蜀锦 (Shǔ Jǐn)
Shu brocade (蜀锦) is the imperial silk weaving tradition of Chengdu, Sichuan — one of China's Three Great Brocades alongside Nanjing Yunjin and Song brocade, and the only one with an unbroken 2,000-year production history. The technique uses a multi-shaft draw loom (花楼机 huā lóu jī) requiring two weavers: one seated at the loom threading the pattern, one standing above on a platform pulling individual warp thread bundles (花本 huā běn — the pattern program) in precise sequence. The pattern information is stored entirely in the hand-tied flower heddle — a physical punch-card-like program of knotted cords that predates the Jacquard loom by at least a millennium. A single Shu brocade pattern heddle for a complex design takes 3–6 months to tie and contains millions of individual knot decisions.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · China National ICH List (2006)
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