According to Confucius himself, about the year 2, BC The wife of the Yellow Emperor Huangdi was having tea under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup. As she watched, a strand of fiber unspun from the cocoon, and she realized that the strong filament could be used to make cloth. Thus, an industry was born. She taught her people how to raise silkworms and later invented the loom.
It is thought that silk was exported along the Silk Road routes by about BC or so, and after this, though silk became highly esteemed, the various kingdoms and imperial dynasties kept secret the methods of silk production for another thousand years.
It might have been one of the most zealously guarded secrets in history. Anyone found smuggling silkworm eggs, cocoons, or mulberry seeds was put to death. Silk garments were worn by emperors and royalty, and it was a status symbol. Common people were prohibited from wearing silk. Silk was also used for a number of other applications including luxury writing material. Silk cultivation spread to Japan about AD, and by the year , Europeans and Arabs started to manufacture silk.
In recent times , the invention of efficient techniques for producing cotton cloth and then the invention of synthetic polymers such as nylon and polyester greatly reduced the demand for silk. It is now a luxury good and is much less important a good than in the past. Silk is a delicately woven product made from the protein fibers of the silkworm cocoon. Silk production is a lengthy process that requires close monitoring. Silk moths lay around eggs during their lifespan of four to six days.
After the eggs hatch, the caterpillars are fed a diet of mulberry leaves in a controlled environment. Their body weight increases substantially. After storing up enough energy, the silk caterpillars silkworms surround themselves with fibers of a white jelly-like substance.
Their cocoons resemble white, yellow, pink, and brown furry balls. They are pretty. After eight or nine days, the silkworms actually caterpillars changing into moths are killed. The cocoons are lowered into hot water to loosen up the tight protective filaments that are then unraveled, wound onto a spool, and later spun into thread.
The cocoon filaments might be to meters long! Silkworm cocoon are sometimes yellow and pink; these colors are boiled out during processing.
Women often work all day with the hot cloudy water, which is too hot for most of us to touch. To make silk yarn, the nearly invisible strands from five to eight cocoons plucked from the hot water and plied together and placed into the eye of a reeling machine, which pulls the thread from the cocoons, twists them together into a single yarn that is to 1, meters long and is wound on spools.
Natural glues left on the strands bind the yarn together. At factories in China, women stand all day in front of reeling machines. If a cocoon stops bobbing, the person operating the reeling machines knows a strand has broken or run out and the end of another cocoon is unraveled and put in its place.
During a second reeling, the silk is measured into specific lengths. The silk yarn is then graded for shipment. The process the silk goes through afterwards often depends on the quality of the silk. Weighted silk is colored with dye and dipped in a solution of metallic salts that add weigh and give it a sheen. Spun silk is made from the floss and other wasted filaments of the silk process. These fibers are carded and spun into yarn using methods similar to those used to make wool.
Wild silk comes most from two kinds of moths: the Antherea mylita of India and the Antherea pernyi of China. The strands from the cocoons made these moths are coarser and more difficult to unravel.
They are often made into spun silk. After the silk is harvested at Dongshan People's Commune in eastern China the cocoons are carried by boat in table-size baskets to government purchasing stations.
The commune is paid, depending on quality and weight, about three dollars a kilogram 2. At a factory in Dadong women stand all day in front of reeling machines washing the silk cocoons and loosening the silk thread with hot cloudy water, which is too hot for most of us to touch.
Silk workers near Hotan often starch silk on the loom by spitting water on it. Women who unwind silk cocoons often plop the silkworms in boiling water and munch on them. One gets a pleasant odor of food being cooked, when passing through a reeling factory. Chinese doctors replace diseased arteries with silk prostheses. In the s, Dr. Feng Youxian read about grafts in vascular surgery in the United States. After the silk has been removed, the shrimp-size silkworm pupae are delivered to restaurants where they are stir fried in garlic, ginger, pepper, soy sauce and oil.
Silkworm pupae are high in protein and said to be good for high blood pressure. When the Chinese have finished sucking out the meat they spit the shells on the table and floor. Silkworms are being pushed as a food source as they are high in protein and need less feed than cattle and other mammals and can be raised in smaller spaces. Silk yarn and yarn spun from silk waste, put up for retail sale.
Pure Silk Fabrics. Silk Madeups. Hong Kong. South Korea. United States. United Kingdom. United Arab Emirates. Experts believe that rising cost of labor and a relative increase in the cost of production has squeezed the profits coming from silk cloth manufacturing. For instance, earlier, the cost of production of reeling silk was 20, Yuan per ton but now it is more than 30, Yuan per ton; which is up by over 50 percent.
There were about 76 reeling silk enterprises in but presently Zhejiang Province is left with only 56 of which 36 enterprises are running at a loss. Experts believe that the situation is likely to get worse in the second half of this year, and appreciation of RMB is expected to make conditions more difficult.
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Once they have enough energy, they spend days spinning a cocoon around themselves. After a further 9 days the cocoons are ready. First, they are dipped in hot water to loosen the filaments and then unwound.
Each cocoon amazingly produces around metres of a single thread, of which are spun together to produce a single silk yarn. Silk takes dye like no other fabric because in cross section the thread is more triangular than round and this intensifies the effect of any colour.
Silk appears to be almost alive because no single fibre is uniform, this provides the designer with a huge variety of options as it can be gossamer thin or a thick upholstery weight.
The farming and weaving of silk is a lengthy and laborious process. In fact, the total number of people directly dependant on sericulture is 34 million worldwide.
It provides a buffer against poverty in rural communities.
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