Nanjing Velvet Flower: Capturing Bloom for a Thousand Years
- ELSEHERE
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Introduction
Flowers bloom and fade — fleeting beauty, in keeping with nature’s cycle. Yet there is a beauty that never wilts. Shaped by artisans’ fingertips, structured with silk and fine wire, it has bloomed steadily for a thousand years, untouched by time. This is Nanjing Velvet Flower — an eternal spring that never fades.
From the Dynasties: A Silent Legacy
If there is a flower that grows not in soil, nor fed by wind and rain, yet has graced hair ornaments and temple rituals for a thousand years, it is Nanjing Velvet Flower.
Its craft can be traced to ancient traditions of the Qin Dynasty. Later, in the Tang Dynasty, Records of Ancient and Modern China documented that Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s consorts wore “five‑colored velvet flowers” — early forms of the craft. During the reign of Wu Zetian, Nanjing Velvet Flower was selected as an imperial tribute, earning the name Palace Flower.
It flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The imperial court established the Jiangning Textile Manufacturing Office to oversee court textiles, with velvet flower as one of its signature products.
In Chinese, ronghua (velvet flower) sounds identical to ronghua (glory and prosperity), making it a powerful symbol of good fortune. In old Nanjing, people wore velvet flowers at weddings and during three major festivals: Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat Festival, and Mid‑Autumn Festival.
By the 1990s, fresh flowers became widely affordable, and mass‑produced accessories flooded the market. Handmade velvet flower gradually declined; workshops closed, and the craft nearly vanished.
In 2007, Nanjing Velvet Flower was inscribed on the Jiangsu Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage List (Project No.: JSVII‑20). This nearly lost bloom finally found its spring again.
Silk as Bone: An Inch of Velvet, An Inch of Time
Making a Nanjing Velvet Flower involves nine careful steps: silk boiling, dyeing, drying, strip rolling, ironing, tip shaping, assembling, pasting, and packaging. Four steps demand the highest skill: silk splitting, strip rolling, tip shaping, and assembling.
Splitting the Velvet
Boiled and dyed silk is pulled and combed into fine, even strands. This delicate work depends entirely on fingertip feel. Too much silk makes the flower bulky; too little makes it weak. The perfect balance comes only from years of practice.
Strip Rolling (The Soul of Velvet Flower)
Split silk is sandwiched between two thin copper wires and tightly twisted by hand. Soft silk becomes a firm, round velvet strip — the basic “building block” of every flower. Too loose, and the strip collapses; too tight, and the wire bends or damages the silk.
Tip Shaping
Scissors trim velvet strips into rounds, points, curves, and straight lines. Rounds become buds; points become petals; curves become leaves. Every cut is final, shaping the flower’s final look. A true bloom requires both gentleness and restraint.
Assembling (Chuan Hua)
This is the art of careful arrangement: longer strips for petals, shorter for buds, curved for leaves, straight for stems. Each piece has a fixed position and angle; even a small shift breaks its natural spirit. Using tweezers, artisans place each part gently into place. When the last petal and stamen settle, a velvet flower comes to life at the fingertips.
Blooming Anew: Into the Modern World
How does a thousand‑year‑old craft stay alive today? Nanjing Velvet Flower shows the way: honor tradition, yet embrace the new.
In 2018, the hit drama Story of Yanxi Palace brought velvet flower back to fame. All 19 velvet flower hair ornaments worn by Empress Fucha were handmade by inheritor Zhao Shuxian and his team, taking a full month to finish. Historically, the real Empress Fucha “wore only grass and velvet flowers, not pearls or jade” — making the pieces historically accurate. Young women flooded workshops with orders, and waiting lists stretched to six months.
Film and television were only the start. Velvet flower kept breaking boundaries:
It collaborated with Acqua di Parma on limited‑edition gift sets
It created themed window displays for Hermès
It appeared on the Dior 2024 Spring Men’s Runway in Paris, amazing the world with quiet, elegant Eastern aesthetics
Beyond commercial partnerships came meaningful cultural exchange. Tencent’s Hello, Guardians documentary series featured Zhao Shuxian, the leading inheritor of Nanjing Velvet Flower. In its Nanjing episode, velvet flower was combined with filigree inlay, replacing copper wire with gold thread — a craft fusion that asked: How far can ancient skills go in the modern world?
Most heartening of all: young people are taking up this old craft, carrying it forward.
Eternal Bloom: Fleeting Splendor, Timeless Beauty
Across the world, flowers stand for beauty that fades quickly. Cherry blossoms last only days; roses wilt in a week. People often grieve that beautiful things cannot last.
Nanjing Velvet Flower uses silk as its soft “flesh” and fine copper wire as its strong “bone.” With care and patience, artisans lock fleeting spring into something permanent.
How should we face time?
Like fresh flowers, blooming wildly, knowing they will soon fade?
Or like velvet flowers, growing slowly, then blooming steadily, forever?
The answer lies in every velvet flower.
First, learn to treat every strand with tenderness.
The craft begins with slow, quiet work: untangling silk, sorting strands, and shaping them —a practice repeated for a thousand years.
It reminds us: tenderness is a quiet strength.
We must untangle chaos slowly to find what matters;calm our hearts to hear our true voices;ignore noise to hold onto what is real.
The first lesson of velvet flower:
Do not rush to bloom. First, care for what you create.
All greatness starts with a gentle, willing heart.
Time Rewards Patience
Only when velvet strips are shaped and gathered into full form does the flower truly bloom.
Fresh flowers fade in days. Velvet flowers do not fight time — they rise above it. Their secret is not hardness. Silk stays soft; wire stays fine. Treated gently and made patiently, they stand firm through years.
Those quiet,“small”moments:eating slowly, listening fully, writing carefully.
They become the quiet structure of your life.
When the world grows loud and rough, they support you like the wire inside velvet flowers, keeping you whole.
The second lesson of velvet flower:Every moment you give to beauty matters.
Time may take much, but it never betrays the care you put in.
The beauty of fresh flowers is bold and romantic: giving all, even in fading.The beauty of velvet flowers is calm and wise: earning eternity through gentleness and focus, a gift to oneself.
Natural flowers follow time:they bloom in season, fade in season.Velvet flowers do not.They stretch their bloom across a thousand years.
The beauty of real flowers is in their fading.The beauty of velvet flowers is in their remaining.
For more than a thousand years, springs have come and gone, flowers have bloomed and withered.
But velvet flowers remain: silent, steady,blooming beyond time.
References
The People's Government of Jiangsu Province. (2007). Circular of the Provincial Government on Issuing the First Batch of Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists (Su Zheng Fa [2007] No. 28). http://www.jiangsu.gov.cn/xxgk/webpic/W0201311/W020131107/W020131107401040465313.doc
Baidu Baike. (n.d.). Craftsmanship of Making Velvet Flowers.
Sohu. (2025). CHJ One City One Intangible Cultural Heritage Nanjing Station: Contemporary Narrative of Dual Intangible Cultural Heritages—Velvet Flower and Filigree Inlay.
Sohu. (2023). Paris Men's Fashion Week: DIOR Integrates Chinese Traditional Crafts into New Collection.
CRI Online. (2017). Nanjing Velvet Flowers Step onto the International Stage: Intangible Cultural Heritage Integrates into Contemporary Life. https://js.cri.cn/20170616/b1897096-fca8-12e1-5642-837b9ef299e0.html
China Story. (2021). Chinese Cultural Heritage in Costume Dramas: Story of Yanxi Palace Sparks a Craze for "Nanjing Velvet Flowers".
Comments