ARTISANS

Red Gingko works with two groups of women from Guizhou Province in Southwestern China.   The first group is composed of approximately 25 Dong hill tribe women.  The leader of this cooperative, Ms. Yang, has been drawing patterns and distributing them to other ladies for about 4 years now.  We discovered Ms. Yang about two years ago and have been collaborating ever since.  The cooperative has been slowing growing over the years as their skills and products become more well known.  Currently, most of their work is produced for the local tourist economy.   

The second group is one that Red Gingko started when we began working with one Miao hill tribe woman.  She in turn has gathered several Miao hill tribe women from her home town.  For each project, she brings the textiles by local bus to her home village to give the embroidery work to relatives and friends.   Although she does very fine embroidery work, her eyes are not what they used to be.  So, she coordinates the efforts of the ladies in her home village.     
All of these ladies embroider at home.  So they are able to earn income while caring for their children and home.  After their home and family obligations are done, they embroider in the comfort of their own home.  This type of textile work allows these ladies to earn income in a region that has few economic opportunities; the overwhelming majority of people in this region are subsistence farmers.

We allow these women the opportunity to set the price of the piece work they do for Red Gingko.  Although this sometimes means that we pay a high price for our embroideries, we think it is worth it.     

TEXTILE TRADITION

Textiles are an important form of Chinese ethnographic tribal art.  Girls traditionally began learning how to spin, weave, dye, and embroider textiles at seven years old. Over the course of their childhood and adolescence, girls learn to perfect the art of making textiles to demonstrate their diligence and artistry.

Sadly, the artistry of embroidery, weaving, and dying is fast disappearing with modernization in Southwestern China. Middle-aged women who learned the skill when young make most new textile pieces. Unfortunately, these women no longer possess the dexterity of their youth and many often complain that their eyes prevent them from producing very fine work. The vast majority of young girls never learn how to embroider and weave. In their mid-teens, young men and women choose to go to the city to work where they are can earn more money than farming.  As a result, the old and very young are the only ones left in the villages.