Countywide : Fine Points in the Art of Embroidery

For more than 2,000 years, the people of Suzhou, China, have been embroidering silk fabric in complex patterns and stitches, using single strands from a silkworm or a human head with needles as fine as baby’s hair.

Since 1954, those techniques have been preserved, expanded and taught at the city’s Embroidery Research Institute, a government-run organization in the canal-laced city that is one of four major silk embroidery centers in China, each with a unique style.

Last month, the first U.S. group to study there spent three days watching and learning stitches from master embroidery workers. Three of the group’s 18 members were from Orange County.

“Many stitches are the same as we use here,” said Beth Stiel, a librarian at Cal State Fullerton whose hobby is fiber arts. “But the scale is totally different. I have never before seen anyone work with a single strand of silk or a single human hair. It was unreal.”

Karen Koelzer, of Koelzer Travel in Fountain Valley, got the idea for the trip last year while leading a tour group in Suzhou. One of the tourists said she would like to study at the institute, and Koelzer subsequently organized the trip, which brought together embroidery teachers, writers and amateurs from around the country.

“The subtle skills and rich heritage you see there are really breathtaking,” Koelzer said. “There are old people and young people there, about 50 professionals whose full-time job it is to create works of art with embroidery in exquisite and infinite shades.”

At the institute, all silk is dyed on site in brilliant colors, such as fuchsia, turquoise and scarlet, and a single leaf might have up to 50 gradations of green.

“There are as many variations as you have with a brush and paint,” said Koelzer, who is also a professional artist. “Some are as big as wall-size, and they rival--or some say surpass--painted works. Because they are silk, they literally glow with light.”

Koelzer said Suzhou embroidery is characterized by the fine-textured, silk-on-silk work that depicts flowers such as peonies, pomegranate and plum blossoms, and birds such as peacocks, herons and swans.

Until the late 19th Century, Suzhou embroidery workers did all of the work for the Chinese emperor and his court, including robes with intricate dragons and phoenixes--designs strictly reserved for imperial use, Koelzer said.

Today, most of the work--including portraits and landscapes--is commissioned for patrons all over the world. But the main focus is to pass on old techniques, such as single-strand and human-hair embroidery.

The institute also develops new techniques such as double-sided embroidery, a method whereby with one stitch, intricate images appear on both sides of a silk fabric.

“You need a magnifying glass just to thread the needle,” Koelzer said. “It’s one single filament as it comes out of the cocoon. And while working, they don’t even look at the second side at all.”

The complex double-sided embroidery, which takes about six years to learn, is a state secret, Koelzer said, so the U.S. tour group was not taught how to do it. But they were given a chance to watch those works in progress.

“It opened another window for me,” Stiel said. “Even if I never did another stitch, it gave me such an appreciation of the arts.”