Silk is one of the oldest textiles in the world and its natural beauty has ensured it remains synonymous with luxury, still highly prized in sumptuous home furnishings and lustrous fashion garments today.
The earliest fragments of silk unearthed in China are thought to pre-date 3000BC and the Chinese preciously guarded the secret of silk production for centuries with the threat of execution deterring anyone from divulging its mystery.
Although too late to be its genuine origin, the legend of the discovery of silk in 2640BC by Lei Zi, the wife of Emperor Huang Di, is a magical tale. The invention of the weaving loom has also been attributed to her, The Lady of the Silkworm. The story tells that whilst walking in her garden and drinking tea, a silk cocoon fell into her cup. When she retrieved it, the cocoon unwound into a fine thread of silk.
Around 200 BC Chinese immigrants reputedly brought silk worms to Korea and around 550 AD, two Nestorian monks brought silkworm eggs to the court of Emperor Justinian in Rome by hiding them in their hollowed staffs. When silk finally made its way from China into the wider world it was even more valuable than gold. Traders brought it across Asia to Europe along a route which became known as the Silk Road and people wore fragments on their clothes like jewellery.
A humble blind and flightless moth is where the real silk secret begins, when it lays its eggs – around 500 of them.
The process of cultivating the silkworms to produce silk is called sericulture, from serica, the Greek word for silk. The Bombyx Mori from the Lepidoptera family is the species which is cultivated to produce most of the silk currently produced. Once hatched, its tiny Bombyx Mori worms are laid on a bed of mulberry leaves.
Each worm eats around 30,000 times its own weight, growing from about a quarter an inch to about 3 inches in 30 to 45 days. The adult worm then spins its cocoon of one continuous strand of silk filament 700 to 1000 yards long. The filament, spit out from two spores on top of the worm’s head, is coated with sericin, a glue-like substance which holds the threads together to form a cocoon.
Except for a few kept for producing the next generation of Bombyx Mori, the cocoons are heated and stored.
To start production, the cocoon is moistened to loosen the filament which is thinner than hair but very strong. Fabric woven with a single strand of silk filament will be very sheer and translucent. To increase the thickness of the strand, five to eight filaments of silk yarn are reeled together on a spool.
Several strands of silk are then twisted together, in a process called throwing, to make yarn for weaving. The gummy sericin, is removed by boiling the silk in soap and water either before or after weaving.
In India, undomesticated silk worms like the tussah are found in the wild. The colour and quality of silk from these worms depends on what they feed on but tends to be more yellow and less strong. This ‘raw silk’ is woven and then beaten with sticks to remove the serinin and soften the silk.
Silk yarn is twisted and separated into warp and weft yarns and rolled into hanks. The warp yarn has more twists than the weft yarn as it needs to be stronger.
The yarn is bleached or dyed in preparation for weaving. Silk is by far the strongest of all natural fibers and has excellent elasticity and resilience. Originally woven on handlooms, the silk yarn is strong enough to be woven on the modern shuttle-less looms. It is also very light, soft and smooth and absorbs dyes extremely well.
The beauty of silk fabric today is that it is so versatile for interior furnishings. There is a finish to suit every style, from glamorous smooth satin or crisp shot taffeta to the classic fine slubbed dupion, rustic matka or raw tussah silks. Unlike many modern man-made fabrics, silk resists mildew and damage by moths. It is non-flammable, though not fire-retardant.
Apart from making luxurious curtains and accessories, most James Brindley silks - including embroideries - are even available backed onto wallpaper.
With 182 shades of plain dupion silk to choose from alone, plain coloured walls can have a warmth and distinctive texture that instantly adds luxury to a room, from around £44/m. At 137cm wide the fabrics are broader than conventional wallpaper widths, counterbalancing some of the cost and allowing grander scale patterns for a dramatic design statement.
For more information about the versatility of silk, the experts at James Brindley can be contacted on +44 1423 880400 or visit www.jamesbrindley.com