Embroidery exhibition pays tribute to Qing women

Julia Wu (吳海苗) has spent 20 years collecting Chinese embroidery from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). As a tribute to the labors of women in this period of Chinese history, Wu is sharing her personal collection with the public in an exhibition now on display at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.

Chinese embroidery owes a big part of its existence to the confinement of women to the home. From the age of six, young girls were taught by their mothers to stitch and together they would embroider garments and tapestries to be used as dowry payments. After marriage, the mother-in-law would determine the character of her son's bride by the quality of her stitching.

"Generations of women would come together to work. They couldn't leave the house so they would sit for hours every day. A lot of thought went into their work. It provided a way for them to express their desires and thoughts at the time," Wu said.

Given the difficulty of preserving embroidery work, Wu said it is rare to find pieces from prior to the Qing Dynasty, and the invention of electric machinery led to the end of this handicraft, which is now a rare practice except in some rural areas of China. Even that which is done by hand now does not compare to the work produced by women in the mid to late Qing Dynasty, she said, citing the use of chemical dyes as one reason.

The layout of the exhibition is simple and minimal. Most of the 30 works are hung around the small gallery with a few pieces enclosed in display cabinets. Beside each work is a small plaque with a brief description of how, when and where the work was used. From the entrance, on the right side are pieces representing Beijing-style embroidery and on the left are works from China's southern regions. Both styles vary in their patterns' decoration and type of stitching.

The works include mostly decorative hangings along with a few garments that Wu purchased from antique boutiques in China. One of the more interesting pieces on display is the pair of shoes worn by women whose feet were bound at birth. It's the infant size of the shoes rather then the embroidery that make them so fascinating to look at.

As with traditional Chinese painting, a deep understanding of the motifs is imbedded in each of these embroidered works. There are pieces decorated with familiar symbols of peonies, Mandarin ducks and dragons.

What is obvious is the extremely precise labor that goes into each piece. From the detail in human expression to the seal signatures, the precision of the stitching makes it difficult to differentiate these embroidered works from ink paintings.

Event notes :

What: The exhibition of Chinese embroidery from the Qing Dynasty

Where: The basement gallery of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, 505 Renai Rd, Sec 4, Taipei (國父紀念館，臺北市仁愛路四段505號)

When: Daily 9am to 5pm until Sunday