Representative works of Shanxi embroidery include: "The Romance of the West Chamber", "Thousand-Year-Old Cypress", "Shanxi Merchants", "The Picture of the Buddha", etc.
Embroidery, also known as "needle embroidery" and commonly known as "embroidery", is widely popular in the three Jin Dynasties. "Houma Embroidery" is a type of "Jin Embroidery" with a history of 3,000 years.
Embroidery patterns:
Most of them are based on popular content among the people. The first is based on folk tales passed down from generation to generation: such as "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", "The Fairy's Match", "The Legend of the White Snake", etc., which express the working people's intelligence, wisdom, unyielding to evil, and pursuit of a better life; the second is based on Local customs, such as "weddings, funerals, getting married" and other traditional folk customs, are full of strong local feelings; thirdly, they are based on natural flowers, grass, birds and animals, permeating the "harmony between man and nature". "One" harmonious thought of traditional Chinese culture.
Use of colors in embroidery:
Strong contrasting techniques are often used, with bright red and green, big blue and black, yellow and white as the main colors, and natural pigments are used for dyeing. The colors of the embroidery are true, solid, fresh and vivid, and will not fade. The stitching is tight, strong and wear-resistant, and the embroidery is flush and smooth. It is not only connected with people's clothing, food, housing and transportation, but also integrated with cultural phenomena such as customs, life rituals, literature, painting and religion. It not only retains the original style, but also incorporates fashion elements.
The leader of the Houma embroidery army-Guo Meiling.
“Talented people have emerged from generation to generation, and each has led the way for hundreds of years.” For more than a thousand years, Houma embroidery has been passed down from generation to generation, and a number of outstanding successors have emerged.
Growing up in an "embroidery family", Guo Meiling has been influenced by the art of embroidery since she was a child. Her great-grandmother was a well-known "skillful hand" and once worked as an embroiderer in the Qing Dynasty court. My grandmother was also a local "smart daughter-in-law" and was once chosen to embroider a wedding dress for a young lady from the county magistrate's family. In the hands of Guo Meiling, it is already the fifth generation.
She mastered the art of embroidery when she was seven or eight years old. For decades, Guo Meiling has adhered to her family motto, specializing in female embroidery, absorbing the strengths of hundreds of skilled women, and studying folk embroidery techniques in southern Shanxi and other places. She has devoted herself to sorting out, researching and innovating folk embroidery crafts. In her practice, she summarized "A embroidery, door ring embroidery" Embroidery techniques such as ", jump three stitches" are known as unique skills in Jin embroidery.
In order to inherit the embroidery culture, Guo Meiling opened the Jin Embroidery Cooperative, which has more than 30 embroidery workers.