Tu-Wednesday Textiles: The Silk Road

One of our most luxurious fabrics is formed from the secretion of a caterpillar.   It’s a good thing that silk is unlike any other fiber–dry hand, a unique natural luster, good moisture absorption, beautiful draping, and high strength–or else I think we’d all be grossed out.  To be more accurate, silk is produced by the larvae of a silk moth.

Chinese legend has it that the cultivation of silk (called sericulture) began in 2640 B.C. when a cocoon fell into the tea cup of Empress Hsi Ling Shi  the fourteen-year-old-wife of the ancient Emperor Xuanyuan (some accounts call her Lei Zu and a concubine).  The cocoon began to unravel in the hot liquid and she discovered that it was composed of a delicate thread.  This piqued her interest and she learned how to reel the thread so that it could be woven into fabric.  Because of her efforts to weave the silk thread, China’s silk industry was developed.

Although silk culture eventually spread to Korea and Japan, then westward to India and Persia, and finally to Spain, France, and Italy, China basically held a monopoly on silk production for about 3000 years.  The Silk Road was developed, among other reasons, so that merchants could get their hands on the highly coveted Chinese silk to sell to their customers.  Several attempts at sericulture were made in the United States without success.  According to Textiles (10th ed.) by Sara J. Kadolph, the major producers of silk are China (54%), India (14%) and Japan (11%).

We probably have silk to thank for the development of manufactured fibers.  Because of silk’s high cost, manufacturers have been trying to replicate its beauty and wonderful hand.  Rayon, the first manufactured fiber, was called “artificial silk” when it was first developed and you can occasionally find that term on older vintage patterns.

We’ll learn more about manufacturers’ attempts at duplicating silk’s properties when we get to manufactured and man made fibers but the most successful are the fibers with a triangular cross section that are extruded from a gizmo called a spinneret (similar in concept to pushing Play Dough through one of those plastic shape templates).

Next time we’ll learn about how silk is produced and some terms associated with silk.  You might be surprised at how the various silk is produced!