Celebrating old arts in new forms

Such a combination enables Shanghai silk embroidery to broadly diversify its themes during production, extending beyond the primary floral and landscape motifs of traditional embroidery.

Jiang told China Daily that their silk embroidery works are considered to be reinterpretations, typically based on an ancient painting or renowned photograph. One example, shown at the WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 Expo, which ran in Shanghai from Sept 23 to 26, is their work Blooming Life.

Adapted from an original photograph, the piece depicts a curling, blooming rose. For nearly two years, Jiang and his mentor, Ye Weina, layered finely split silk threads to reproduce the undulating folds of petals, with rich red and gold hues interweaving.

Unlike traditional flower embroidery, the work adopts a strikingly modern visual language and fully captures the passionate, dynamic posture of life in bloom.

"Different from paintings, the layers of our embroidery work are built up bit by bit by hand to achieve extremely subtle color transitions. From different angles and distances, as you can see, the colors also look different," says Jiang.