Tin Embroidery

A heritage craft from the women of the Miao minority group in Guizhou Province, PR China. Miao women of Jianhe County weave cloth on wooden looms in their homes using cotton threads. They use the indigo plant to dye their woven white cloth to create dark hues that will showcase their tin embroidery patterns. Indigo, black and red are the traditional colours used as a backdrop to showcase their intricate tin embroidery.

Singing while weaving and stitching is an important part of their artistic process. “If you only embroider and don’t sing, you won’t know the stories of your patterns. Someone who doesn’t sing well, doesn’t embroider very well", says Long Nu San Jiu, the tin embroidery artisan featured in this video and on numerous other state sponsored and travel promotional videos.

Tin is cheaper than silver and easier to work with. Strands of tin measuring approximately 1 millimeter wide is sheared off a tin sheet using sissors.  The strand is then woven into the already created embroidered pattern. Each stitch is wrapped in the tin strand, cut, folded back on itself and pressed down.  A meticulous process that needs patience and endurance. 

These patterns are handed down from generation to generation along the maternal heritage lines, from mother to daughter. Each piece of tin embroidery is an expressions of the creator’s interactions and experiences, past and present within their own cultural environment.  So, using needle and thread like pen and ink, they tell a story through their stitches, using traditional symbols as visual orations of their lives. 

Information about the meaning of the designs used in Miao tin embroidery is sparse and difficult to verify. There are some well researched and reliable journal articles on Miao embroidery generally available, however, the information is primarily about their brightly coloured silk and cotton embroidery.

Weaving and stitching using metal threads is not unique to the Miao people group. Long before the Miao created their tin embroidery, Indian and Persian cultures used precious metal threads to embroider delicate patterns on more refined silk fabrics.  I will be exploring their use of metal threads in future posts.

Picture Gallery of the Tin Embroidery Process