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Jiangnan Trousseaus, Witness to Love

Different areas in China have different wedding customs. In the past, rich family in southern Jiangsu and Anhui and northern Zhejiang province s, an area called Jiangnan in general, would make as large a wedding ceremony as possible to enhance the status of their daughter in the groom's family. The procession that sent the wedding gifts from the bride's home to the bridegroom's, sometimes stretched as long as 5000 meters, showing off the family wealthy.

As red is a lucky color in Chinese culture, the bride would wear an all-red dress embroidered with many designs made of gold or silver thread. The most typical designs on the dress are those of the dragon and phoenix , showing the union of male and female sides. Besides the wedding dress, the bride's family purchases a superb collection of beautiful things, from different types of clothing, to various utensils, including the closestool, which implies pregnancy. .

In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279AD), the emperor Gaozong lost the battle and fled to a lake of the Ningbo-Shaoxing plain. As enemy soldiers closed in, a lady saved the emperor by hiding him under white voiles. After the war, the emperor gave local women a grateful approval to have designs of dragon and phoenix, the exclusive privilege of the royal family, on their wedding dress.

Silk Bedding embroidered flowers

In the 1960s-70s, bedding was a necessary marriage possession in weddings. The material was silk and cotton, and people used carved plates to paint the various design on the surface of bedding. The arts and crafts are rare.

Embroidery pillowcase

Chinese maids began to study embroidery when they were young girls. A pillow with an embroidered case was an important matter in embroidery study. Jiangnan embroidery is special and vivid because of the materials, lines and different techniques people used.

Embroidery pillows were designed to be 50cm long, and trace back to the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-AD24). There are the symmetrical pattern such as embroidery and appliqu¨¦ at both ends. One symmetrical pattern is the so-called Pillow Flowers, which is 17cm¡Á17cm in size. Flowers are a lucky indication in daily living, which is vivid and colorful. For example, "Child riding on Kylin," is a pattern on pillows, meaning that a family has become big and rich.
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