Wu Brocade

Wu Brocade

　　Shen Yongchang, the founder of Yida Silk, a renowned old-brand silk business in Wuzhen, had a son named Shen Xuewen. After taking over the family business, to overcome the challenge of sluggish sales of traditional wooden-loomed silk fabrics in the market, he conducted extensive research and decided to replace conventional products with brocade items. In 1923, he personally selected more than ten apprentices to study brocade weaving techniques in cities such as Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing. After several years of hard work and repeated trials, they finally built a brocade drawloom consisting of nearly two thousand components and over one hundred procedures.

　　 The large drawloom requires over a hundred days from designing the pattern draft to completing the final fabric. The weaving process is extremely intricate, yielding only 5–6 centimeters of fabric per day, hence the saying “an inch of brocade is worth an inch of gold.” Wu Brocade is woven from the finest natural silk and some products are even embellished with pure gold threads. The resulting brocade is sturdy in texture and luxuriously elegant. Locals refer to this jacquard silk brocade, which incorporates China’s celebrated brocade-weaving craftsmanship while integrating local traditional features, as “Wu Brocade.”