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ORIGIN & HISTORY

The evolution of Chinese knotting has followed a long and elusive trail that leads back to the silence of remotest antiquity. Chinese culture and the numerous folk arts that thrive in this milieu reach to the dawn of recorded history and beyond. Here, in the valley of the Yellow River, was a cradle of civilization that gave birth to beliefs, customs, and traditions that survive to this day. Folk art, including decorative knotting, is no exception.

Unfortunately, Chinese knotting, ancient as it may be, was never the subject of scholarly treatises. Instead, it remained in the background, a marginal art that was often overlooked. All we have in our hands today are fine examples of knotting from the late Ching and early Republican periods, creations of our grandparents and their parents. The complexity of these knots and the ingenuity of their designs bespeak the culmination of a long, unbroken artistic tradition. Secondhand traces of this ancient folk tradition appear here and there, and the inferences drawn from these tantalizing bits of evidence suggest that the origin of Chinese knotting predates even the possibility of written record.

100,000-year-old bone needles and pierced objects unearthed at Choukoutien.

Bodkins used by men of the Chou Dynasty to untie knots.

The first hint of the earliest Chinese knots dates back to the late paleolithic age, seventy to a hundred thousand years ago. Artifacts found from that era in a cave at Choukoutien include several awl-shaped instruments with holes in one end. Archaeologists maintain that they were used for sewing, implying that thread and some rudimentary form of knotting must have existed at that time.

Tenuous as this remote and humble beginning may be, there is no doubt that later inhabitants of the Yellow River basin had need of highly developed knotting techniques. In a commentary on the trigrams of the Book of Changes, we discover that “in prehistoric times, events were recorded by tying knots; in later ages, books were used for this.” In the second century A.D., the Han scholar Cheng Hsuan expanded on this passage to say that great events were recorded with large knots, and smaller knots signified events of lesser importance. Of course, no samples from prehistory exist.

The only indigenous evidence of this practice consists of simple pictorial representations of the symbolic use of knotting in the Warring States Period, from the fourth to the second century B.C. Number symbols on the surface of bronzeware from that age clearly reflect the earlier practice of making records with knotted cord. For example, the numbers 10, 20, 30, and 40 The similarity between the rope figures and the script forms is striking. On the other hand, these knots represent rather simple abstract concepts. The design of the necessarily more complex and intricate knots that were tied to record events during Chinese prehistory must be left to the imagination. But turning to a satellite culture, the Ryukyu Islands off China’s southeastern coast, we can find concrete examples of intricately knotted ropes that are used to keep records. Perhaps these reflect the ancient Chinese knots that were used in a similar way. The examples from the Ryukyu Islands and the numbers on ancient Chinese bronzes tend to lend credence to the assertion that at least a part of the Chinese written language evolved from these knotted cords. At the very least, they establish the fact that knotting was an abstracted form of symbolic communication that predates the Book of Changes.

Detail from Ku Kai-chih’s “Admonitions of the Court Instructress” showing a knotted sash.

A bronze vessel from the Warring States era, decorated with a knotted motif.

Other evidence leads to the conclusion that knots were cherished not only as symbols, but also as an essential part of everyday life. Chinese gentlemen of the Chou Dynasty, 1112-256 B.C., carried a special tool tied to their waist sashes, a hsi. Made of ivory, jade, and bone, hsi have been preserved in a number of museum collections. Their cresent-like shape with one tapered end suggest that they could have been used to loosen knots. Indeed, the Shuo Wen, one of the earliest Chinese dictionaries, tells us that the hsi was “a device to untie knots, part of adult attire.” Knots that called for a special tool to untie them must have been intricate, indeed. Moreover, the fact that a hsi was common to all adult wardrobes tells us that knots abounded in the Chou Dynasty, as commonplace as watches are today.

For example, the same gentlemen who could not leave home without their hsi were also fond of wearing elaborate belt ornaments hung from their waist sashes. These ornaments were composed of several small pieces of jade — delicately carved dragons, circlets, squares with holes in the centers, crescents, and the like — all strung together in a symmetrical array. Although jade belt ornaments with cord eyelets have been found dating from the Shang and Chou Dynasties, the cords that held them together have long since turned to dust. But surely such prized ornaments warranted equally attractive cord mounting, calling for intricate knotwork between each piece of carved jade.

Long robes with flowing sleeves, the traditional garb of both men and women, had to be fastened at the waist with knotted sashes. Simple examples exist in paintings, but it is not hard to imagine the Chinese of days long gone taking great care in tying their sashes, much as 17th century Europeans were fond of tying elaborate cravats. Looking elsewhere for a hint of these knots, perhaps the intricately knotted Japanese obi is not too far removed from earlier Chinese knotted attire.

Household objects in ancient China also made use of knots. Bronze mirrors were forged with rings on their backsides, so that they could be tied to walls by knotted cords. Although the earthenware jugs of old have long since disappeared, ceremonial bronze replicas of them from the Warring States Period retain a design of the knotted network that was used to hoist them. The fact that the knotted pattern was retained in the bronze replicas is interesting in and of itself, because it represents the first surviving use of a knotting motif for a purely decorative purpose.

With knots playing such an important role in personal apparel and household items, and having already been used symbolically, it was quite natural for the ever-artistic Chinese to further explore the decorative possibilities. Unfortunately, cord fibers rot away quickly, leaving no evidence for later generations to study. One of the very few extant firsthand examples of ancient Chinese knotting is the latticework holding together the jade plate-mail suit found in the tomb of the Han Dynasty Princess Tou Wan. Woven in gold thread, it includes little flower-petal knots at the junctures between each small jade plate. These relatively simple knots are quite artistically done, despite the stiffness of the medium in which they are tied. Imagine what the artist could have created with pliable cord.

Jade plate-mail burial suit of Han Princess Tou Wan.

String of knots decorating the back of a sash on a Tang tri-color figurine.

On the other hand, the jade plate-mail burial suit of the princess reveals little about the use of more commonplace knotwork. References from literary works of two post-Han Dynasty states fill in that gap. Both refer to the “true lover’s knot,” purported to have been tied in an endlessly repeating pattern and symbolizing, of course, romance and affection. The first ruler of the early sixth century state of Liang, Wu Ti, mentions the knot in a poem about the object of his adoration: “I dreamed the silk cords at our waists/Were bound together in a true lover’s knot.”

Towards the end of the sixth century, the “true lover’s knot” appeared in the Sui Dynasty, the brief unification that foreshadowed the Tang Dynasty. There, as recorded in the official dynastic history, Sui ruler Wen Ti’s young concubine Hsuan Hua 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.