The Craftsmanship of Nanjing Yunjin Brocade

The Craftsmanship of Nanjing Yunjin Brocade

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Nanjing yunjin production technology is mainly distributed in Qinhuai, Jianye, Baixia, Xuanwu, Qixia five areas. In ancient China, brocade was the representative of high – grade textiles. Nanjing brocade is a traditional brocade of yage in China, which is famous for its magnificence, flowery and magnificence. Nanjing brocade is also the best brocade, pine brocade,Shu brocade brocade of the three brocade. Known as “China’s prodigy”, “the world’s treasure”. As for the name “Yunjin”, “Yun” means “cloud” in Chinese and “jin” means “brocade”. People named it “Yunjin” because it was as colorful as clouds. Another theory is that the name “Yunjin” comes from the texture of clouds.

The technology of Nanjing Yunjin is meticulous, innovative and exquisite. “Weft breaking” is its specialty. The wooden fabric used is 5.6m long, 1.4m wide and 4m high. The design of the loom is very scientific and reasonable. Each loom consists of two parts. The top half is used to lift the warp and the bottom half to weave the weft. Weft yarns are woven alternately to meet the requirements of flexible color matching. This process is very complicated, 5~6 cm brocade requires two people to work all day.

Here went the old saying: “one inch of brocade equal to one inch of gold”.

This craftsmanship had lots of advantages: One weft would be completed by several times of flowering so that there was no colorway restriction—same texture could be designed into different colors to make the brocade look elegant and harmonious. This unique craftsmanship still could not be replaced by any modern texture technology or machine.

Jacquard weaving was another specialty of this craftsmanship. Because of the complicated dermatoglyphic patterns, a sample picture in 1/3 meter was needed while weaving 1 inch of the brocade. Let’s describe it in this way: the Jacquard weaving method was the software while the dermatoglyphic patterns were the programs wrote by the ancient method of rope hitching. The upper worker keyed on the “keyboard” while the lower one followed the “screen” to flower it. The process was really amazing and miracle. Nowadays, it still belongs to security restriction of the nation.

Besides, intertexture of gold threads and silver threads was also an important craft of Yunjin Brocade, which made the brocade dignified and graceful to meet the royal requirements.

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Cassidy Tse

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