The art of traditional embroidery might be seeing a resurgence soon as students from Tainan’s Kuang Hua Senior High School’s fashion and clothing design department recently sought lessons from local masters.
Department director Chang Wan-ling (張婉玲) said that the initial concept of combining fashion with traditional embroidery was the outcome of the school’s attempt to live up to its responsibility to pass on local culture and handicrafts, and in doing so seeking innovative ideas for the art.
“We hope that students will be able to use modern thinking to develop new signs and symbols that will appeal more to people of this age, and in doing so, revitalize ancient traditions,” Chang said.
The students asked 76-year-old embroidery master Lin Yu-chuan (林玉泉) from Kuang Tsai Embroidery to demonstrate and pass on knowledge of a technique called ba xian cai (八仙彩).
Lin, who has been engaged in the trade for more than five decades, said he has seen the rise and fall of the industry, and he felt sad that it was going downhill.
“I was moved to see how passionately involved the high-school students were in learning the craft,” he said, adding that he was holding nothing back and would be glad to teach everything he knew in the hope of innovation being brought to the trade.
After coming into contact with traditional embroidery methods and the three-dimensional pictures embroidered into cloth, the students did not disappoint their teachers or Lin.
Their imagination has created a new look for traditional handicraft and value for the cultural creative industry, Chang said.
Ku Chih-yi (古之怡), one of the students, said it was possible to use digital imprinting as the foundation and then make changes with the techniques taught to them by Lin, adding that such alterations would create different variations.
Kuo Fu-mei (郭富美), a student who won ninth place in a national clothing design competition, used a heat transfer process to imprint pictures that were unique to Taiwan, then made changes with hand-embroidery to give each item its own unique flavor.
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