The copper wire twists, twists the silk into a round and rolling velvet strip, smokes, brakes, blanches, saves... After more than a dozen processes, a blooming peony jumped into the palm of his hand. This velvet flower, which has been passed down in old Beijing for more than 300 years, is about to enter the international stage.
Velvet flowers, a traditional handicraft of intangible cultural heritage, will soon be used in the winter Olympic awards ceremony.
Recently, the Winter Olympic Organizing Committee released the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Awards Dress, which brings together Chinese landscapes, Hanfu, embroidery and other representative traditional Chinese cultural elements. Among them, the "Tang Hua Fei Xue" series of dresses will be served in the awards square during the race, and two old Beijing velvet flowers are inlaid with one before and one after the hat as decoration. These velvet flowers are "knifed" by Cai Zhiwei, the sixth generation inheritor of Beijing velvet birds.
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Yesterday, the reporter came to the velvet flower production studio located in Sendai Village, Yangsong Town, Huairou, and Cai Zhiwei was busy designing new velvet flower shapes. Speaking of Beijing velvet flowers, it probably dates back to the Ming Dynasty, and there is a clear record in the Minghui Classic Scrolls - there are 188 kinds of crafts, and there are 11,800 craftsmen. The velvet flower craft formed an industry at the end of the Ming Dynasty and developed to its peak in the Qing Dynasty, mainly for the enjoyment of the court nobles. Not far from the Forbidden City, Huashi Street has gradually become a distribution center for palace flowers and velvet flower products, and the name "Flower Market" is derived from this. Later, he created poultry, birds and other shapes, and the velvet products inherited from Beijing were collectively called "velvet birds". Cai Zhiwei is the inheritor of the "Velvet Bird Zhang" series in Beijing.
The index fingers and thumbs of both hands form a thick cocoon, and the mottled scabs are faintly visible at the ends of the fingers, and Cai Zhiwei laughs and says that this is a "badge of honor". Talking about participating in the production of Winter Olympic costumes, Cai Zhiwei felt honored, and also admitted that at the beginning of participating in the production, he faced great challenges. According to the vision of Chu Yan, the designer of the "Tang Hua Fei Xue" award dress, the brim of the women's dress is decorated with two velvet flowers, one with leaves, the overall shape is narrow and long, placed in front; the other is rounded and fixed behind the hat. Because there are two sets of women's dresses, the velvet flower also needs two sets of colors, one blue and one red. "Dyeing this pass has tormented me for a long time." Cai Zhiwei explained that simulating the light and shadow effect through color gradients presents a three-dimensional sense, which is a major feature of velvet flowers. According to the traditional mulberry silk dyeing process, red from dark to light will show dark brown, positive red, peach, orange, turmeric and other color changes. "The Winter Olympics awards uniform is only red and white, and it must be red but not colorful, and the gradient is not yellow." Cai Zhiwei said.
Constantly adjusting the formula and trying more than a dozen versions, Cai Zhiwei was always dissatisfied. "Minerals are often used as pigments in traditional Chinese paintings, and perhaps used in silk can stably dye different shades of positive red." Cai Zhiwei had a whim and tried to change it to a mineral dye. In the incubator, hot water at 80 degrees Celsius was boiled for half an hour, and Cai Zhiwei carefully immersed a strand of silk. "It's done!" Excited, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Choose silk, stretch wire, split rows, bolt rows, rub strips... Cai Zhiwei said that each of these dozen processes is very important, not only to ensure that the individual flowers are well-made, but also to unify the size, color and shape of all the velvet flowers, and must not ignore any detail. "For example, the shell beads as flower buds used to be glued with glue, and the cold glue was easy to fall off, so we pondered for a long time and decided to use copper wire to tie it in series, and then cover it with a circle of glue for double fixation."
20 days, 6 people, almost non-stop, repeatedly breaking through the limit of physical strength. "After rubbing the last velvet strip, I only feel that my eyes see everything flowers, and my arms seem to have fallen into two scales." Liu Lihua, who participated in the production of velvet flowers, said that she was tired and happy, and she was extremely proud to contribute to the Winter Olympics!
In another 20 days, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will be grandly opened, "highlighting the unique charm of oriental aesthetics, intangible cultural heritage, will add a lot of color to the Winter Olympics." Cai Zhiwei is full of expectations.
Source: Beijing Daily | Reporter Wang Kexin Gannan
Editor: Wang Qiong
Process Editor: Dan Guo