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Chinese Silk Tapestries and Embroideries

© Ann Garner

As early as the first century B.C., the Silk Road was established by merchants carrying silk from China to the rest of Asia, Europe and the Middle East. China was exporting woven fabrics in "polychrome silk, damask, tapestry, gauze, quilted cloth, and decoration in moire and embroidery," showing a highly-developed silk-weaving industry, perhaps already centuries old at that time, according to Ernest E. Leavitt, Jr. in The Silkworm and the Dragon, 1968. By the eighteenth century, China boasted a repertoire of 300 different types of silk fabric.

Among these types of fabric is the k'o ssu tapestry weave, a wonder of the textile world. As I understand the weaving method, the warp could be strung on even a very crude loom, because the art was not in the use of the loom but in the "pick-up artistry" of the weavers, some of whom could thread the fine weft yarns into the background warp and create tapestry reproductions of brush paintings. When natural figures are woven in their organic shapes into fabric, the weft threads leave tiny slits where the threads do not cross the warp at an absolute right angle. This technique makes an outline around the organic shape and if a heavier thread is used for the weft than for the warp, the figures will even stand out in relief, yielding a striking three dimensional effect. Slender, deft fingers directed by the sensibility of a superb representational painter are required for this work.

"The weaving was so fine...that pieces with 20-24 warps to the centimeter and as many as 116 wefts to a centimeter of warp have been discovered..." (loc.cit., p. 22) It is estimated that some of the pieces which have been discovered would have required one person to spend his while life on the project.

But for other types of Chinese silk fabrics, weaving provided only the plain-woven background for fabulous embroidery. The stitches and techniques reach back to the time of the establishment of the Silk Road. "The satin stitch was most popular. The stem stitch, long and short stitches, and especially the Peking (French) knot were also common. Gold or silver wrapped threads and thick braids were held to the surface by couching." (Ibid.) To explain couching: the heavy metallic cord -- made by satin stitching or simply wrapping lengths of cotton in silver or gold thread -- was laid on the background fabric and stitched on in a figurative or geometric design with a finer thread of a less noticeable material, often matching the background fabric. See the article at this site which is entitled Embroideries for Town and Country for examples of couched embroideries in heavy gold satin-stitched cording.