1. Introduction
Textiles offer crucial insights into an individual society's history of design and manufacturing. The traditions of weaving and embroidering silk textiles in China have been passed on for centuries through discrete decorative motifs and techniques, and Chinese textiles have been treasured on the international market since they were first traded along the Silk Road.
Beginning in the Song dynasty (960–1279) and flourishing into the Qing (1644–1911), craftsmen took up shuttles and needles as their brushes and silk threads as their pigments, creating exquisitely woven and embroidered pictorial and calligraphic works. In the hands of these weavers and embroiderers, weft-woven silk tapestry (kesi) and embroidery (cixiu) evolved into a celebrated art form—a fusion of painting, calligraphy and hand weaving or embroidering for aesthetic appreciation. When viewed together, the interdisciplinary nature of these vivid depictions of image and text occupy a unique and unbroken place within the history of Chinese visual culture.