蘇州のシルク刺繍の問屋街「綉品街」に作品の材料のシルクの刺繍糸を買いに行ってきました。ここは蘇州刺繍発祥の地らしいですが、鎮湖という所の近くにあり結構郊外です。通りの両側には刺繍作品を売っている店がだーっと並んでいて、市内で買うより安いので蘇州の刺繍で結構大きいサイズのを買いに行くのにはお勧めです。その中に何件か刺繍材料も売っている店もあります。
お店に入ってまず「各色一束ずつ欲しいと思ってるんだけど全部で何色くらいありますか？一束いくら？」と聞いたところ「大体800色あるかなあ、一束７元」と言われ「……800色で一束７元っていうと…全部で5,600元かー……」と絶句。
「似たような色のが沢山混じってるから間を抜かすとかして本数を少なくすれば？」と言われたので、うーん確かに良く考えてから買わないと無駄になっちゃうなーと思ってとりあえずモノクロの作品用の白黒灰色の糸20本だけ買って帰ってきました。
一束が普通の市販の刺繍糸（日本だったら一束80円、中国でもDMCの糸は一束3.5元）の10倍くらいの大きさなのでかなりお得といえばお得ですが…蘇州で作る作品は白・黒・茶色・緑系をメインにその他の色をアクセントに使ったもの＋完全にモノクロのものの二種類、合わせて40個くらい作ろうと思ってます。
I went to buy silk embroidery threads as the material of my artworks to Suzhou silk embroidery wholesale district town “XiuPinJie”. Here is the origin of Suzhou embroidery located in a suburb near ZhenHu lake. On both sides of the street, there are many stores that sell embroidery work. The price is cheaper than center of Suzhou city, so if you want to buy a larger Suzhou silk embroidery work, I recommend this street. There are also some shops selling silk embroidery materials.
First I went inside the store, “I want to buy a bunch of all different colors, how many colors are there? How much is one bunch?” I asked “There are about 800 colors, Each bunch is 7yuan.” she answered, “… 800 colors and each bunch cost 7yuan … it can be 5,600 yuan …” I started thinking…
”If you want to reduce the amount how about skipping similar colors?” she said. I thought I need to think well about ahich colors I really need or it will be big weste. So I decided to start making Monochrome artwork first, then I only bought 20 black and white gray colors.
Normal bunch of embroidery thread in sell (normally costs 80 JPN in Japan, in China a bunch of DMC thread is 3.5 RMB), but a bunch of thread in here is about 10 times bigger than normal one so it’s quite reasonable… In Suzhou I’m going to make the artworks with green brown black & white colors and I’ll use the other colors just as accent, and complety monochrome works. I’m going to make 40 artworks in these two different types.
