Ji has blueprint to make a success of straw weaving
Print Edition
Wearing a pair of glasses, Ji Xuecheng is busy with designing on his old glass desk where over 20 blueprints are folded. His designs are not buildings, but straw weaving artworks, a special folk art of Jiading District.
Many people may doubt the need for blueprints, but it’s because of these blueprints that Jiading Xuhang Straw Weaving has developed in modern times.
From picture to product, all the steps have been tested through numerous experiments and practices.
Ji, who is in his 70s, has been devoted to straw weaving design for over 40 years. At his peak in the 1990s, he designed about 250 new products every year.
Ji visited France in 1984 and was deeply impressed by elegant and complex Western art. After he returned, those art images became his inspiration and made his designs unique.
In his career he has made a lot of friends, and one of them was a Japanese businessman surnamed Inoue. Inoue was keen on Xuhang straw weaving and often promoted the art to the outside world. He also shared beautiful patterns with Ji which he had seen in Paris, Milan and Zurich on his business trips.
In traditional straw weaving, the style of a handbag was all square with simple color and patterns. So, Inoue suggested a new style and patterns that would definitely dominate the market. Later, a handbag style called “pumpkin bag” came into being, which replaced the traditional style and changed the weaving methods from vertical weaving to horizontal weaving. With beautiful patterns and a modern wood loop, the handbag immediately became popular in Japan and Western countries.
After global success, this style of bag eventually came back to China, back to where it had been created. Chinese traditional straw weaving craftsmen realized this “pumpkin bag” which they used to consider weird could actually open up the market, and they asked Ji to teach them the technique.
Later, Ji also designed the popular “Longfeng slippers.”
As a designer, Ji has his own opinion on fashion. “I prefer to create fashion rather than follow it,” he says.
In mid 1980s, Ji got two orders to design a cradle and he came up with fairly conservative designs for both orders with vivid and colorful flower patterns. However, the two similar designs received completely different responses. The first buyer said they preferred a simple style rather than Ji’s design, while the second said Ji’s design was satisfying. Ji later learned that the two customers were from urban and rural areas respectively, and it was natural that they had different tastes.
This experience inspired Ji with some ideas on how to make classical straw weaving products fashionable. After one month’s thinking, he started to make changes in materials — he added leather, plastic, cloth, rattan, papyrus and corn bran as accessories. Nowadays, leather lines, silk ribbons and embroidery patterns can often be seen on women’s straw weaving handbags.
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