Value vs. Price
There are many factors can influence the value of silk embroidery. Such as: 1) Is that design unique? 2) How well were silk thread colors matched and transitional? There are many colors of silk thread will be involved into one embroidery art. 3) How different stitch methods were adopted and how well the design was recreated into embroidery art form? 4) How well the stitches are: neat, smooth, dense, glossy and their direction changes handled gracefully, or the stitches were so rough or loose and hardly even cover the satin material? 5) Were the thread residue hided well? 6) How well they were mounted and framed after embroidery finished?
Chinese embroidery has many esoteric stitching traditions. Executed in fine stitches, it looks smooth, neat and glossy. The complicated process involves various embroidery techniques, such as tracing, color matching, hooping and especially stitching. Sometimes a thinness of ordinary silk thread could be split into 2, 32, or even more filaments for fine-drawn embroidery and some of the stitches are hardly visible.
In general, an experienced embroiderer has to practice for over 10 years to master all the techniques. The clever use of thicker or thinner, richer or lighter colors of silk threads and variety of stitches guarantee the embroidery superb quality. The quality of stitching is what makes the work more valuable.
Larger embroideries are more expensive than smaller ones usually because more time and work needed to complete it in general. But sizes are not the only measures for prices, if it it the case of the bigger pieces were not fully embroidered, the patterns or background from original paintings, or designs were not completely finished and covered well, so that kind of embroidery should be sold at lower prices. Because embroidery is 100% handcrafted, some of them were stitched so fine, so that they took several people and several years to complete. These pieces are very expensive.
