Arts Of Chinese Han Folk Pouches

From Before Qin Dynasty to the Latter Qing Dynasty, a set of folk pouches gradually developed to a mature level in folk costumes systems.With rich modeling style, exquisite making and decorative craftsmanship, the folk pouch arts of Chinese Han grew various functions and abundant connotation.It is not only the carrier of history and culture of Han, but also important component of Chinese traditional costumes and folk arts. However, under the impact of wars, reforms and revolutions, the pouch system was continuously going weak with the Westernization of Chinese social life.By Real sample analysis on the base of an over 500 pieces pouch collection from both Jiangnan University Folk Costume Museum and Collector Liao Chunmei,who established the Taizhou Embroidery Museum, and on abundant literature survey, the Han folk pouch system, which consisted of the waist pouch,Da-lian pouch, the square and round purse, fragrant sachet, tobacco or areca pouch, fan pouch, glasses pouch, key pouch, and so on, has been constructed. Modeling art of the traditional Han folk pouches shows a feature of balanced planarity, normative inheriting and diversified style.There is a homomorphic trait on shape and isomorphic on structure, and the functional differentiation can be perceived. Social changes resulted in the oblivion of the making process and loss of most handcrafts of these pouches. Through the styling research and restoration practice, making processes of the representative pouch types have been worked out, like the waist pouch from Zhedong district, Ruyi-shaped da-lian pouch, square money pouch, kidney-shaped sachet and Ruyi-shaped fan pouch.Meanwhile, common decoration techniques on traditional pouches have been explained, such as embroidery, dyeing, painting, trimming and knotting art. The various exquisite making and decorative techniques can be preliminarily demonstrated. From the handcrafts, we can see that there is applicability on the material matching, hierarchy on decoration, localization on holistic style. All of these are reflecting the creation thought of "conforming to nature and according to material".These pouches also carry the national wealth of cultural connotations. For individuals, the early pouches were prominent in functions like containing or protecting small objects, holding fragrant herb for decoration or therapy, and other practical value.With the promotion of aesthetic significance, the pouches developed to an important medium for the ancients to show skills, express emotions, decorate their life or seek entertainment, and both the material and spiritual value grew.Traditional pouch arts could contribute design ideas to modern fashion design. The current local high-end brands with Chinese national characteristics can be rarely found, and our contemporary fashion design may apply these traditional costume elements to express the Han ethnic style.Traditional pouch craft reflects the living art and ethnic taste of ancient Chinese Han, and coincides with modern national style luxury design principle.Rational exploit of its artistic elements would help to increase the brands’ national characteristics of and enrich cultural connotation of design.