evolution of Chinese knotting has followed a long and elusive trail that leads back to the silence of remotest antiquity. Chinese culture and the numerous folk arts that thrive in this milieu reach to the dawn of recorded history and beyond. Here, in the valley of the Yellow River, was a cradle of civilization that gave birth to beliefs, customs, and traditions that survive to this day. Folk art, including decorative knotting, is no exception.
Unfortunately, Chinese knotting, ancient as it may be, was never the subject of scholarly treatises. Instead, it remained in the background, a marginal art that was often overlooked. All we have in our hands today are fine examples of knotting from the late Ching and early Republican periods, creations of our grandparents and their parents. The complexity of these knots and the ingenuity of their designs bespeak the culmination of a long, unbroken artistic tradition. Secondhand traces of this ancient folk tradition appear here and there, and the inferences drawn from these tantalizing bits of evidence suggest that the origin of Chinese knotting predates even the possibility of written record.
100,000-year-old bone needles and pierced objects unearthed at Choukoutien.
Bodkins used by men of the Chou Dynasty to untie knots.
The first hint of the earliest Chinese knots dates back to the late paleolithic age, seventy to a hundred thousand years ago. Artifacts found from that era in a cave at Choukoutien include several awl-shaped instruments with holes in one end. Archaeologists maintain that they were used for sewing, implying that thread and some rudimentary form of knotting must have existed at that time.
Tenuous as this remote and humble beginning may be, there is no doubt that later inhabitants of the Yellow River basin had need of highly developed knotting techniques. In a commentary on the trigrams of the Book of Changes, we discover that “in prehistoric times, events were recorded by tying knots; in later ages, books were used for this.” In the second century A.D., the Han scholar Cheng Hsuan expanded on this passage to say that great events were recorded with large knots, and smaller knots signified events of lesser importance. Of course, no samples from prehistory exist.
The only indigenous evidence of this practice consists of simple pictorial representations of the symbolic use of knotting in the Warring States Period, from the fourth to the second century B.C. Number symbols on the surface of bronzeware from that age clearly reflect the earlier practice of making records with knotted cord. For example, the numbers 10, 20, 30, and 40
Detail from Ku Kai-chih’s “Admonitions of the Court Instructress” showing a knotted sash.
A bronze vessel from the Warring States era, decorated with a knotted motif.
Other evidence leads to the conclusion that knots were cherished not only as symbols, but also as an essential part of everyday life. Chinese gentlemen of the Chou Dynasty, 1112-256 B.C., carried a special tool tied to their waist sashes, a hsi. Made of ivory, jade, and bone, hsi have been preserved in a number of museum collections. Their cresent-like shape with one tapered end suggest that they could have been used to loosen knots. Indeed, the Shuo Wen, one of the earliest Chinese dictionaries, tells us that the hsi was “a device to untie knots, part of adult attire.” Knots that called for a special tool to untie them must have been intricate, indeed. Moreover, the fact that a hsi was common to all adult wardrobes tells us that knots abounded in the Chou Dynasty, as commonplace as watches are today.
For example, the same gentlemen who could not leave home without their hsi were also fond of wearing elaborate belt ornaments hung from their waist sashes. These ornaments were composed of several small pieces of jade — delicately carved dragons, circlets, squares with holes in the centers, crescents, and the like — all strung together in a symmetrical array. Although jade belt ornaments with cord eyelets have been found dating from the Shang and Chou Dynasties, the cords that held them together have long since turned to dust. But surely such prized ornaments warranted equally attractive cord mounting, calling for intricate knotwork between each piece of carved jade.
Long robes with flowing sleeves, the traditional garb of both men and women, had to be fastened at the waist with knotted sashes. Simple examples exist in paintings, but it is not hard to imagine the Chinese of days long gone taking great care in tying their sashes, much as 17th century Europeans were fond of tying elaborate cravats. Looking elsewhere for a hint of these knots, perhaps the intricately knotted Japanese obi is not too far removed from earlier Chinese knotted attire.
Household objects in ancient China also made use of knots. Bronze mirrors were forged with rings on their backsides, so that they could be tied to walls by knotted cords. Although the earthenware jugs of old have long since disappeared, ceremonial bronze replicas of them from the Warring States Period retain a design of the knotted network that was used to hoist them. The fact that the knotted pattern was retained in the bronze replicas is interesting in and of itself, because it represents the first surviving use of a knotting motif for a purely decorative purpose.
With knots playing such an important role in personal apparel and household items, and having already been used symbolically, it was quite natural for the ever-artistic Chinese to further explore the decorative possibilities. Unfortunately, cord fibers rot away quickly, leaving no evidence for later generations to study. One of the very few extant firsthand examples of ancient Chinese knotting is the latticework holding together the jade plate-mail suit found in the tomb of the Han Dynasty Princess Tou Wan. Woven in gold thread, it includes little flower-petal knots at the junctures between each small jade plate. These relatively simple knots are quite artistically done, despite the stiffness of the medium in which they are tied. Imagine what the artist could have created with pliable cord.
Jade plate-mail burial suit of Han Princess Tou Wan.
String of knots decorating the back of a sash on a Tang tri-color figurine.
On the other hand, the jade plate-mail burial suit of the princess reveals little about the use of more commonplace knotwork. References from literary works of two post-Han Dynasty states fill in that gap. Both refer to the “true lover’s knot,” purported to have been tied in an endlessly repeating pattern and symbolizing, of course, romance and affection. The first ruler of the early sixth century state of Liang, Wu Ti, mentions the knot in a poem about the object of his adoration: “I dreamed the silk cords at our waists/Were bound together in a true lover’s
