If This Isn't a Photo of Space, Then What Is It?!

Recently, a woman from Suzhou named Chen Yinhua saw her online popularity rise on Weibo after showcasing her embroidery skills.

Chen Yinhua was born in the beautiful lake town of Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai, where Suzhou embroidery originated.

She began to learn embroidery from her mother at the age of 14, but the road to success is not easy. It is long and slow. Chen spends 15 hours every day practicing her stitch and dividing lines at her desk.

Although some people might find this craft rather boring, Chen Yinhua has always excelled and shown superior skills over her peers. 

This is her passion, and she enjoys every bit of it.

"When I sit down to embroider, I feel very peaceful inside, and I like the feeling, with the needle as the pen, colored by the thread, and stroking on the gauze." 

Despite her loneliness, Chen is without a doubt very talented and has mastered a variety of embroidery techniques.

In addition to embroidering patterns of traditional flowers, insects, and birds, she is constantly trying new creations using western paintings as inspirations for her new patterns.

▲ The peony

▲ The drunken beauty

▲ Western scenery

▲ Van gogh's sunflowers

But little did Chan know that a brand new horizon would soon open up for her, as she stared at images of stars that had been captured by telescopes in complete awe. She was fascinated by such scenery and felt inspired to represent it doing what she does best: embroidery.

At first glance, you would think that the scene she's looking at in this photo is just another high-res picture of space. 

Well, think again…

▲ The constellation of Leo

When you look carefully, you will find the fine details of stitches, through the thickness of the various silk threads revealed by the halo.

These are more than just your neighborhood decorating fabrics… 

These are incredible pieces of art. 

After studying the principles and stories of the heavenly bodies, she discovered that some of them had an attractive halo that was fading away.

She invented a new stitch in order to show the lovely side of the universe.

After more than two years of grinding, Chen finished the star series with 16 colorful, textured, three-dimensional works.

▲ Neptune

▲ Sunspot

▲ Crab  nebula

Her work was exhibited at the 28th International Astronomical Union Exhibition in 2012, and raised quite a lot of interest from physicists and astronomers around the world: "This is the work of Vega!” some said. 

Chen shocked the world, even more, when she refused an offer from NASA representatives who had asked to buy her work without even asking for a price: ”I just want to keep it in China for more people to see," she said.

Chen has been a specialized expert in her field for a long time. Back in 2006, experts had selected her for an overhaul project of cultural relics at the Palace Museum in Beijing, which was far from being a simple fix. 

Not only was she tasked with maintaining the silk line color, but she also had to place embroider designs and needed to make sure that other original patterns would not show the slightest difference.

Needless to say, this was a very challenging request. But as you’ve probably figured out by now, this is exactly the kind of work that requires her expertise and hers only.

In order to perfectly reproduce the royal embroidery from more than 200 years ago, Chen Yinghua went to the Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University to systematically study painting and color theory. She read a lot of historical materials to bring herself up to speed.

Through repeated studies and tests, she finally mastered the art of handling various types of needles such as the looping needle, single flat trowel needle, collecting trowel needle, rolling needle, and the rotating needle among others.

She spent more than two years leading her team to repair more than 100 pieces of royal embroidery. Among them, the most breathtaking have been the following two works.

   1   

The dragon chair cushion of the Imperial Palace

It is mainly made of gold embroidery and has been handmade in 18K gold.

She reduced the thickness to the exact same level as the original.

   2   

Pearl on the Dragon Robe

The whole dragon robe has eight dragons in various forms and is full of 4,000 Taihu freshwater pearls.

The dragon's body was also coiled with pure gold threads.

Once Chen and her team were done with their restoration initiative, a large number of damaged embroidery relics and come back to life to bear their ancient charm once again.

But she never stops improving herself.

She’s taught embroidery for free. She wants to let more people know about traditional hand embroidery and pass it on to other generations.

“Anyone who wants to learn the art of embroidery will be treated equally and will be taught for free. Because I want to make this kind of traditional hand-embroidered, and allow more people to understand it.”

Hence, the ranks of the embroiderers in Suzhou are constantly expanding.

They are busy perfecting their own embroidering skills without any distractions.

This group of embroiderers is willing to put aside the worldly vanity so as to make Suzhou embroidery, which has a cultural history of more than 2,000 years, be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage and be preserved in all corners of the world.

These are the kinds of timeless pieces that will remain culturally rich and full of history over the years and generations. Luckily, we are surrounded by creative innovators whose aspirations are to keep this type of heritage alive.

Source: insdaily

Editor: Crystal Huang

Co-editor: Ed Bellin

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