Velvet flowers, known as "Nanjing on the bun", are a representative traditional handicraft with local characteristics in Nanjing.
Velvet flowers are all handmade, because their special expression methods cannot be produced by machines until now.
The history of velvet flowers
The harmonic sound of velvet flowers "Ronghua" means auspicious blessings, which can add to the joyful atmosphere of the festival. Therefore, every wedding celebration or Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, folk generally use velvet flowers as decoration customs.
During the Tang Dynasty, Yangzhou presented velvet flowers as royal tributes, which could only be used by royal nobles, which showed its preciousness.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the velvet flower fell from "the emperor will be a stranger" to "ordinary alleys", in addition to being favored by the royal family, it was also loved by the people. In the 1930s and 1940s, the velvet shops were bustling in Nanjing's "Flower Market Street", a bustling scene.
Velvet flower craftsmanship is exquisite, colorful, beautiful and profound, everywhere can penetrate a strong auspicious meaning, full of people's yearning and love for a better and happy life.
In 2006, Nanjing Velvet Was Listed as a Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The process of velvet flowers
The production of velvet flowers needs to go through nearly ten processes such as dyeing, softening brass wire, hook strips, sharpening, and passing flowers.
The main material for making velvet flowers is silk, and after the silk is purchased, it must be cooked in alkaline water and must not be rotten.
When making, it needs to be dyed first. According to the different colors of the production of velvet flowers, the cooked velvet should be dyed into different colors, and the dyed cooked velvet should be put on a bamboo pole to dry, and it must be turned over frequently and straightened. The second is to split the fleece, which is fixed to a utensil after the cooked velvet is split, arranged evenly, and combed through with a pig brown hair brush.
The use of copper wire is an important step. The brass wire is burned over a charcoal flame until annealed and softened, and depending on the velvet flowers produced, the specifications of the brass wire vary in size and are sandwiched on both sides of the silk. Once fixed, the fleece needs to be cut quantitatively. Combine the middle of the copper wire into a small spiral fork and clamp the well-lined cooked fleece. The other end of the copper wire is then merged and twisted into a spiral, and the left and right hands are twisted in the opposite direction at the same time to make it compact. Then use the upper and lower wooden boards to roll the copper wire, and after tightening, use scissors to process the flannel strip, so that the cylindrical velvet strip becomes obtuse angle, sharp angle, rounded corner, sphere, elliptical body and other shapes.
Finally, the required parts are re-trimmed, and the splendor strips that have been pointed are combined with forceps, and the required products are made with auxiliary materials such as lead wire, leather paper, and beads, and a often undefeated velvet flower is ready.
The type of velvet flower
As a velvet flower of plastic arts, its type has also been continuously innovated with the development and progress of the production process, and four generations of type products have appeared successively.
One is the sideburns, which are used as ornaments for wearing on the head and chest. The velvet phoenix crown, as an ornament for the bride when she marries, has a more auspicious blessing.
The second is the velvet bird, which has made a breakthrough in the form of modeling, changing the single mode of sideburns, and expressing the flowers, birds, insects, fish, and human figures in a three-dimensional form, which is lifelike and has great ornamental value.
The third is the velvet hanging screen, the velvet artist according to the velvet flower production materials rigid and soft, strong modeling characteristics, the use of relief and inlay process production methods, absorb the artistic creation style and aesthetic conception of Chinese painting, comparable to other hanging screen art decorations.
The fourth category is velvet ornaments, which are mainly made of velvet materials for velvet flowers, combined with other materials and object contents, which are used for table head and bedside decoration. With the change of aesthetics and social values, these types of velvet flowers have given it more shape and connotation, tending to simulate flowers, dense combination, symmetry and harmony and other artistic characteristics, with a strong artistic expression tension.
Since its birth, the velvet flower has been constantly opening and renewing, it enriches women's makeup boxes, but also decorates women's daily life, with its unique production process and profound cultural meaning, it has flourished for hundreds of years.