Embroidered Identities: Ornately Decorated Textiles and Accessories of Chinese Ethnic Minorities

This publication accompanies the University Museum and Art Gallery’s exhibition of traditional Chinese costumes, baby carriers and silver ornaments drawn from the collection of Mei-yin Lee. Elaborately embroidered costumes and baby carriers, most of which originate with the Miao, Dong, Shui and Zhuang ethnic tribes of the south-western Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, and Guangxi are decorated with richly coloured, stitched and sewn ornamentations―and sometimes silver applications―indigenous to the particular culture and long-lived traditions they derive from. As some ethnic minorities lack a written script, the symbolism and colour-coding found in their textiles form a visual language that presents an important cultural and anthropological development and heritage still in practice today.