The Dramatic Cast of Nineteenth-Century Chinese Women’s Vernacular Embroidery

Silberstein’s fellowship was focused on vernacular embroidery of mid-late Qing dynasty in China, specifically pieces that displayed “dramatic narrative motifs” rather than the more widely studied “auspicious motifs.” Her research was concerned with cataloging and researching the “materiality, style, and content” of these embroidered objects in order to place the choice to depict these narrative motifs in the context of “contemporary, vernacular representations of narrative,” to demonstrate that these folk textiles were part of a dynamic and changing culture that responded to and interacted with the “external influences of commercialization, urbanization...social mobility and that it was not an ossified and unchanging repetition of traditional motifs.” Her work underlined the fact that the women who created these items engaged creatively with the popular and dramatic culture of their time.