Cross stitch (Huayao cross stitch)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Tiaohua (Huayao Tiaohua)

Applicant: longhui County, Hunan Province

Project No.: 324

Project No.: Ⅶ - 25

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: traditional art

Region: Hunan Province

Type: new item

Applicant: longhui County, Hunan Province

Protection unit: longhui County Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center

Brief introduction of cross stitch (Huayao cross stitch)

Applicant: longhui County, Hunan Province

Cross stitch is a kind of embroidery technology with strong decoration. The cross stitch skills spread in Huangmei County of Hubei Province and longhui County of Hunan Province have their own characteristics.

Huangmei cross flower, also known as frame flower and cross cross cross flower, is widely spread in Huangmei County, Hubei Province. It is said that it originated in the Tang and Song Dynasties and matured in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. For a long time, this craft has been perfected by generations of peasant women's meticulous research. With bright color combination and exquisite design conception, it highlights its unique artistic expression.

Huangmei cross stitch is known as caitiao by many domestic folk craft experts. The colorful cross stitch in Baili cotton area of Huangmei County is more exquisite with rich and colorful patterns and rich local characteristics. There is a local proverb that says, "if there are women in Huangmei, they will cross flowers." Caishan, Xinkai and Konglian are the most prosperous places for cross stitch. As soon as the girl is sensible, she follows her mother or aunt to do needlework and gets married all the time. The local people call the girl who can't pick flowers "whole slap", which is a kind of humiliation to the girl.

Huangmei cross stitch is different from the general embroidery, embroidery heavy thorn, cross stitch heavy pick. The yellow plum cross stitch is based on Yuanqing cloth, and five colored silk threads are embroidered on the mesh interwoven by warp and weft of the bottom cloth with needles to form a pattern with gorgeous color and strong three-dimensional feeling. Among them, the stitch with "×" shape is called "cross stitch", and the stitch with "Yi" shape is called flat stitch. At the beginning, the works mainly included headscarf, hem, curtain, edge of tent, bed, etc. folk women used them to dress themselves and decorate their rooms.

The main raw material of Huangmei cross stitch is the local home woven cloth, also known as big cloth. This kind of cloth is dyed blue as the bottom. Artists rely on a needle and a thread (seven colors) to pick and embroider various patterns alternately on it. It mainly includes quilt cover, bed sheet, door edge, square towel, apron, clothes, insole, pillow and so on. Among them, the square towel is the most outstanding. It has won the gold medal of international expositions for many times and has had a wide influence.

Cross stitch is purely manual work. It takes three or five days to pick a pattern, and one month to pick it, but it often doesn't get the corresponding reward. Therefore, since the early 1990s, there have been fewer and fewer young people in Huangmei society. This special skill is on the verge of being lost and needs to be rescued.

Huayao cross stitch is a unique handicraft popular among Yao women in Longhui County, Hunan Province. The Yao people in Longhui County are known as "Huayao" because of the gorgeous cross stitch decoration on their skirts. Huayao are distributed in huxingshan Yao nationality township, xiaoshajiang Township, dashuitian Township and matangshan Township in the north of longhui with an altitude of more than 1300 meters, with a total of more than 7000 people.

It is said that Huayao cross stitch originated from Han Dynasty and matured in Ming and Qing Dynasties. The materials of the cross stitch are indigo or white cloth and various kinds of silk yarn. The cross stitch women do not need to draw and mold, but follow the warp and weft of the cloth by hand. They mostly use the filling cross stitch technology of pattern set in the pattern. There are more than a thousand kinds of cross stitch patterns, including animals, plants, history, customs and so on. The animal pattern is the most common, with ingenious design, bold and exaggerated modeling, balanced and symmetrical layout, clear black and white color, and strong visual impact. Mr. Shen Congwen, a famous cultural and Museum expert in China, called it "the world's first-class cross stitch". Huayao cross stitch clothing is listed as a treasure collection by China Art Museum and National Museum. In 1994, Huayao Tiaohua won the bronze prize in the "Chinese folk art exhibition" held by the Ministry of culture, and in 2003, it won the gold prize in the "China's first cultural relics imitation and folk arts and crafts exhibition". Therefore, huxingshan Yao Township in Longhui County was named "the hometown of culture and art" by Hunan Provincial Department of culture.

With the deepening of social change and the change of living environment, national costumes have been assimilated by the outside world. During this period, many old cross stitch artists died, and the inheritance of skills was broken. At the same time, cross stitch materials were scarce, and the production was facing difficulties. The cross stitch technology of Huayao is declining, and it is in an endangered state, which needs to be protected and saved.

Chinese PinYin : Tiao Hua Hua Yao Tiao Hua