vintange chinese embroidery letters on fabric?

[hemmel]

hello

I found two embroidery pieces that have this on them. What does is say please. 

If it is Japanese or other language, I dont know. 

Thank you in advance

Mindy

 

 

[roddy]

Looks a bit of a mess to me, any chance of clearer photos?

[Lu]

It's Chinese alright, but I can't make head or tail of the handwriting.

[Nathan Mao]

I've made out a few characters so far:

系 and traditional version of 远。

Maybe 乑

 

One thing helps: bring up the picture on your computer screen, then go stand 10 feet away, and just figure out what it looks like.

 

If we, as a group, can get 70% of the characters figured out, we can often figure out the rest by context.

 

I will spend some more time on this later, don't have the time to work through possible characters (based on identified radicals) right now.

 

 

I would guess this embroidery was done by someone who doesn't know Chinese trying to copy some Chinese handwriting. It has that feel of someone copying lines without any knowledge of individual elements of a character.

[Lu]

The 5th (?) from below might be 砂.

[Nathan Mao]

Are the first 3 characters supposed to be the same for both items?

 

It looks like it to me.

[hemmel]

I am the OP and I will go and try to get better pics on Monday.

I do appreciate the help in trying to decipher for me.

They are two framed embroidery pieces and the shop owner said they are antique so before i buy them (they are expensive) I wanted to know something about them. The glass in the frame makes it hard to take without glare. The frame is sealed and i cant take them out to look at them. The stitching is very fine though, that is something I do know about, so I tend to believe that they are older pieces. But if the maker was not chinese then as another poster suspects then the shop owner may be tricking me by telling me that they are antique and cut from something bigger etc etc. 

It is indeed a mystery, one I hope someone super sleuth can solve!

Thank you. Mindy 

[Nathan Mao]

don't take my word alone for it. Can someone else weigh in in agreement or disagreement on that issue?

[Lu]

If I'm not mistaken, you're not allowed to take them out of the country if they are antiques.

Apart from that, I would be very, very wary of buying anything in China on the premise of its being antique. Personally I assume everything that looks old is fake until I have very good reason to believe otherwise. If you are an expert, or have an expert on hand that you trust, you can take the risk. But if you need to ask the internet for its opinion on whether this is genuine, then here is my opinion: it's fake. You can still buy this (or another, comparable piece of embroidery), because it's nice enough and can look great on your wall, but set out to buy something fake and pay accordingly. (This is what I did when I bought my Tang three-coloured porcelain horse, and I found a nice fake-antique horse for a good price and have been happily looking at it ever since.)

You probably know more about embroidery that I do, but I do know that very fine stitching is not something that has gone extinct. I visited an embroidery school in Yunnan at some point where the owner explained all about stitching with threads as thin as 2 or 3 fibers of silk. If they can do it there, it's probably still practiced more widely too.

[hemmel]

The embroidery is located in an Antique shop here in Luxembourg.

I suppose it left China a long time ago, if it is indeed old. The embroidery includes very detailed stitches specific to Asia and China, such as forbidden stitches and knots. It is all done on silk. German and French embroidery doesn't have anything close to this type of stitch-work, if it is the correct time period which I dont know. Also, Nathan Mao makes a good point, that it could have been done by someone copying lettering. The only other provenance that makes me think it is old is that it came in a trunk of Kangxi saucers and other real 18c Chinese antiques. I dont know anything about porcelain, but they are marked so I will photograph them too later. But i do know about stitching, and this is nice work.  

Also, I like Lu's opinion if you like something that is all that matters. I will consider/think on the price a bit more.

I will also try for better pics when the shop is open again, it is a holiday here in Luxembourg today.

Thank you very much.

Mindy  

[hemmel]

I have more photos now, I hope this helps! The photos are clickable to enlarge them.  

Thank you so much for your kindness in taking your time to try to decipher them.

Mindy