Shen Shou's embroidery works: Queen of Italy and Jesus Christ. [Photo/WeChat account: ntwgx6]

Nantong simulation embroidery, also known as Shen embroidery, is an important branch of Suzhou embroidery, which was founded by Shen Shou (1874-1921), a celebrated embroidery master of modern times.

When Shen visited Japan in 1905 to study textile education, she was struck by Western oil paintings, with their use of light, shadow and perspective standing out to her. Inspired, she returned home and blended those techniques with traditional Suzhou embroidery, creating a new style she called "simulation embroidery". Moving away from flat decorative compositions, she developed specialized stitches — spiral, scattered, layered and void — to achieve three-dimensional realism and lifelike textures.

Her works won international acclaim. A portrait of Queen of Italy took first prize at the Nanyang Industrial Exposition and earned a top honor at the International Exposition of Industry and Labor in Turin in 1911. In 1915, her artwork Jesus Christ earned a grand prize in San Francisco.

Her legacy might have faded without industrialist Zhang Jian (1853-1926). In 1914, he founded China's first women's embroidery institute in Nantong and appointed Shen as its director. Together, they authored the first systematic manual on the craft.

Today, Shen embroidery is a national intangible cultural heritage. The original institute, now the Shen's Embroidery Museum, still stands in Nantong. The craft has passed through four generations, with national inheritor Jin Leilei carrying it forward. "What is embroidered," local authorities say, "is not just Eastern charm, but the cultural vision of a pioneer and a century-old legacy."