Chinese Folk Art Story: Chinese Knotting

 Chinese Folk Art: Chinese Knotting

Chinese knot (Chinese knotting) is a kind of knotting developed in ancient China, dating from the sewing knotting in the Old Stone Age, used as a decorative handcraft accessory nowadays. It names for Chinese knot for exquisite design, of a long history, compliance with China traditional decoration custom and aesthetic standards.

Each knotting is made with a rope and each basis knot name after its shape and implied meaning (according to shape or pronunciation). Various knots can combine or match other decorations.
Long before, the Chinese have learnt how to tie the knot and knotting is an important part in their life, mainly for quite useful skills, e.g. sewing, clothing accessories, and even some recording method.

In Zhou Dynasty, Chinese knotting often is decorated with jade, the pattern of knotting is shown at the bronzes crafts in Warring States Era and in Qing Dynasty, and Chinese knots are really regarded as Chinese traditional folk art. Today, we usually can see it as interior decorative finishing, gifts among friends or individual belongs.


The basis Chinese knots are as followed, according to different style and knotting methods.
1. Double-coin Knots: shape like half overlaid of two Chinese ancient coins.

 

2. Button Knots: often used as to tight clothes.

 

3. Pipa Knots: developed from double-thread button knots and used as the decorative button of Tang suits (Chinese-style clothing) and cheong-sam (Chinese-style dress).

 

4. Tuanjin Knots: shape like a kind of flowers (Tuanjin), knotting is small, beautiful and not easy to loose, usually decorated with jewelry and stones.

 

5. Half-Windsor Knots (Cross Knots): shape like two Chinese characters “口”and “十”.

 

6. Eternal Knots: inherit from cross knots, one of the original knots on behalf of good luck. The single eternal knot is easy to change when under heavy weight and fixing with glue is better.

 

7. Wanzi Knots: the line run looks like the signal representing Buddhism.

 

8. Panchang Knots (Long drive knots): Shape like “Panchang”, one of eight Buddhist's skulls, of closely symmetric patterns.

 

 9. Sunk Panel Knots: closely knotted, shape like ancient sunk panel, available of weaving as necklaces, bracelets and waistbands.

 

 10. Square Knots: one string or something as the roller and wrap it with the two ends of the other string, wide availability.

 

11. Shuanglian Knots (Double Joint Knots): two single knot set together, solid, hard to loose, and imply combination and always constant.

 

 12. Creeping Oxalis Knots (Chinese butterfly knots): three loops look like the leaves of creeping oxalis, which is the national flower of Ireland, and mean good fortune as one wishes. 

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_knotting