Preface
As Desmond Morris pointed out some years ago, human beings are basically just naked apes, and as such we lack the protection of our simian ancestors. Clothes initially did no more than protect us from the elements but in time they started to become more elaborate and decorative. As society developed and became hierarchical, clothes also became indicators of wealth and position, and no material has ever been developed that gave higher status and prestige than silk. It has been doing do for some five thousand years. That alone makes it an interesting subject to study, but there is more to it than that. It was silk that brought east and west together through trade, and along that trade route flowed ideas, technologies and religions.
I was brought up in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire, famous as a centre for the wool industry, and as a boy went to the local school in Knaresborough. The mill down by the River Nidd was not making woollen cloth, but a finer material, linen, and we were taken there on a school visit. I found the machinery for textile manufacture fascinating – and still do. I first started researching the history of textiles for my book Remains of a Revolution, published in 1975, and later went on to write about the cotton industry. In working on that book and the accompanying BBC TV series, I visited India and had a chance to see a little of the exquisite work being done by craftsmen weaving silk. It, however, remained a subject of comparatively minor interest for me, until I began working on a series of documentary programmes for Discovery Channel. I was able to spend time in Lyon, visiting the excellent silk museums, workshops and factories and discovered a great deal of the history of the industry in that city. Back in the UK, I continued with visits to silk mills in Essex and Hampshire and museums in Macclesfield. The more places I visited, the more intriguing the story became.
It was in Lyon, seeing Jacquard looms at work as well as the machinery for making punched cards, that I first realized just how important this was to the whole development of technology. It was particularly striking for me, as I worked many years ago on one of the early number-crunching computers, that were fed with punched tape and at the same time was using punched cards to contain records. The more I looked into the history of silk and the Silk Road, the more interesting it became and the more it seemed that this remarkable substance produced by a rather boring looking moth had a central role in the development of so many aspects of our lives. My visit to Lyon took place more than a decade ago but that is where this book had its beginnings.
Anthony Burton
Stroud 2021
Ahimsa silk – Indian silk produced by the wild silk moth Bombyx Mandarina. The moth is allowed to go through its complete life cycle, and the silk thread is obtained from the opened cocoons.
Applique – A decorative technique which, as the name implies, involves sewing a piece of fabric onto the base cloth to produce a raised motif.
Brocade – An ornate woven silk cloth in which an extra weft thread had been added above the woven cloth to give the impression the material has been embroidered. The name comes from the Italian ‘Brocatto’ for ‘raised cloth’. It would have first been mainly manufactured on a draw loom.
Calendering – A process in which cloth is folded in half, so that the faces are in the centre. The cloth is then pressed under a roller to produce a shiny finish.
Carding – Drawing fibres through wires to align them. The technique is only used for waste silk, not for silk from unbroken cocoons.
Damask – A figured cloth which, unlike brocade, is produced with just single weft threads. The pattern is generally produced by means of a warp-faced satin weave. The name derives from the fact that the first cloths to reach Europe in this style came from Damascus.
Draw loom – The draw loom was developed to make it possible to weave elaborate patterns, by manipulating the warp. A boy perched on top of the loom, raising the appropriate healds for each pass of the shuttle.
Dressing – A combing process used to separate and align the filaments of wild silk.
Eri silk – This is similar to Ahimsa silk in that the moth is also allowed to complete its life cycle. The moth is officially known as Samia Ricini but gets its common name from the Assamese word ‘era’ meaning castor, because the moth feeds on that plant.
Figured silk – A term applied to any silk fabric with a woven pattern.
Heald or heddle – A cord with an eyelet through which the warp thread is passed. Healds are raised and lowered to create a space – the shed – through which the shuttle can pass with the weft.
Jacquard loom – Not strictly speaking a loom, but an attachment that can be added to a loom. It uses punched cards to create a pattern. When healds are activated, they can either pass through a hole in the card and be raised, or will hit solid card and remain in place. It replaced the draw boy of the draw loom. It is named after its inventor, Joseph Marie Jacquard.
Lease – A device, usually in the form of a rod, that separates the warp threads and is placed between the back roller and the healds on a loom.
Lustring – The name for a silk fabric with a shiny surface, usually produced by calendaring.
Muga silk – Silk produced from a silk moth native to Assam that has a lustrous golden colour and is hard wearing.
Mule – A spinning machine that was first developed for cotton. The threads are wound onto bobbins that go on the back of the frame, and are then passed through rollers to spindles on a moving carriage. As the carriage retreats from the frame, it draws out the threads. At the end of the run, the carriage stops and the spindles rotate to twist the thread. The carriage then returns and the threads are wound on.
Plain weave – This is the simplest weave, in which the weft threads are alternately passed over and under the warp threads.
Reeling – The process of drawing the filaments off a cocoon and winding them onto a reel/warp threads.
Sateen – A satin weave made with spun yarn instead of unbroken filaments.
Satin – Originally produced in Quanzhou in China, it was traded to the west through Arabia, where it was known as zayton. This is one of the basic weaves, in which a weft thread passes over a number of warp threads. A four-harness satin, has the weft passing over three warp threads, then under one and so on. The most pliable version is the eight-harness satin, with the weft thread passing over seven warp threads and under one.
Throstle – originally a steam powered spinning machine, based on the Arkwright water frame, in which the threads are passed through rollers, moving at different speeds, to draw out the thread, and then twisted by a rotating flyer.
Throwing – The process of twisting silk threads together after reeling.
Twill weave – One of the basic types of weave. It is created by passing the weft over two or more warp threads, and then on the next throw of the shuttle moving along by one warp thread to create a diagonal pattern.
Velvet – The weaving of velvet involves the introduction of a third thread in the warp, which forms loops. The loops are then cut to create tufts that rise above the ground fabric. This is the pile. If the pile is more than 1/8 inch high it is known as plush.
Warp and weft – The warp threads are set on the loom, running from a roller at the back of the loom to the front. The weft is the thread that passes between the warp threads, usually carried in a shuttle. An old weaving joke makes it easy to remember – the warp goes up and down, the weft from weft to wight.
Watered silk – Silk which is calendered, using grooved rollers, producing an effect rather like a watermark.