The beautiful art of embroidered school badges

Tucked away in a small Chiayi alley is a 53-year-old tailors that specializes in embroidering school badges. Craftsman Jian Rong-xun, originally worked as a manual laborer, but the heavily polluted environmental conditions forced him to rethink his life direction. With his wife Su-lan working as a seamstress making clothes to order, Jian Rong-xun decided to learn the art of embroidering school badges. Working in the same field, the couple could give each other a lot of mutual support. Jian Rong-xun’s embroidery skills are completely self-taught, and throughout all these years he has continually insisted on hand embroidering school numbers. This is due to his belief that unlike the rather lifeless mechanized typefaces, hand-embroidered numbers are more vibrant. Unfortunately, demand for Jian Rong-xun’s embroidery skills have gradually waned over the years, and with such meager profits, he has no one to whom he can pass on his valuable skills. However, through word of mouth, many Chinese medicine doctors find out about Jian Rong-xun’s embroidery skills and use his skilled hands to embroider their uniforms. Jian Rong-xun firmly believes embroidering badges is a real art, because ‘to write with a needle’ is anything but easy. Through all these years in the business, he has never changed his attitude to work – meticulous work at an equitable price.

PeoPo 公民新聞

The beautiful art of embroidered school badges
URL: http://www.peopo.org/news/96118

(以下是中文對照)

美麗的藝術 繡學號 ( 慈大傳播站 )

在嘉義的小巷子裡，有一間開了五十三年的繡學號老店。老師父簡鎔勳原本是黑手，但因工作環境污染嚴重，讓他興起換工作的念頭。簡鎔勳的太太素蘭，當時在幫 人訂做衣服，簡鎔勳於是開始學習繡學號，夫妻之間在工作上也能互相幫助。他繡學號的技術完全是自學的，這麼多年來，他堅持純手工繡字，因為他相信，手工繡 出的字較為活潑，不像印刷體死板板的。繡學號這份工作，至今已漸漸沒落了，也沒有年輕人可以傳承，因為繡學號的利潤很低。不過因為顧客口耳相傳，很多店 家、醫生都會把衣服送來給他繡，簡鎔勳覺得繡學號是一項藝術、一項工夫，因為「能用針寫字」並不容易。工作了這麼多年，他對自己的堅持從未改變，他仔細的 把每一件衣服繡好，收錢也要公道。

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