The Textile Museum presented Pamela Kaplan this morning talking about her journey to India to observe mulberry silkworm farming and the resulting processing all the way to fine silk fabric. She observed it as a cottage industry in Bangalore.
And she's now trying her hand at small scale silkworm cultivation at home.
The life cycle of the mulberry silkworm
Eggs like poppy seeds
They eat masses of mulberry leaves, don't eat anything else, don't drink, just plow through mulberry leaves
They have teeth!
Back in Bangalore
Delivering
She's active with the collection of the Textile Museum and is writing a series of articles.
And she showed silk from other cultures, including Chinese gold work thread, hair thin strands of silk wrapped in metal. You'll recognize this from my past blogging about goldwork embroidery.
Very well organized talk. I only pictured the high points on the silk process, though she also discussed the workers and how they literally live at the workplace.
I think if you Google on Textile Museum you can probably see more, including a short video she created of part of the process.
Fascinating! When we were in Japan, we visited a Unesco World Heritage Site where cottage industry silk farming was carried on in ancient times.
ReplyDeleteChina is still the biggest producer of mulberry silk. India's second. Were these scenes familiar to you, I wonder?
DeleteThe trays and the leaves, yes.
DeleteWow, great post.
ReplyDeleteIt is fascinating. I had never considered what went into silk. Incredible!
ReplyDeleteThe most amazing part to me is the task of those women finding the end of the thread in the cocoon and unwinding it.
Deletehow on earth do they wrap a hair thin strand of silk in gold!
ReplyDeleteNowadays it's done by machines. But the Chinese did it by hand. Incredibly fine skills
DeleteVery interesting! Even more interesting (to me anyway) was your comment about the women finding the end of the thread in the cocoon and unwinding it. Would certainly have good eyesight to tackle that, to say nothing about a huge amount of patience!
ReplyDeleteIf you look back at the pix you'll see a row of women doing it. I notice they're young!
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