The intangible cultural heritage - Chinese Silk Embroidery Art

A hand bag with handmade embroidery technique

As an important sector of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the handmade silk embroidery art is impacting contemporary trend and crossover culture, the craftsmanship's creative products are the commitment to the better life and pursuing inner peace.
MOPA is helping YiHui's embroidery art to develop the international market, who 's a brand from Hangzhou, China, due to the increasing demand of culture and arts globally.

The earliest examples of Chinese embroidery stem from the Zhou Dynasty (1027 – 221 BC), it was ​widespread throughout China in the Han Dynasty (BC 206 – AD 220). As we know, the Silk Road trade also created a demand for Chinese goods.

​In 13th century, the Yuan dynasty of China set up a culture and embroidery bureau hiring wealthy intellectuals and reclusive cadres to administrate arts. Since then, landlord culture had started to flourish in southern China. Exquisite and ornamental silk embroidery works were stitched in imitations of master calligraphy and paintings, divorcing from what folk arts were but marrying to the art of great paintings of the time. Later in the Qing dynasty, silk embroidery was divided into imperial and civilian classes. Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing had gathered many of the imperial style artists, who produced a lot of fine items supplying to the imperial court. High requirements in artistic technique offered stunningly great produces. In cities, there were mills doing silk embroidery business which attracted many experienced painters to do draft and design jobs. As more and more produces coming into the market, popular silk embroidery articles were also made for daily use. These were exported to Japan, Southeast Asia and Western countries. At the time, even the least skilled craftsmen could make fine art works of different styles in various parts in China.