【Cultural Perspectives】
Cloth spelling clouds and clouds give birth to spring breeze
——A brief discussion on the art of patchwork in Longdong
Gentingzi
Pillow top cat and bird
Jacket partial
Insole with patchwork and embroidery
Pillow top peacock peony
Li Jianrong
The art of patchwork is to splice and paste cloth as a material to form paintings or practical products, which is both an ancient and a new art. In recent years, patchwork art has also become a new content of printing and dyeing design in colleges and universities. This artistic pursuit can resurrect the symbolic system of traditional cultural symbols contained in the loess plateau sachet and purse, and activate the infinite imagination of cloth creation.
The diversity of the art of patchwork
The sachet in the narrow sense was called the smell in ancient times, the sachet, the sachet, etc., and the folk also commonly known as the purse, the goods, and the sloppy. These terms have their own specific designations, but they are intersecting with each other and are not uniform. In the concept of "Qingyang sachet", there is obviously a distinction between broad and narrow senses. In a broad sense, sachets include all kinds of folk embroidery and cloth handicrafts. The process of sewing small pieces of fabric of various shapes together according to specific geometric laws and aesthetic tastes is called patchwork. This patchwork process has a long history and is sewn by people to protect against the cold. Chinese folk will patchwork is called "Bai" "衲", which is the meaning of patching, and "Bai" refers to a lot. Even if a complete set of things are integrated with sporadic materials, it is called "Baig".
There are a large number of patchwork works in Qingyang sachets, and if they are limited to sachets in the narrow sense, they will exclude many types of folk cloth creations - such as door curtains. In other words, the sachet is both embroidered and collaged.
The inheritance of the art of patchwork
Patchwork contains a profound cultural accumulation in the practical art of dressing. The art of patchwork is not just a decoration for the holidays and the dress up for the celebration of the hour, it runs through all aspects of life.
The pottery fragments unearthed from the Nanzuo site in Qingyang have many jigsaw puzzle patterns, including stone axes, stone knives, spinning wheels, bone flutes, daggers, arrowheads, needles and other production tools. Pottery is usually painted with a variety of patterns inside a wide-brimmed pot. Most of the ornaments are horizontal basket patterns and rope patterns, and a small number are checkered patterns. The pottery color is predominantly red, followed by gray and a little black.
Fragments of spinning wheels, machine knives, bone needles and textiles have been unearthed at the Hemudu site. The pottery unearthed in Hemudu has a pig-patterned square bowl, a fish-patterned pottery pot, a rice-eared pig-patterned pottery bowl, a bird-shaped pottery bowl and other daily necessities with rich shapes. These patterns have been passed down by other crafts that followed.
The creativity of the art of patchwork
Paper-cutting, patchwork, embroidery, and sewing are different processes that comprehensively use handicraft art. They cooperate with each other and accumulate a large number of rich folk art schemas. These schemas are both inherited and innovative. Its ornamentality derives from the aesthetic design of folk crafts. In the research of folklore and intangible cultural heritage, researchers attach great importance to the collection and sorting of folk patterns, and gradually form a rich series of Longdong folk art.
Among these patterns, the folk art patterns drawn by Tian Xiumao, an octogenarian in Longdong, are a precious and unique group. The preciousness lies in the fact that his drawings not only come from his own fieldwork on folk art, but also from his own reading and study, and he combines the two aspects to design and redraw them on the basis of collation and research. Such as the needle gourd work he designed. The needle gourd is the art of assembling it, also known as the needle prick, the needle prick, is the embroidery product used for inserting the needle, it is better to hold it in the hand, it is a common item for women to do female red, mostly with cloth and cotton as the material, embroidered on it. In the past, shoes and clothes were made by women by hand, and the needle gourd never left their hands every day, and they took the needle gourd wherever they went.
For thousands of years, people have accumulated a wealth of cultural symbols and art patterns with needle-prick special objects. The reason why it is called a needle gourd is because the shape of the needle prick is similar to that of a gourd. The "gourd" is made up of two parts that are connected to form a whole, implying that only when we work together can the family be happy.
There is a cover on the needle prick, and several layers of cloth should be used to make a hard back, embroidered with flowers, and the needle prick cover protects the needle from falling off and does not pierce the human skin; the needle prick core should be soft, the needle is vertically pierced on it, there is adsorption, and the exposed part is made into a variety of folk art shapes, which is very beautiful and good-looking - this is the wisdom of folk handicraft art, and it has its scientific principle.
I look at the needle prick of Qingyang in Longdong, it is from childhood, grandmother, grandmother, mother and women in the village, each has one or several needles of their own, the old grandmother often hangs the colored needle on the left chest of the covered clothes, and the grandfather embroidered dry tobacco pouch shines brightly. "Gourd" is homophonic to "Fulu", and the colorful cloth gourd is used as an ornament for clothing, which is also based on this folk meaning.
In the folk customs of female red, in some people's homes, the hand thread of the needle gourd should also be made of red and white threads entwined together, and in the bottom bag, grandma and mother will fill in the hair they have combed, because the needle is inserted in the full hair, and it will not rust after a long time. I was very moved in my heart, thinking of the ancient poem "Before leaving, I am afraid of returning late", and I remembered that in the passing years, the green silk and white hair of my relatives, this eternal love, eternal warmth, endless, is inherited by a needle, a lamp, and a thread.
The symbolism of patchwork art
The original traditional patchwork art inherits the symbolic art code of Chinese culture. The original ecological folk patchwork of the Loess Plateau retains the origin of Chinese cultural decorative patterns, and the patchwork in Longdong and northern Shaanxi can be used as an example.
The original ecological patchwork culture of the mainland is extremely prosperous in the middle reaches of the Yellow River on the Loess Plateau. Scholars have discussed a lot about the inheritance relationship between the folk cloth culture and the painted pottery and painted pottery of the Neolithic Age, which still exists in the middle reaches of the Yellow River on the Loess Plateau, but they have not done a systematic comparative study on the artistic modeling and pottery patterns of the patchwork alone, which requires us to combine our own field investigation and archaeological objects to compare and discuss.
Symbolism is an important method of creation, for example, the most common bun doll in the northern folk patchwork, there are various variants, and it is common in embroidered pillows and embroidery pieces.
The bun doll is a very unique folk art pattern, its center is in the Guanlong area, whether it is a humanoid doll, or a tiger, a frog, a crab is the protector of life. These patchwork works are free and innocent, mysterious and aura, full of childlike innocence, freewheeling, bold and exaggerated, with deep beliefs and rich imagination. They constitute a primitive and original ecological cultural system that corroborates each other with underground cultural relics, radiating from the Loess Plateau to the land of China, constituting a complete cultural context.
The narrative nature of patchwork art
There are many kinds of patchwork costumes in folk life. As a technique of traditional folk culture, patchwork is also part of the intangible cultural heritage. First of all, patchwork is one of the embroidery processes, using larger pieces of cloth with different color patterns to collage the base map, and then embroider on it. At the same time, patchwork is also a unique type of clothing and embroidery cloth works, which can be distinguished from embroidery and clothing making skills and regarded as an independent art.
On the Loess Plateau in the north, in the area of Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningjin, and Jinjin, the clothing and ornaments sewn and embroidered by this art have the distinctive characteristics of patchwork art and have the effect of relief. Its specific practice is to combine the paste and fill embroidery paintings, some people call it collage relief embroidery, and this technique is used the most in the production of belly pockets and pillow tops. Because it is mostly an overall design, made in parts, and then combined into a complete picture on the cloth, it is called "funny", "funny" is the Qinlong dialect, that is, the fingers carefully put together different parts to form a pattern, because the cloth is small, to be careful and careful, gently assembled, so the daughter-in-law who will "tease the wrapper" and "tease the jacket" is a clever person, saying that a woman will "tease", is the recognition of her female red skills.
The art of commestic, including cutting, plastering, folding, embroidery, filling, painting and other processes, in the process of completion, cleverly combine different natural scenes and character stories. This skill is very old, passed down from generation to generation, and older women have mastered more patterns, and now there are very few young people who can do it. The main ones made with such skills are 100 family clothes, children's cloaks, door curtains, children's hats, cushions, etc. According to the form of the patchwork, it can be divided into flat patchwork and three-dimensional patchwork.
The aesthetics of patchwork art
Patchwork is a unique art form that beautifies rural living spaces. In the countryside of Longdong and northern Shaanxi, in autumn, winter and early spring, the weather is cold, and in order to keep warm, a curtain is often hung. The door curtains are mostly patchwork works, and the doors and curtains made of different pieces of cloth are pasted with animals in the zodiac, swallows, pandas, etc. During the Spring Festival or when marrying a new daughter-in-law, such a curtain is hung on the door of the cleanly cleaned farmhouse courtyard, which is much more festive. Sometimes, patchwork curtains are also hung on the windows. The cave is warm in winter and cool in summer, even on a hot day, some people will hang thick patchwork curtains, and the cave is cooler.
From spring to summer, the mountain plain is green, and the mountain flowers and colorful curtains reflect each other, and it is splendid. From autumn to winter, the mountains are desolate, the land is brown and yellow, the patchwork curtain is bright and warm, calling the wanderer to return home, if it is after the snow, the world is white, the colorful colored curtain is even more heart-warming-because the curtain is opened is a hot meal, a warm kang head.
Cloth sticker and marriage picture
The modernity of Qingyang patchwork art
Qingyang cloth stickers are mainly distributed in Huachi and Xifeng. Huachi is located at the eastern end of Gansu Province, bordering Zhidan, Wuqi and Dingbian in Shaanxi Province in the northeast, and Qingcheng, Huanxian and Heshui in the southwest of the province.
Huachi folk cloth sticker is an ancient folk arts and crafts, which is an important part of Longdong culture. Huachi patchwork creation is made of coarse cloth as raw material, the colors are rich and bright, the edges of the cut and paste are clear and neat, and the knife and wood characteristics of woodcut prints are rich. Its content is mostly based on the themes of people, animals, flowers and birds, etc., pays attention to color contrast, exaggerates the description with red and purple colors, pursues strong intuitive effects, and pays attention to decoration; the style is romantic and clumsy, rich and simple, and the charm is vivid.
Xifeng's cloth stickers integrate folk paintings with literati paintings, traditional local feelings and modern humanistic spirits, and have a new quality of contemporary painting art. From the Longdong patchwork costumes and contemporary literary and creative works, we can read the deep feeling of fate in the depths of a person's soul, the deep nostalgia for childhood, and the deep mountains and rivers, spring and snow, and the firm and silent personality. (The author of this article is a distinguished professor of Xi'an University of Foreign Affairs, and the picture is provided by the author)