Study Of Jiangnan Marriage Needlework Art

The Red Dowry is a custom which a bride would bring a large dowry when get married. It is based on the legend that in Southern Song Dynasty, King Guo ZHAO was saved by a country girl and rewarded girls in east part of Zhejiang to be treated as princesses in their weddings. It also stands for grand ceremonies when rich families in east part of Zhejiang held weddings for their children in olden days. The custom arises from Southern Song Dynasty, and became prevalent in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty. The huge influence also affected the whole Jiangnan area. Needlework is a broad term for the handicrafts of decorative sewing and textile arts. Girls always learn the skills from their mothers in bedrooms. Needlework for weddings is usually expressed by embroidery. Decorative sewing is important in the dowry for a bride. It is a benchmark for groom’s family to judge the bride and can also be sold for cash to overcome hard economic times. In the complicated traditional weddings, needlework witnesses the six formalities. In the engagement period, groom and his family makes needlework clothes and sent betrothal gifts to bride and her family while bride answers with perfect needlework to make a commitment. After settling the wedding date, bride’s family starts to prepare for the dowry. Needlework clothes play an essential part in the dowry. Bride also participates in making needlework to express the prospects of new life. In order to show the ingenuity of the bride and the well-off of the family, the bride’s family would always prepare the clothes for bride’s whole life or even for groom and his family. Wedding gown and groom suit are gifts sent to each other by both parties three days before the wedding day. They are also referred as gifts which groom and his family urges the bride and her family to deliver the dowry. On the wedding day, dowry would be delivered to the broom’s family with the bride.Needlework in the dowry includes things for daily uses and wedding uses. There are various kinds such as clothes, shoes, hats, accessories, home textile and etc. Bride dress, groom costume, wedding shoes, red veil, decorative chaplet and rope, stole and etc constitute wedding uses clothes. Daily uses include clothes, bellyband, shoes, hats, and embroidered pouches. Because having a baby is the priority of a family, clothes for kids are also being prepared besides those for bride, groom and parents in law. Moreover, quilt, bed-curtain, table cloth and etc are for the decoration of the new home. The needlework of daily use are colorful; the dress, sedan chair and the fabric soft decorations are red. Ans in the Ming dynasty had the custom of wedding dress can taking the red. The magnificent and joyful effect are created by the red wedding clothes match with cannetille embroidery technology which is originated from Ningbo. Except cannetille embroidery technology, monofilament embroidery, affixed cloth embroidered, cross-stitch work, seed embroidered, petit pointand and other delicate skills are also used in embroidery techniques for dowry. Patterns for dowry stand for luck. The main patterns are the ones pray for the happiness of the newly-wed and having babies. Besides, there are patterns of the spirit of integrity, fortune, luckiness and other traditional patterns. Needlework tools consist of needles, strings, scissors, tables, frames and easels for embroidery and so on. In addition, paintings for embroidery are sources for creativity in olden days. Nowadays, wedding related market is becoming a hot one due to large amount of weddings, high quality of life and spiritual pursuit. Compared with western culture wedding dresses, Chinese style wedding clothes have a smaller market share but with huge potentials and opportunities. By improving the quantities and qualities of the Chinese wedding dresses, a relative mature market can be cultivated. The current popular Chinese wedding dresses are dragon and phoenix suit, XiaoFengxian suit, Xiuhe suit and modified form cheongsam. Home textile for wedding includes beddings, decorations and paintings used in bedrooms and dining rooms and so on. Embroidery skills such as plain embroidery, gold and silver embroidery、 beaded embroidery and etc are commonly used in Chinese wedding clothes. Sellers also love to use embroidery skills to increase the value of their products. I hope that early needlework of dowry offers an important lesson for the design of current wedding clothes and home textile.