The Surging News reporter Yang Baobao
Sitting in front of the old loom, the 70-year-old Xu Yongmei regained the memories of being a teenager as a girl, stepped on the loom pedal, and sped the polished shuttle through the two rows of cotton threads, compacting heavily, and weaving a weft thread. In the era of Songjiang cloth "clothes under the heavens", in the repetitive labor of one weft and one weft, the most skilled weaver girl can weave a piece of cloth a day.
From September 30th, the "Songjun Cotton Quilt World/ Ye Xie Buckle Textile Technology Exhibition" opened on the third floor of Shanghai Yong'an Department Store. The exhibition exhibits a large number of Matsue cloth collected by the painter Dongye from the Countryside of Shanghai, as well as cultural and creative derivatives such as clothing and sachets made from Matsue cloth.
Spectators are picking sachets made of Matsue cloth
Brie has a thick culture and a long life
In the exhibition hall, there is a shelf, which is stacked on top of each other, roll after roll of Matsue cloth, with different patterns. These are just a small part of the Toono Collection.
Entering the exhibition hall, directly opposite is a loom, and on the left and right sides is a spinning wheel, which is still operational. Some of these displays also come from his collection. As the countryside became urbanized, many elderly people moved into buildings, and the bulky looms they had been carrying for a lifetime could not go upstairs, and finally sold.
The earthen cloth collected by Dongye is stacked on top of each other on shelves
"The cloth was the dowry at the time of the dowry, well preserved, almost brand new." Dongye bent down and turned over a roll of cloth in the cowhide box. Decades of earthen cloth, each roll carefully sealed with paper, with a bright blue background, looks new. This was the most precious dowry for girls at that time, stored in a moisture-proof cowhide box, and only when needed was some of it.
Until the middle of the last century, farmers in many places on the outskirts of Shanghai were still weaving fabrics. Girls began to learn to weave cloth from the teenage years old, set a box of dowry for themselves in the mother's home, knit diapers for children after marriage, weave cloth tailoring for the whole family, and the years of life flowed through the loom.
Toono began collecting Matsue soil cloth more than 20 years ago. At first, it stemmed from childhood memories and an interest in matsue cloth textures. As a painter, he has a special sensitivity to patterns, and matsuebu is quite beautiful between the passage and the weft, which fascinates him.
A native of Matsue, Toono's mother also weaves cloth from an early age, and she can weave a piece of cloth a day when her hands are fast. Dongye grew up wearing native cloth clothes made of Matsue cloth, and Matsue cloth is always a warm memory in his heart.
In the process of collecting Matsue cloth, Tono began to come into contact with the story behind the fabric. He remembers going to collect a loom at a time, and when he got to the place, the 78-year-old man stood up barefoot from the field to greet him.
"That healthy, lifelike atmosphere touched me very much." Toono, who had been just going to collect the loom, couldn't help but ask, "Do you still have cloth at home?" ”
The old man took him back to the house, opened the closet, and took out more than 20 pieces of clothes made of Matsue native cloth, saying that this was the birthday dress that she and her husband would wear in the future. Walking to the second floor, I opened another cabinet from the old Republic of China period, which was full of white earthen cloth, and the old man said that this was what everyone would use at the funeral after she left.
DongYe asked, is there anything other than that? The old man took out a piece of cloth about 50 centimeters wide, and the weft lines were colorful lines. Dongye had never seen this kind of cloth and asked, "What kind of cloth is this?" "The old man said it was incense cloth, the piece of cloth that his relatives wanted to cover her with their own hands after she was gone.
"When she talks about death, it's all about pulling a family-like attitude." I saw the old man say to his daughter, "You will cover me with this cloth later." "Dongye was very touched at that moment.
Embarrassed, he asked the old man for a little incense cloth. The old man began to disagree, saying that there was only this little bit. The daughter said next to her, "Mom, either you can cut a paragraph for him." In the end, he spent 120 yuan and got a piece of incense cloth.
"The old man told me that she started dyeing at the age of 12 and weaving at the age of 15." Dongye tried to imagine that a 15-year-old girl knitting a dowry for herself, knitting the clothes of her future husband, the clothes of her children, and her own clothes, which were also divided into different categories such as field work, visiting relatives and friends, and staying at home. How did she know who she would marry in the future? How did she know what death was?
He began to realize the thick culture and long life behind Matsue cloth, "I think the biggest spiritual core of Matsue cloth is as a dowry for women in Gangnam. From the inside of the cloth, you can see their life, Matsuebe as the dowry of Jiangnan women, in fact, each mother passed on the life skills from generation to generation, which itself is a traditional living folk inheritance. ”
At the exhibition site, a 70-year-old man demonstrates weaving
"Clothing the world", Matsue Bu was once a legend
In September 2019, Dongye visited the "Jingwei Huazhang" - the era narrative exhibition of Shanghai Tubu at China Normal University, and was deeply inspired.
"Listening to a lecture at that time, I was suddenly brought back to the scene when I was wearing native cloth clothes when I was a child." Dongye collected native cloth before, but rarely studied its history. The academic narrative of Hua Normal University made him interested in the history of this piece of cloth in his hand, "Looking back and combing, it turns out that Songjiang cloth is so powerful, has such a glorious history, and also carries the spirit of Jiangnan women." ”
The so-called Songjiang cloth refers to the cloth produced by "Songjiang Province", rather than the songjiang district of shanghai, and its scope is equivalent to the area south of the Wusong River in present-day Shanghai.
Songjiang is the "root of Shanghai", and it is said that "there is Songjiang Province first, and then there is Shanghai Beach". In the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, Huang Daobo, a Wunijing man in Songjiang Province, brought advanced cotton textile technology back to his hometown from Hainan and taught the people the technology of making textile tools. This makes Songjiang cotton from the original rough, single, loose to refined, firm and beautiful.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, cotton textile production has become an important pillar of Songjiang's economic development, and almost every household in each township has invested in textile activities, and the cloth produced has been sold throughout the country through water transportation, and even East Asia, South Asia, Europe, the United States and other places. With the rise of the cloth market, the yarn ships engaged in coastal transportation gathered in the port, which led to the prosperity of Shanghai port trade, and created Songjiang Province to become the weaving center of the national cotton textile industry in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and also had the reputation of "Su and Song tax half the world" and "clothing under the world".
Songjiang cloth is not only soft in texture, but also has a variety of patterns, incomplete statistics have hundreds of kinds, generally common leaf buckle cloth, standard cloth, triangular cloth, twill cloth, purple flower cloth, flying flower cloth, wicker cloth, lattice cloth, medicinal patch cloth and so on.
Dongye collected native cloth from all over China and picked out a few horses to compare, Henan's soil cloth texture is thicker and harder texture, while Songjiang's famous leaf-and-cheek clasp cloth is soft and thin, light in color, and is most suitable for making diapers for newborn babies. Tongxiang is not far from Shanghai, but the color of the soil cloth is more gorgeous, and although the Songjiang cloth also has different colors, the overall is "stable" that can be suppressed.
Matsue cloth has different texture patterns, but the aesthetic is very "stable", which stems from the influence of the aesthetics of the literati doctor on the folk
"In the Ming Dynasty, songjiang cloth technology had the innovation of the zodiac, and the aesthetic was represented by Dong Qichang, and the literati and doctors gathered, such a context gave birth to the aesthetics of this region, and their aesthetics will also affect the folk, and the two aspects of influence have created the legend of Songjiang cloth 'clothes under the world'." Dongye said.
In the exhibition, two "purple flower cloths" were placed in the display cabinet and properly preserved. "Purple flower cloth" was once a famous fabric in Matsue Province, woven from natural colored cotton, and its name comes from raw materials. This cotton flowers purple, the mature cotton fruit is yellow, the fibers are slender and soft, and the handmade cloth woven without dyeing is naturally yellow, durable, and is called "purple flower cloth".
Purple flower cloth was marketed overseas as early as the 18th century through the Maritime Silk Road. In his research, Dongye learned that the most common attire of European aristocrats at that time was "wearing a silk top on the top and purple cloth pants on the bottom."
This is a legend that belongs to Matsuebu once. Now only a hundred or two hundred years have passed, not many people know about it, and the old people who can weave Songjiang cloth are even more withered to nothing.
Reintegrate Matsuebu into modern life
Nowadays, the raw material of purple flower cloth has disappeared, along with the disappearance of cotton varieties, there is also the skill of hand-weaving.
Today's Songjiang is already a district of Shanghai, in the era of increasing urbanization, people's lives have also undergone earth-shaking changes, the original handmade cotton textile is replaced by modern new technologies and new fabrics, and the traditional Songjiang cloth weaving technology is gradually disappearing in the transformation of this time and space.
Toono wanted to do something for Matsue. In 2012, he and his partners founded the "Jiuqu Creative Workshop" in a small village called Jiuqu at the foot of Tianma Mountain in Matsue, trying to promote different forms of art creation to the public. By 2019, after listening to the lectures of China Normal University, he began to realize that MatsueBu had more depth in both story and spiritual level, so he separated Matsuebu's project and made a separate studio.
Nowadays, when Dongye goes out, there will always be one or two pieces of Matsue cloth on his body, sometimes a patchwork jacket, sometimes plaid pants, sometimes dirt shoes, sometimes a small accessory.
At the exhibition site, many costumes and cultural and creative objects made of Matsue cloth were displayed
"No matter what, always wear a little, your body is the best endorsement." Dongye said. His studio has also developed a series of cultural and creative costumes, toys and intangible cultural heritage material packages derived from Matsue cloth. At the same time, using cloth as a medium, through the graphic narrative of different forms of exhibitions, as well as the interaction with strangers during walking, Matsue Cloth "walks the world" in different forms.
"This is also true of this exhibition." Through various means, Dongye tried to make Matsuebu re-enter people's vision. He felt that as the pace of urbanization increased, the memory of Matsuebu disappeared faster and faster, "There are two kinds of memory disappearance, one is the memory in our minds, and the other is the skill in the hand, so this is more important."
He hopes that the diversification of The way Matsue cloth is presented will help awaken people's feelings for the countryside, culture and life, "As a non-genetic inheritance of Matsue cloth, not only enter the museum, but more importantly, through everyone's efforts, the wisdom, concepts and methods of these predecessors are integrated into our modern life." ”
"Today, Matsuebu re-entered Yongan Department Store, which has symbolic significance." Tian Zhaoyuan of East China Normal University said that a century ago, handmade native cloth represented by Songjiang cloth was a best-seller in department stores, but with the large-scale entry of machine industrial cloth into China, traditional hand-woven fabrics gradually withdrew from the mall because of high costs, and then withdrew from the historical stage. However, after a hundred years of development, after economic development and affluent life, people began to re-recognize the value of tradition, began to realize the temperature behind the handmade fabric and the spiritual core that has been passed down for hundreds of years, so that Matsue cloth returned to our lives, and now it is opportune.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe
Proofreader: Ding Xiao