Students looking at the Suzhou Traditional Gardens. [Photo/Suzhou Daily]

With one Suzhou traditional garden depicted for each meter of silk roll, the 25-meter long silk cutting is a sight to behold. The gardens are linked closely and spliced seamlessly, exhibiting a novel and beautiful piece of visual art on silk.

At an event called the International Day of Archives, Guorong Jin, the creator of the cutting and a master of craft and fine arts in Suzhou, exhibited this silk cutting - which had just won the title of "China Records" - and donated it to the Silk Archives of China for permanent keeping.

As type of folk are, paper-cuttings have traditionally used red or blue paper, wax paper or rice paper as materials. Paper is prone to fading and is difficult to preserve resulting in few large paper-cut pieces remaining.

In recent years, Guorong Jin had been inspired by the "Lou Jin Zuo Sheng" paper-cut method (patterns cut from paper, gold and silver foil or silk.) The method was popular in the Tang and Song Dynasties and has gradually developed into a new paper-cut using silk to create silk-cuttings. A patent of invention has been applied for this new presentation form which has been steering traditional paper cutting in a new direction.

The silk-cut Suzhou Traditional Gardens is a scroll 27.76 meters long and features an uninterrupted image of 25.38 meters across it. In order to reveal the grace and charm of the World Cultural Heritage, Guorong Jin chose the classic spots of 25 traditional gardens and places of interest. These included Tiger Hill, The Humble Administrator's Garden, Lion Grove, Master-of-Nets Garden, Pavilion of Surging Waves, Lingering Garden, The North Temple Pagoda, Twin Towers, Cold Mountain Temple, Joyous Garden, Couple's Retreat Garden, Panmen Scenery Area.

The classic spots were arranged in an irregular manner on the silk cutting and were joined together by highlighting the beauty of artificial gardens and the charm of natural scenery. For the materials Gurong chose a plain crepe satin. The material has special appeal due to it being closely-knit, shiny and silky. An application to the Guinness World Records is known to have been sent.