attracted the admiration of Wen Ti’s son and successor, Yang Ti. When Yang Ti ascended the throne, he wished to express his pent-up feelings. Unable to broach the subject directly, Yang Ti turned to the “true lover’s knot.” He sealed several of them in a gilded box, and ordered it delivered to Hsuan Hua. The message was clear: She was the object of Yang Ti’s affection, and he wished to demonstrate his amorous feelings. Although we have no idea how the “true lover’s knot” was tied, it is obvious from these examples that knots were replete with symbolic connotations that allowed for extra-lingual communication centuries ago in China.
The “true lover’s knot” continued to enjoy widespread use, even finding its way into the titles of two popular melodies of the subsequent Tang Dynasty. The original lyrics are gone, leaving only the title and a hint of the rhythm. But it is a safe guess to assume that the “true lover’s knot,” and a variety of other knots as well, were known to almost every man and woman in the street by that time.
Even more significantly, Tang sculpture has preserved the designs of a handful of rather complex knots, ones that have survived to the present day. A swastika knot, designed after the ancient Indian motif which Buddhists hold as a symbol of all good fortune, hangs from the waist of a statue of the Goddess of Mercy in the Nelson Gallery of the Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. A string of knots, including the swastika knot and two simpler ones, can be seen decorating the back of a sash on a Tang tri-color figurine housed in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Decorative knotting played an important role in the lives of these early Chinese, both as an aesthetic embellishment in personal attire and as a visual symbol of love and affection or religious concepts. The tying of these knots was long ago considered a necessary skill for all young unmarried women to master. The techniques were passed down orally from grandmother to mother to daughter, right along with spinning, weaving, and sewing. Sadly enough, the very nature of this folk craft precluded traditional scholarly attention. Knots were a mundane part of life, a skill common to most women that was surely not worthy of explication in serious classical treatise. The silence is staggering.
A butterfly knot and a good luck knot variation gracing a fan from the Ching Dynasty.
Fortunately, the advent of popular vernacular novels in later days opened the avenue for making incidental references to the marginal arts, decorative knotting included. These novels depict ordinary life with an eye for painstaking detail. Here and there, an occassional reference to knotting appears in these works, shedding a few rays of light on the art and its practice.
Striking among these passages is an extended conversation about decorative knots in chapter 35 of the Dream of the Red Chamber. There, Pao-yu has summoned Ying-erh to his quarters to ask her to tie a few knotted tassels for him. During their discussion, Ying-erh divulges a host of information: where the knots can be used, the selection of the proper color of cord, a hint at the amount of time needed to tie the knots, and a list of those she is able to tie. The knots in her repertoire bear such fanciful names as the incense knot, the sunflower knot, the plum blossom knot, the elephant’s eye knot, the willow leaf knot, and the double diamond knot. These tantalizing names actually tell us little of the designs of the knots; the only one that has survived is the double diamond knot. Nevertheless, the passage demonstrates the wide variety of purely decorative knots in use during the Ching Dynasty.
But by the later Ching, we no longer have to rely on secondhand references. A fine selection of Ching knotwork survives today, housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. There are many complex and exquisite Ching knots gracing tassels attached to a host of objects — chops, fans, scepters, sachets, and even eyeglass cases. Even more impressive are knotted liu su, large composite hangings made of many knots tied in a multitude of shapes — dragons, carp, phoenix, and cranes, to name a few. The design of these liu su is strikingly reminiscent of the jade belt ornaments surviving from the 12th century B.C. The only difference is that the small carved pieces of jade have been replaced with intricate knots. In the Ching Dynasty, these liu su decorated large pieces of furniture or accented interior architectural design, hanging from bed canopies, sedan chairs, terrace gables, and the like. Often tied by single girls for their trousseaus, these extravagant medleys required a high degree of skill. Their technical execution, along with the preservation of ancient motifs and designs, leaves no doubt that they were the culmination of a tradition dating back to ancient times.
The decorative knotting tradition continued into the early days of the Republic. But the flood of Western science and technology in this century has changed our lifestyles. In the rush to modernize, we seem to have ignored the traditional arts and crafts. Furthermore, the availability of mass-produced trinkets made handmade knotwork obsolete. The art of knotting was on the verge of extinction.
A decade ago, the only people in Taiwan who knew anything about traditional decorative knotting were a handful of senior citizens and curio dealers. Then, in 1976, a series of articles appeared in ECHO Magazine, one of which explained how some of the simple knots were tied. From this humble beginning, a few creative spirits and cultural afficionados began to try their hands at it. Chinese knotting regained a precarious hold on life.
Today, knotting is again becoming a widespread hobby, as people are rediscovering the relaxation, artistic satisfaction, and beautiful personalized ornamentation it can offer. In addition to learning and sharing the techniques of tying the knots of old, some practitioners are inventing new ones and experimenting with a broad range of new materials — cotton, hemp, durable synthetic fibers, leather, and even fishing line. This promises to add a new and exciting dimension to this ancient craft.
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