The studio
A small studio in Nanjing.
Silk & Wire began with a simple problem: the silk flowers sold online were mostly polyester, and the pieces made by hand were almost impossible to find outside China. We are a small studio working in ronghua, the Nanjing craft of stretching silk over copper wire, and we make pieces for people who want to wear the real thing.
Everything is made in one room. Silk is dyed in small batches, petals are wired and stretched by hand, and finished pieces are packed flat in boxes sized for them. We keep the range small on purpose: a few flowers, done properly, rather than a catalogue that changes every season.
The craft is listed as Jiangsu provincial intangible cultural heritage. We are not a heritage institution and we do not claim to be. We are one of the studios still making the work, and the website exists so that the pieces can reach people outside China without going through a marketplace listing that flattens them into a thumbnail.
Three things we will not do.
Sell polyester as silk
If a piece is not mulberry silk, we will say so in the listing. Rayon and polyester are labelled as such, everywhere.
Invent a heritage claim
The listing is provincial, from 2007. We do not describe it as national, and we do not attach dates we cannot support.
Send a flower we would not wear
Every piece is checked for loose thread, bent wire and uneven dye before it is boxed. If it is not right, it does not ship.
Work with us.
Bridal commissions, colour matching, gifts and wholesale enquiries all go to the same inbox. We answer within two working days.