AurumFlow

In the twilight of the old mansion in Jiangnan, the pearls wrapped in silver wire are glistening on the desk. The fingertips of Lin Wanqing, the inheritor of Suzhou embroidery, stroked over the glazed crystal, and in a trance, it was as if she had touched the golden pearls on the cape of the enjoined wife three hundred years ago. During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, Mrs. Xie, the wife of the minister of the Ministry of Public Works, was granted a first-rank enjoinment because she was meritorious in disaster relief. On the cape, the peonies inlaid with Dongzhu beads and crystals were vivid, and the tassel of the phoenix head trembled with her steps, as if the stars in the sky were embellished on the earth. This honor is not only an award for virtue, but also hides the craftsman’s pursuit of the ultimate craftsmanship — each pearl needs to be polished through twelve procedures, the crystals need to be carved into a hundred petals of exquisite peonies, and the gold tassels require more than three years of experience for the embroiderer to weave out the rhythms. While Wang Hernian, an inheritor of the non-heritage pompom technique, dips silver threads into a special dye solution to recreate the “silver-red” color of the Ming Dynasty, Lin Wanqing is sewing handmade tassels. Silk threads are intertwined with gold threads, and the twelve coiled buttons are like butterfly wings, which reminds her of the story her grandmother told her: in the olden days, in the ceremonial procession of the ennobled lady, the embroiderers were required to sew the tassels under the moonlight, and the refracted rays of the threads lit up the whole long street. “This is not a simple reproduction.” Lin Wanqing embedded the pearls into the crystal receptacle, “We used the false and messy stitches of Suzhou embroidery, the make-up techniques of Nanjing Yunjin, and even improved the lost ‘tired silk dotting’ into an environmentally friendly material.” Fingertips winding tassels gently swaying, each thread with the moist breath of the Suzhou River, as if to tell a hundred years of craftsmen’s perseverance. Nowadays, when this hanging ornament adorned with non-heritage craftsmanship hangs in front of the window, the halo of light refracted by the pearl and the crystal’s clarity are a perfect match. It is not only a tribute to history, but also the inheritance of a thousand years of craftsmanship. Every shake is a whisper of time, weaving the dignity and virtue of the enjoined lady and the persistent craftsmanship of the non-heritage craftsmen into a never-fading oriental legend.