The Beijing Winter Olympics are in full swing. On the field, the competition is thrilling; outside the arena, a group of traditional craftsmen also pay tribute to the "Winter Olympics" in a different way. In Luojing Town, Baoshan District, a flower picking technique that has been passed down for more than 300 years, the cross flower picking, is inspired by the snowflake element in the opening ceremony and weaves a beautiful and flexible snowflake.
Zheng Xiaorong was once an athlete. Now her other identity is the representative inheritor of the Luojing Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage Cross Flower Picking District. Inspired by her son, she took the snowflake element as inspiration, and used the cross flower picking technique, which has the poetic gene of Jiangnan, to pick winter dreams, and the "art" road accompanied the winter Olympic athletes, cheering for the athletes and moving towards the future together.
Just like athletes, traditional works of skill also need to be "broken". The creation of this work is also a "special challenge" for Zheng Xiaorong. Luojing cross flower picking technique is a traditional skill that has been passed down for more than 300 years, which is not only an extension of art to life, but also an infiltration of life to art, full of life aesthetics. How can traditional skills be carried forward? It was something she had been thinking about. So, she decided to combine the Elements of Olympic Snowflakes with the traditional pattern of Baji to make a pen curtain.
Have ideas, but it's not easy to practice. The traditional needle of cross picking flowers is relatively single, and the pattern performance is not vivid enough. How to fully express the flexibility of snowflakes is the first problem in front of us. To this end, Zheng Xiaorong boldly spaced a distance of warp and weft yarn between each cross, making the overall pattern vision more stretched and more tense. In this way, a beautiful and flexible snowflake was born.
Luojing cross flower picking technique is crossed on the front, and the back is neatly arranged in a dotted manner, how to present the simple and elegant beauty of the front and back sides of the cross flower in front of the viewer's eyes, Zheng Xiaorong "brain hole open", opened a skylight in the pen bag, and used the transparent yarn process to perfectly present the back of the flower picking.
Just as athletes train for the basics day after day, so does cultural heritage. While making breakthroughs and innovations, we must not forget the roots of traditional culture. In this brush curtain work, the traditional Eight Ji pattern is applied at the connection of the rope, which holds people's worship of life and prayer for auspiciousness, symbolizing the endless and continuous life of beautiful things.
See the local art between the square inches, and the subtleties are full of heart.
Author: Wang Jiayi
Editor: Wang Wanyi
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Xiaoming
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.