Nanjing Yunjin Brocade
Thanks to my wonderful friend Jing I got the chance to visit, with her and another friend of mine, the Nanjing YunJin Museum which hosts the Nanjing Brocade Research Institute established in 1982. Here it's possible to see how the famous YunJin brocade was born and witness some of the few incredibly skilled people still performing this topmost craftsmanship using the same loom of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). There are many different kinds of brocade, YunJin is one of the three most famous in China. The product is a fine silk brocade produced and sold mainly in Nanjing. It's name Yunjin (云锦) comes from the cloud-like colors and patterns of this borcade and the legend of a beautiful princess coming from the sky. Of the four YunJin brocades, ZhuangHua (妆花) is still unworkable with a present-day machine.
Cathy kindly led us through this amazing discovery:
Cathy kindly led us through this amazing discovery:
“There are many stories and legends related to Yunjin brocade, like the Dream Of The Red Chamber, one of the China's Four Great Classical Novels, which is told to have happened in Nanjing since the author's family used to weave Yunjin for the King. That's how the story of the family became the prototype for the novel.
The silk brocade production follows a process old more than 1500 years, used for weaving the cloth of the Emperor. Inside the museum you can see the real weaving process of this precious brocade.
The silk production in China is an incredibly ancient activity, but difficult to preserve: silk contains much more proteins after long time under the earth, once dug out by people will oxidate and faint. We have some pieces of silk fabric that dates back 2000 years, they've already become like pouder. This is the reason why our Institute tries to replicate these garments by studing how they where and reproducing the original clothes. From the original pictures of the dresses woven in the past we replicate the cloth's features (weight and transparency) and patterns.
This picture shows the original work of a summer dress woven by plain gauze; plain gauze is transparent, softer, with no color, it only weights 49 grams and was used by the rich people to cover their beautiful clothes. The replica by our Institute took 13 years to finish, because of the evolution of the silk worm today the mulberry tree are feed with chemicals and the mulberry leaves are larger so the silk worms are larger and the silk thicker. We need 13 years to gather thin silk! Also the processing took long, the thinner the harder to weave.”
Considering the amount of labour and the preciousness of the product, this kind of craft was realized just for a niche market of rich people, wasn't it?
“In the ancient times during three dynasties, Yuán, Míng and Qīng, it was only for the King. If someone used it without the king's permission the whole family would have been killed! It was only a royal tribute.
This is the gold robe of the king from Qín Dynasty, more than 1500 years ago, the patterns on the shoulders and the belt are woven by gold thread!
These other clothes present respectively patterns of dragons and plum flowers, and patterns of pheonix and plum flowers. Usually in China the dragon stands for the king and the phoenix for the queen, but during the Qín Dynasty women had a higher social status so it was reverse, dragon for female and phoenix for male!
We also have original pieces coming directly from the Forbidden City, belonged to the Qīng Dynasty, the last dynasty in China. On these original clothes there is the name of the person who produced it for the king as a traceability matter: if the king found any problems with the brocade, about the colors or the patterns, he could send him to death!
But the workers, the people weaving the clothes, in the ancient times were kept secret, even their names were not known and the brocade knowledge passed from generation to generation and the ones weaving for the king had to be only boys. That's why our masters are all man. We take in also girls to study and work, but none of them is master yet.”
So the activity used to remain inside the family, passing on from father to son?
It was not rescticted to the family, not necessarily just father and son, what is sure is that in the past a teacher had just one student, nowadays it's different, they follow more than one apprentice at the time.
Who decided to establish and financed the Museum together with the Research Institute? Was it an initiative coming from the government?
No, we are a private company. We sell what we produce in the store downstairs or in the fabric-shops around the city, in order to sustain ourselves. Our production comes together with our brand logo as a guarantee of the borcade quality and we either sell yardage or the ready-to-use product (ties, foulards, dresses, fraimed pictures, pillow cases and traditional costumes). Many foreigners come to buy in here, but we don't export abroad.
And how does the production process work?
To produce this kind of brocade we still use the same loom of the Song Dynasty. We have 50 looms and 100 workers to operate them, so usually there are two people working together: one up on the loom, another sitting down and they cooperate together.
The person up has to pull some white threads so that the lower yellow threads, forming the web of the brocade, are divided into different layers, some up some down, and the person sitting down remembers all the formulas by heart on how to control the colors across the web, he's in charge of the patterns and the colors. Eight-hour work per day produce just 5-6 cm of brocade.
What's the avarage age among the workers?
Masters are usually middle age, some around 60 years old.
How long does it take to learn how to weave brocade?
Three years to get just some basics skills. After three years of study they can start working, but not as good as the others. Students train inside the school in Nanjing and then some of them come here as interns.
Our masters have been working already more than fiftheen years here; they weave using peacock's feathers thread, gold and silver threads, silk thread. The silk threads are all made with natural colors, coming from seeds and flowers, following a natural process!
Do you collaborate with any design school in order to create new patterns and compositions?
Of course there are many designers, we have classes in here, theachers bring their students to learn different kind of patterns. The patterns have to be then converted into those nods you can see in the upper part of the loom, each of them keeps a different conbination of the pattern and divide the threads for the Master to create the composition.
Many people prepair these nods before and the Shifu has to pull the threads according to these nods. Every time that the pattern changes different nod is needed, but the nods can be used more than once.
The patterns they weave are for the majority traditional?
They also do modern patterns. Phoenix, dragons and flowers are the traditional ones.
Moreover in China we have many patterns, each with a differnt meaning and also the use is differentiated, some are used for pillows, others for male or female dresses and so on. The dragon for example is the pattern associated to the King and used just for him, whereas the lotus is a buddhist symbol used for religious things.
How is the loom made and with which material?
The loom is handmade, by loom-makers, from plain wood plus some additional parts in bamboo, and it's combined by the workers according to the necessity and the kind of brocade. The design of the loom remained unchanged from the Song Dynasty, almost 1000 years ago.
Is this the only kind of brocade you produce?
YunJin has four kinds of brocade, three of them can be made by modern machines, only one kind called ZhuangHua (妆花), the one you just saw, still cannot be replaced, it can be woven only by loom and the result is quite different, is much more colourful and the pattern more complicated. The machine makes regular patterns and can work just with three colors.
The silk brocade production follows a process old more than 1500 years, used for weaving the cloth of the Emperor. Inside the museum you can see the real weaving process of this precious brocade.
The silk production in China is an incredibly ancient activity, but difficult to preserve: silk contains much more proteins after long time under the earth, once dug out by people will oxidate and faint. We have some pieces of silk fabric that dates back 2000 years, they've already become like pouder. This is the reason why our Institute tries to replicate these garments by studing how they where and reproducing the original clothes. From the original pictures of the dresses woven in the past we replicate the cloth's features (weight and transparency) and patterns.
This picture shows the original work of a summer dress woven by plain gauze; plain gauze is transparent, softer, with no color, it only weights 49 grams and was used by the rich people to cover their beautiful clothes. The replica by our Institute took 13 years to finish, because of the evolution of the silk worm today the mulberry tree are feed with chemicals and the mulberry leaves are larger so the silk worms are larger and the silk thicker. We need 13 years to gather thin silk! Also the processing took long, the thinner the harder to weave.”
Considering the amount of labour and the preciousness of the product, this kind of craft was realized just for a niche market of rich people, wasn't it?
“In the ancient times during three dynasties, Yuán, Míng and Qīng, it was only for the King. If someone used it without the king's permission the whole family would have been killed! It was only a royal tribute.
This is the gold robe of the king from Qín Dynasty, more than 1500 years ago, the patterns on the shoulders and the belt are woven by gold thread!
These other clothes present respectively patterns of dragons and plum flowers, and patterns of pheonix and plum flowers. Usually in China the dragon stands for the king and the phoenix for the queen, but during the Qín Dynasty women had a higher social status so it was reverse, dragon for female and phoenix for male!
We also have original pieces coming directly from the Forbidden City, belonged to the Qīng Dynasty, the last dynasty in China. On these original clothes there is the name of the person who produced it for the king as a traceability matter: if the king found any problems with the brocade, about the colors or the patterns, he could send him to death!
But the workers, the people weaving the clothes, in the ancient times were kept secret, even their names were not known and the brocade knowledge passed from generation to generation and the ones weaving for the king had to be only boys. That's why our masters are all man. We take in also girls to study and work, but none of them is master yet.”
So the activity used to remain inside the family, passing on from father to son?
It was not rescticted to the family, not necessarily just father and son, what is sure is that in the past a teacher had just one student, nowadays it's different, they follow more than one apprentice at the time.
Who decided to establish and financed the Museum together with the Research Institute? Was it an initiative coming from the government?
No, we are a private company. We sell what we produce in the store downstairs or in the fabric-shops around the city, in order to sustain ourselves. Our production comes together with our brand logo as a guarantee of the borcade quality and we either sell yardage or the ready-to-use product (ties, foulards, dresses, fraimed pictures, pillow cases and traditional costumes). Many foreigners come to buy in here, but we don't export abroad.
And how does the production process work?
To produce this kind of brocade we still use the same loom of the Song Dynasty. We have 50 looms and 100 workers to operate them, so usually there are two people working together: one up on the loom, another sitting down and they cooperate together.
The person up has to pull some white threads so that the lower yellow threads, forming the web of the brocade, are divided into different layers, some up some down, and the person sitting down remembers all the formulas by heart on how to control the colors across the web, he's in charge of the patterns and the colors. Eight-hour work per day produce just 5-6 cm of brocade.
What's the avarage age among the workers?
Masters are usually middle age, some around 60 years old.
How long does it take to learn how to weave brocade?
Three years to get just some basics skills. After three years of study they can start working, but not as good as the others. Students train inside the school in Nanjing and then some of them come here as interns.
Our masters have been working already more than fiftheen years here; they weave using peacock's feathers thread, gold and silver threads, silk thread. The silk threads are all made with natural colors, coming from seeds and flowers, following a natural process!
Do you collaborate with any design school in order to create new patterns and compositions?
Of course there are many designers, we have classes in here, theachers bring their students to learn different kind of patterns. The patterns have to be then converted into those nods you can see in the upper part of the loom, each of them keeps a different conbination of the pattern and divide the threads for the Master to create the composition.
Many people prepair these nods before and the Shifu has to pull the threads according to these nods. Every time that the pattern changes different nod is needed, but the nods can be used more than once.
The patterns they weave are for the majority traditional?
They also do modern patterns. Phoenix, dragons and flowers are the traditional ones.
Moreover in China we have many patterns, each with a differnt meaning and also the use is differentiated, some are used for pillows, others for male or female dresses and so on. The dragon for example is the pattern associated to the King and used just for him, whereas the lotus is a buddhist symbol used for religious things.
How is the loom made and with which material?
The loom is handmade, by loom-makers, from plain wood plus some additional parts in bamboo, and it's combined by the workers according to the necessity and the kind of brocade. The design of the loom remained unchanged from the Song Dynasty, almost 1000 years ago.
Is this the only kind of brocade you produce?
YunJin has four kinds of brocade, three of them can be made by modern machines, only one kind called ZhuangHua (妆花), the one you just saw, still cannot be replaced, it can be woven only by loom and the result is quite different, is much more colourful and the pattern more complicated. The machine makes regular patterns and can work just with three colors.
After talking with the Museum Guide I got the chance to address some quick questions to one of the weavers.
She's been working there for seven years. There is no particular reason why she picked up this job, it's just another way to make a living, for food! The salary is based on how much they weave, so they're free to decide their schedule by themselves.
She seems to like what she does, but even if she didn't like it she should do it anyway. It's very tiring and she wouldn't like her children to do the same.
She didn't got any kind of certificate or qualification attesting her ability in doing this job, she's simply learned how to do it. Maybe there is a qualification for the Master, but she's still learning. Her sister has more experience, she checks and advise her while she's weaving. Usually are the husband and the wife working together on the same machine, but sometimes brothers or sisters also do it.
She's been working there for seven years. There is no particular reason why she picked up this job, it's just another way to make a living, for food! The salary is based on how much they weave, so they're free to decide their schedule by themselves.
She seems to like what she does, but even if she didn't like it she should do it anyway. It's very tiring and she wouldn't like her children to do the same.
She didn't got any kind of certificate or qualification attesting her ability in doing this job, she's simply learned how to do it. Maybe there is a qualification for the Master, but she's still learning. Her sister has more experience, she checks and advise her while she's weaving. Usually are the husband and the wife working together on the same machine, but sometimes brothers or sisters also do it.
A BIG THANK YOU TO JING FOR TELLING ME ABOUT ALL THIS AND TO CATHY FOR PATIENTLY LEADING MY THROUGH THE DISCOVERY OF A CHINESE NATIONAL TREASURE WHILE ANSWERING ALL MY ANNOYING QUESTIONS!