Embroidery ranks among the oldest art forms known to mankind and remains one of the most enduring means of human expression.
Although the techniques and materials utilized by embroiderers have changed over the millennia, from prehistoric times to the present day humans have continuously employed needle and thread to beauty their surroundings, articulate personal feelings aspirations, and reinforce social, political, and religious ideals and convictions. While various Paleolithic peoples learned how to attach shells, appliqué ornaments, and hemp threads to clothing of leather or braided fabric to create “proto-embroidery”designs, the advent and development of sericulture in Neolithic and Bronze Age China changed the entire course of East Asian history and provided as extraordinary new creative medium for embroiderers. Throughout East Asia’s dynastic period, silk functioned as a de facto currency, a primary indicator of wealth, rank, and status, as well as a key instrument of diplomacy, and the application of time-consuming, expensive embroidery served to amplify the beauty, prestige, and communicative potential of luxury silks. The technically and aesthetically accomplished silk clothing and costume accessories, domestic furnishing, and votive objects created by East Asian embroiderers include some the region’s greatest artistic contributions to world culture. Through their forms, techniques, and designs, embroidered silks vividly document the social, cultural, and historical circumstances that brought them into being as well as the artistic virtuosity of creators.
Although embroiderers throughout East Asia came to share a basic vocabulary of technique and design, regional differences in embroidery styles reveal the influence of local environments and aesthetic temperaments on artistic production. Korean and other non-Chinese embroiderers adopted and transformed technical, stylistic, and cultural developments originating on the Chinese mainland to create native expressions that differed greatly from Chinese prototypes. Korean embroiderers favored design conventions and symbolic patterns that resonated with meanings particular to Korean culture, and worked in styles that typically displayed the vigor, spontaneity, and unique color schemes that characterize much of Korean art.
The materials and visual effects of these embroideries often differ from those seen in East Asia, yet they illustrate the common vocabulary of needleworking techniques shared by embroiderers worldwide as well as the spread of motifs across national boundaries. For millennia, textiles represented one of the most desirable commodities traded internationally, and small, portable objects such as textiles serves as primary vehicles for the global dissemination of techniques and motifs in the decorative arts. For example, trade with Central Asia and the West during the cosmopolitan Tang dynasty similarly vibrant internationalism in Chinese textile production. In Europe, the design on East Asian silks remained a constant source of inspiration for artists and designers from the commencement of trade with the East, and the influence of Asian ornament periodically fostered dynamic new stylistic directions in European decorative arts.