Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Robes of silk and gold



I have collected Chinese and Straits Chinese robes since I was 12 :) I remember hoarding up my allowance to buy tiny pieces of embroidery, and when I was more financially independent, I moved on to actual intact robes. The amount of work on each robe is amazing. This is pretty well documented online so I won't spend too much time writing about it. The imperial robes are the stunners, each piece has gold thread couched dragons on them, and they take close to a year of work by a team of skilled seamstresses in the Imperial Workshops of Hangzhou or Nanjing in Imperial China. It is difficult to replicate such robes to the exact standards of workmanship today. Luckily for us, there have been good attempts. I am particularly inspired by Emperor (皇锦) in Shanghai and Beijing. Seeing what they did set me on the path to recreate using vintage or new glass beads with Imperial designs. Anyway, I sell the robes currently on eBay, also under my name of blueadamsingapore, go check it out! :)


Here are 2 robes that I have sold, one is a Peranakan wedding robe, the other a formal gown belonging to a high ranking Mandarin's wife with crane roundels. Both are very rare. I often use the designs of the robes for inspiration on my next piece of beaded beauty.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

The dotting process ....


Here's a glimpse of the process, at least for making slipper templates. This is for a Straits Chinese man's wedding procession slipper. The beads are cut beads (Malay colloquial potong manek) and size 16/0s. The sizes are standard, just outline the shoe on graph paper. I created the design from a museum booklet from the NY Met Museum for a 1983 Chinese robe exhibition that my parents went long time ago and brought back. It is a lishui border, or standing water border, which I photocopied, cut and paste onto the shoe design. Then I drew the outline of the waves, bats etc onto the shoe and dotted the squares to fill in the colors. It's rather simple. Here's one of the slipper sides plus a picture of the lishui border from the museum booklet. :) It's really fun. I'll talk about the beads on another post.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Too heavy ... but gorgeous!


While waiting for the propotypes to come back, I'm doing research on some Straits Chinese pieces and fiddled around with adapting them to a beaded design. I try to stay true to the colors, but after a while, I observed that for silk satin stitches, the glow and irridescence of the threads make the piece glow. However, transferred to a different medium i.e. beads, larger patches of the same color can look boring and monotonous. Beads are different, they don't give themselves over to subtlety too well, they are rather blingbling. So I've switched track and listened to the beads and the designs have become rather colorful, and fantastical, at times. Here's an example of a vintage piece that has inspired me. :)

My mom's really backing me up on this project. She loves handiwork, though she's amused that I want to resurrect old forms, but she likes the twist in the colors and coordination that I'm giving to them. She says though that if I want to make larger pieces like the vintage piece which was a table top cover, they can be too heavy. That's very true. I'm not sure if people are ready to accept large display pieces too, and there are many slips between cup and lip. But I'm giving it a try. Probably a different piece from the one above. I'm fiddling around with a Penang Straits Chinese table cover done in satin void stitches. I've done some adjusting for the peonies, but they don't transfer well over to beads, so I will work on the colors once I get the design transferred over. That will likely take a few weeks at least! I did 5 peonies yesterday, it was a real strain on the eyes. One of my faves.

Monday, October 09, 2006

This is the start.


I'm giving this a try. I love old designs, especially Imperial Chinese and Peranakan Straits Chinese. I love the boldness of color and form, and how each symbol or color has been honed by literally centuries of use. It is rarely subtle, but it is grand. I have been toying on how to reinterpret these designs, while resurrecting an old art form. I stumbled onto this quite by accident at a wedding procession with my friend Benjamin, he was wearing a pair of beaded slippers which took him 3 years to make. 3 whole years! 2 hours every night, faithfully beading, and the result takes 3 years! It is very beautiful. I gave it a try, taking classes at a local bead shop. My hands are not made for beading, that's my conclusion. But the designing of my shoes sparked off the interest to reinterpret old designs using beads instead of silk.

So here I am, 3 months later. I will have the first few prototypes end Oct, God willing. But as a start, here's a Ming Dynasty princess badge that I spent a few weeks working on. :) Enjoy! I'll update this as I go along. Who knows? If it takes off I might turn it into a little business.