Viewpoint | practitioner of reviving traditional Miao craftsmanship with design

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I am a silver jewelry designer from Hunan who came to Guizhou more than a decade ago to study graphic design. It stands to reason that I will not touch the jewelry industry, let alone the traditional silver jewelry and Miao embroidery crafts that are closely related to Guizhou. After graduation, I joined the "Sun Drum" team, which began my silver jewelry and Miao embroidery design journey.

With the in-depth understanding and research of these cultures, I gradually became fascinated by them, step by step, this industry has long been a part of my life.

Phoenix Nirvana collar

Knots

When you think of Guizhou, everyone will naturally think of the Miao, and when you think of the Miao, you have to say that the Miao are proud of their silver jewelry craftsmanship and Miao embroidery, which are also national intangible cultural heritage.

The Miao people have no writing, for the traditional Miao family, Miao embroidery is a Miao family history book, the Miao family records history with patterns, and wears history on the body. At the same time, the Miao family also loves silver jewelry, which is also an indispensable part of Miao culture. As a cult object, it is a tight condensation of the descendants of the same ancestor; as a symbol of marriage, it represents people's unswerving vows of love until death. Miao silver jewelry is not a simple ornament, but a cultural carrier rooted in the social life of the Miao people. It can be said that Miao embroidery and silver jewelry are the "roots" of Miao culture, which are passed down in a needle and a thread, a hammer and a hammer, and an ancestor for generations.

Change and heritage

In order to pass on these treasures in the mountains, the sun drum original handmade silver jewelry brand founded in 2006 began a local handmade originality, we conducted in-depth research on traditional craftsmanship, invited more than 20 silversmiths with thirty years of silvermaking experience to form a handicraft team, based on traditional craftsmanship, with modern modeling language to tell the design of silver jewelry, and I have become the main designer.

Although there are still some highly skilled craftsmen in Guizhou, with the infiltration of modern culture, many traditional crafts of the Miao people are on the verge of being lost, and there is no successor to the traditional skills. The elaborate slow-paced craftsmanship and ancient patterns are no longer suitable for the fast-paced urban life of the modern era.

In the design of the fusion of miao embroidery and silver jewelry, my design inspiration is often fixed on the beautiful moments of nature, blooming flowers, lotus leaves with dew, flexible swimming fish... In different designs, it is inlaid with Miao embroidery patterns such as horsetail embroidery, crepe embroidery, hanging embroidery, and flat embroidery, which adds a lot of ethnic customs to the jewelry, and at the same time, it also retains the traditional handicraft design ideas. Extracting elements from traditional folk art and applying these elements to fashion design gives people a refreshing feeling.

27 crafts

The silk weaving process is a commonly used craft in the traditional Miao silver jewelry production. Before weaving, the silver strip is first pulled into a hair-like silver wire with a special brushed plate, and then the silver wire is rubbed into silver wire with a washboard, and then the pattern is woven, compared with the carved silver jewelry, the silver jewelry made by the wire weaving process is lighter, more delicate, and also has a special hollowing effect, and the required process is very complex, with a total of up to 27 channels.

When studying the traditional crafts of Guizhou, I found that the traditional silver jewelry made of silver jewelry and silk weaving process mostly takes flowers, birds, fish and insects as the main theme, and the shape is complicated and the national sense is too heavy. In the process of design thinking, we have made some breakthroughs in traditional modeling, upgrading the figurative and cured shapes to more concise abstract and diversified shapes, so that the jewelry under the traditional craft has a new visual sense.

The traditional silk weaving process in Guizhou often follows many rules, and the plasticity ability is limited to a certain extent, and when weaving certain natural objects, it is impossible to achieve the desired effect. In 2011, when I was designing a set of lotus leaf-themed ornaments, I found that the lotus leaves made by the traditional silk weaving process were very rigid, and could not reflect the uneven leaf surface and crisscrossing veins of the lotus leaves. "Why not break the rules and let the silver wire wind freely to enhance plasticity?" Then, after repeated trials, the silver wire was irregularly wound and stacked to produce a full and unique lotus leaf with a realistic form. This series was very popular in the market as soon as it was launched, and then I developed the "Stone Flower" series using the silk process.

"Stone Flower"

Our strength in the promotion and promotion of traditional Miao culture is very limited, but I am willing to work hard for it. I think the younger generation in Miaozhai, if they see the value of this culture, they may also proudly follow it, so that Miao culture can be developed and passed on, rather than becoming a "dead culture" of the museum.

For more than 10 years, we have listed hundreds of products, and in the era when FMCG products flooded the market, we have always insisted on original and pure craftsmanship. What supports us is the respect for the traditional culture of the Miao people, the obsession with the traditional silver jewelry and embroidery craftsmanship of the Miao people, and the insistence on the spirit of craftsmanship.

But we still haven't done enough, there are still many traditional Miao handicrafts, and we hope that through our efforts, more people can join the ranks of guarding traditional culture. I hope that in the future, someone can lead Guizhou handicrafts into the international market and move to a more high-end field. For us, promoting traditional handicrafts and doing China's own original handicrafts is worth a lifetime to complete.

Yuan Jue YUANJUE

Creator of art jewelry, chief designer of sun drum original handmade silver jewelry, member of Guizhou Artists Association, guest lecturer of colleges and universities. Committed to the research and development of traditional Miao silver jewelry and embroidery technology in Guizhou, based on traditional handicrafts, through the innovative design of products to the market, so that these ancient crafts that are on the verge of being lost in Guizhou can be inherited.