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HISTORY OF SILK
Silk production, also known as Sericulture has a long and colorful history unknown to most people. For centuries the west knew very little about silk and the people who made it. Pliny, the roman historian, wrote in his Natural History in 70 BC “Silk was obtained by removing the down from the leaves with the help of water…” For more than two thousand years the Chinese kept the secret of silk to themselves. It has been one of the most guarded secrets in history. |
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SILKWORM AND THE FAMILY
Many countries have their own native varieties of wild silk moths. The blind, flightless moth, Bombyx mori is the key to understanding the great mystery and magic of silk, and China’s domination of its production and promotion. It lays 500 or more eggs in four to six days and dies soon after. The eggs are like pinpoints, one hundred of them weigh only one gram. From one ounce of eggs come about 30,000 worms which eat a ton of mulberry leaves and produce twelve pounds of raw silk. The original wild ancestor of this cultivated species is believed to be Bombyx mandarina (Moore), a silk moth living on the white mulberry tree and unique to China. The silkworm of this particular moth produces a thread whose filament is smoother, finer and rounder than that of other silk moths. Over thousands of years, during which the Chinese practiced sericulture utilizing all the different types of silk moths known to them, Bombyx mori evolved into the specialized silk producer it is today; a moth which has lost its power to fly , only capable of mating and producing eggs for the next generation of silk producers.
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ORIGIN OF SILK-LEGEND OF LADY HSI-LING-SHIH
A group of ribbons, threads, and woven fragments found at Qianshanyang in Zhejiang province,
were dated to about 3000 BC; This gives credit to the Chinese legend that refers to Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih as the goddess of silk. It is said that her husband, the Yellow Emperor ruled China in about 3000 BC. Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih has been credited with the introduction of silkworm rearing and the invention of
the loom.
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 SILK DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA
The use of silk was reserved exclusively for the Emperor, his close relatives and the very highest of his dignitaries. Within the palace, the emperor is believed to have worn a robe of white silk; outside, he, his principal wife, and the heir to the throne wore yellow, the color of the earth.
Silk came into more general use as it gradually was introduced into various classes of society; they began wearing tunics of silk. As well as being used for clothing and decoration, silk was quickly put to industrial use by the Chinese. This was something which happened in the West
only in modern times. Silk, rapidly became one of the principal elements of the Chinese economy. It was used for musical instruments, fishing lines, bowstrings, bonds of all kinds, and even rag paper, the world’s first luxury paper. Eventually even the common people were able to wear garments of silk.
During the Han Dynasty, silk ceased to be a mere industrial material and became an absolute value in itself, farmers paid their taxes in grain and silk. Silk began to be used for paying civil servants and rewarding subjects for outstanding services. Values were calculated in lengths of silk as they had been calculated in pounds of gold. Before long it was to become a currency used in trade with foreign countries.
This use of silk continued during the Tang Dynasty as well. It is possible that this added importance was the result of a major increase in production. It found its way so thoroughly into the Chinese language that 230 of the 5’000 most common characters of the mandarin “alphabet” have silk as their “key”. |
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SILK TODAY
World silk production has approximately doubled during the last 30 years in spite of man-made fibers replacing silk for some uses. China and Japan during this period have been the two main producers, together manufacturing more than 50% of the world production each year. During the late 1970’s China, the country that first developed sericulture thousands of years ago dramatically increased its silk production and has again become the world’s leading producer of silk. |
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