one fabric pattern, Tian Sun Jin. Since Kangxi, brocade artists who fled or were taken away in the early Qing Dynasty returned to Chengdu one after another, resumed their old jobs and began to recover slowly. In the first year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Army occupied Jiangning (now Nanjing), and the Qing Dynasty moved the Zhifu to Chengdu, which promoted the development of Shu brocade. /kloc-from the end of 0/9 to the beginning of the 20th century, people were forbidden to wear silk and satin, and people were forbidden to lift the "clothing ban" with dark yellow. Flower mandarin jackets and brocade shoes and hats were all the rage, and Shu brocade appeared a "golden age". According to the General Examination of Qing Literature, during the Guangxu period, "Chengdu had 2,000 computer rooms, more than 0/0000 looms and 40,000 weavers; Silk products account for 70% of Sichuan, and Chengdu mainly produces tapestries, which have successively produced "Yuehua", "Rain Silk" and "Fangfang" tapestries, which are also called "Three Musts in Late Qing Dynasty".

Shu Brocade in Qing Dynasty is still very famous abroad, and it is called "precious Shu Brocade". In Xuantongyuan year (AD 1909), Jin Shu participated in Nanyang Expo and won the "International Special Award".

Pattern characteristics

Shu brocade in Ming Dynasty inherited the patterns of rolling grass, rolling branches, scattered flowers and broken branches that prevailed in Tang and Song Dynasties, and produced many famous brocade patterns, such as "Prince Sheep" brocade and "Hundred Pictures" brocade. By the Qing Dynasty, especially in the late Qing Dynasty, the dyeing and weaving skills of Shu brocade had reached the level of perfection, resulting in the extremely difficult brocade of "Three Exquisites in the Late Qing Dynasty". Shu brocade combines traditional color and melody art with innovative decorative art, and decorates various patterns with rich colors and soft halos, which makes it have peculiar and gorgeous effects. After the Opium War, foreign goods flooded the market and the national industry suffered a great blow. Shu brocade has lost its former scenery, its scale and output are not as good as before, and it is already a depressed scene when it is near liberation. After liberation, with the support of the government, unemployed Jin Shu workers set up the Chengdu Silk Production Cooperative (the predecessor of Chengdu Jin Shu Factory) in September 195 1, and resumed production in Jin Shu. 1956, under the leadership of the Municipal Handicraft Administration, cadres, experts, old artists and skilled craftsmen gathered to study, textual research, copy old brocade, collect folk patterns and create new ones according to the instruction that Shu brocade should develop in a high-precision direction put forward by President Zhu De when he visited the factory for the first time. In the middle and late 1950s, woven fabrics with folklore patterns, such as "phoenix wearing peony", "white crane loosening", "dragon and phoenix becoming auspicious", "double lion playing ball", "bangs playing cicada" and "goddess scattering flowers", recovered the "moonlight three shining satin", "icing on the cake" and "double warp" that had been lost for 40 years. During the "Cultural Revolution", the traditional patterns of Shu brocade were stopped as "endowment repair".

In the 1980s of reform and opening-up, a new generation of designers systematically explored, sorted out and inspected Shu brocade, including the Silk Road in the north, the silk in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Lhasa in Tibet and the Hong Kong market. Together with the older generation of Shu brocade artists, they repaired five bamboo and wood jacquard Shu brocade machines in Qing Dynasty (existing in Beijing, Sichuan Museum and Chengdu Shu brocade factory) and tried out the elegant and simple "Eight Halo Brocade" and "Butterfly Brocade" in Ming Dynasty. At present, the shopping center of Jin Shu factory displays the "ceiling" and "square garden brocade" of the Tang Dynasty. During this period, the factory also restored the quilts of "A Hundred Birds Facing the Phoenix" and "Dragon and Phoenix Appearing Auspiciously" by using modern silk weaving equipment, woven the quilts of "Wen Jun Listening to the Qin" and "the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon" on the traditional colored warp thread, and innovated new tapestry quilts of "Eight Treasures of Yunlong", "Cai Feng" and "Bashu Winning Orchid" (ten famous scenic spots in Sichuan), with the words "Panda" hanging on them. For four years in a row, this factory has produced ten kinds of elegant satin patterns such as "Hua Niaowen Brocade", "Mei Zhu Lan Ju" and "Colorful Butterfly" for the American anniversary company. Making sofa covers for interior decoration for Sichuan Hall of the Great Hall of the People; Refine Sakyamuni and other senior Buddha statues for the 20th anniversary of the founding of Xizang Autonomous Region. In the early 1990s, the theme was innovated, and a large multi-color tapestry quilt cover was developed, and the "God of Wealth" tapestry was hung on the screen. New products such as "Flower Tree to Deer Brocade" in Tang Dynasty.

Shu brocade was once brilliant, but with the progress of industrialization, the hand loom was gradually replaced by the modern loom, showing a trend of atrophy and decline. In 1990s, Jin Shu began to decline. In 2003, Chengdu Jin Shu Factory closed down and was merged by Chengdu Jin Shu Culture Development Co., Ltd. The original site of Chengdu Jin Shu Factory was transformed into Shujiang Jinyuan (Chengdu Jin Shu Weaving and Embroidery Museum) as a tourist shopping place, and Chengdu Jin Shu Crafts Factory was established.