Types of Textiles
(Contd. from page 5...)
Silk
Silk is the fine strong soft lustrous fiber produced by silkworms.
History of the use of silk:
The Chinese has used silk since the 27th century B.C.. Silk is mentioned by Aristotle and became a valuable commodity both in Greece and Rome. During the Roman Empire, silk was sold for its weight in gold. The Chinese domesticated silk worms and fed them with mulberry leaves. They unwound the silkworms' cocoons to produce long strands of silk fiber.
Farm women in China at that period were supposed to raise such silkworms as one of their chores. Silk was used in China and exported along the Silk Road (the ancient trade route linking China and the Roman Empire). This trade brought China great wealth, but the Chinese did not give away the secret on how silk was formed.
Christian monks finally broke China’s monopoly of the silk production by smuggling silkworm eggs out of the country, and soon other countries started to produce their own silk.
Production of silk:
Silkworms are cultivated and fed with mulberry leaves. Some of these eggs are hatched by artificial means such as an incubator, and in the olden times, the people carried it close to their bodies so that it would remain warm.
Silkworms that feed on smaller, domestic tree leaves produce the finer silk, while the coarser silk is produced by silkworms that have fed on oak leaves. From the time they hatch to the time they start to spin cocoons, they are very carefully tended to. Noise is believed to affect the process, thus the cultivators try not to startle the silkworms.
Their cocoons are spun from the tops of loose straw. It will be completed in two to three days' time. The cultivators then gather the cocoons and the chrysales are killed by heating and drying the cocoons.
In the olden days, they were packed with leaves and salt in a jar, and then buried in the ground, or else other insects might bite holes in it. Modern machines and modern methods can be used to produce silk but the old-fashioned hand-reels and looms can also produce equally beautiful silk.
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