Page 103 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

pattern and over it the embroidered principal motif.
This style is consistent with ritual usage in all the
arts of the time, because the small geometric figures
suggest clouds, which would facilitate
communication between the officiant at the
ceremony and the gods.
Silks with similar embroidered foreground and
woven background patterns were made into the
Han dynasty. The potpourri bag (cat. 76) from
Mawangdui tomb Number 1 in Hunan Province
contains examples of both types: a looped warp-
faced compound tabby and an embroidered
complex gauze. In one section of the potpourri we
find a polychrome compound tabby, known as jin,
with large woven geometric patterns forming the
background and various smaller looped patterns
forming the foreground. Another section of the
potpourri is made of patterned gauze with
embroidered cloud designs. Catalogue 77 is another
example of silk gauze with woven lozenge patterns.
Similar silks may have been made as early as the
WeShang dynasty. know that the style persisted in
later periods in a variant known as "brocade
windows," a principal motif framed by a circle or
roundel against a geometric or similarly figured
woven ground. Such designs were also widely used
in architecture, as is evident from architectural texts
of the Song and from stamped bricks and carved
wood of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
STAMPED DESIGNS, SILK PRINTING, AND BLOCK
PRINTING
Paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass are
four Chinese inventions that greatly influenced the
course of world civilization and the development of
the various cultures. Joseph Needham has listed
twenty-six great inventions of Chinese science and
technology, one for each letter of the alphabet,
including the horizontal treadle loom and pattern
loom, silk reeling, the spinning and doubling wheel,
paper making, and printing. Everyone recognizes
the importance of paper and printing, but few
people are aware of the significance of silk in the
invention of paper making and printing.
It is generally thought that printing originated in
the use of stamps. Many stamps were in use in the
Qin (221-207 BCE) and Han dynasties, but most of
them were employed as seals to make impressions
on clay rather than as printing devices to make ink
graphs on silk or paper. The first trace of a stamped
graph on a textile is found on a piece of warp-faced
compound silk tabby from a Warring States period
tomb near Changsha, Hunan Province. The graph
seems to be a mark of the weaver or the owner of
the bolt of silk. Later finds include two famous
printed silks from Mawangdui tomb Number 1. one
in fine tabby, printed 111 three colors (two of them
ART OF SILK AND ART ON SILK IN CHINA
appear to be gold and silver), and a thin tabby
Onprinted with a floral pattern in six colors. both,
painting was added to enhance the design. The
printing blocks can be identified as small bronze
stamps, usually paired, of which examples about
four and six centimeters wide were found in the
tomb of the king of Nanyue in Guangzhou. Such
stamped designs on silk were the prototypes for
block printing on paper.
Over time, the stamps became bigger, evolving into
printing blocks to be used on silk or on paper; both
types of printing developed contemporaneously in
China. Some examples are three pieces of stamp-
resist dyed silk bearing a portrait of Sakyamuni
Buddha and a number of printed Buddhist
scriptures, discovered in the underground treasury
of the wooden pagoda inYingxian, Shanxi. Apart
from tie dying, the Chinese generally created
designs on fabric by means of printing blocks and
the closely related stencil technique. For block
printing, the pigment was spread on the relief
portions of the carved block, and then the block
was applied to the silk. In block-brush printing, the
piece of silk was laid on the block and rubbed with
a stone to receive an impression of the design on
the block; this blind impression was then colored
with a pigment-laden brush. Stencil printing, often
used in north China to make New Year's pictures,
creates the design by applying colors to the cloth
through the holes in a stencil. All of these later
techniques were derived from elementary stamped
designs on silk.
SILK TAPESTRY, EMBROIDERY, AND CHINESE PAINTING
Silk, both woven and spun, was once the principal
material for Chinese calligraphy and painting.
Woven silk is usually unscoured tabby; many
Chinese documents and paintings were written or
drawn on this type of silk. Spun silk, sometimes
known as cocoon paper, is formed directly by the
silkworm spinning a flat sheet instead of a cocoon.
Spun silk was used as a painting ground or even for
clothes in south China. The renowned calligrapher
Wang Xizhi's celebrated Lanting xu ("Preface to the
Orchid Pavilion") of 353 was written using three
treasures of the calligrapher: an ivory brush pot. a
mousehair brush, and cocoon paper, a splendid
medium still used by modern-day painters and
calligraphers. Once invented, paper replaced silk to
a considerable extent for painting. But in Chinese
the character for "paper." :hi. refers to a kind ot
paper-like silk, a sheet of short, scoured silk fibers
By using vegetable fiber instead of silkworm fiber
to make such a thin sheet, the Chinese invented
true paper.
During the Song dynasty, and especially the reign of
Emperor Huizong (r. U00-II26), the arts ,>t
painting and calligraphy were greatly in favor at
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