"Cloud Brocade" has been around for about a millennium and is called Yun, meaning cloud. The fabric's beauty is equal to that of clouds in the sky and the material was used as tributes to the loyal families of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.
The 62 brocades on display are the top picks from the Palace Museum's cloud-pattern brocade collection handed down from the Ming and Qing dynasties. And most of them are listed as cultural relics under national protection.
The fabric has long been a fixture in imperial court life and was used in the emperors' robes, the dresses of queens, clothing for concubines and for other decorative purposes. The design of the fabrics highlights auspicious elements. Beside the cloud pattern, the other popular patterns include the peony, which symbolizes wealth and rank, and the chrysanthemum and peach, which represent longevity.
Zong Fengying, a member of Palace Museum Weaving & Embroidery Section, said:"This is a quilt cover called "Picture of 100 Children". It was woven with the special techniques developed in Nanjing. This kind of quilt cover was very popular in the court as it conveyed the queens' and dowagers' wish to have more children."
In ancient China, people often said that an inch of the silk fabric equals to an inch of gold. The fabric itself is woven in big wooden looms operated by two workers. In the prime of the production of Brocade, Nanjing enjoyed over 30,000 looms and nearly 300,000 persons live on the trade, which was Nanjing's biggest handicraft industry at the time.
The month-long exhibition is part of the city of Nanjing's effort to have the woven technology of the "Cloud Brocade" added to UNESCO's "Oral and Non-material World Heritage List of Mankind".
(CCTV September 27, 2003)
