Gu Embroidery

Gu embroidery was created by the family of Gu Mingshi, a Songjiang scholar of the Ming Jiajing era; the only Jiangnan embroidery school named after a family, it is known as "painting embroidery" for rendering famous paintings in thread. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006.

Gu embroidery is famed for splitting silk into the finest filaments, rich colour and varied stitches; it often reproduces landscape and bird-and-flower paintings so that thread and brushwork merge almost indistinguishably.

By bringing literati-painting sensibility into embroidery, Gu embroidery influenced later schools such as Su embroidery and stands as a peak of Chinese needle art.

Gu embroidery arose and is transmitted around Songjiang in Shanghai, and its representative works can be seen in local cultural institutions and museums.