History of silk

Developments in the manufacturing technique also started to take place during the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) in Europe, with devices such as the spinning wheel first appearing at this time.

The earliest evidence of silk dates back to more than 8,500 years ago (late 7th millennium BCE) and has been found at the early Neolithic Age tombs of Jiahu, China.

The Siberian Ice Maiden, discovered in the Pazyryk burials, was found clad in a long crimson-and-white striped woolen skirt, with white felt stockings.

The writings of both Confucius and other Chinese traditions tell a story about Empress Leizu; one day, in about 3000 BC, a silk worm's cocoon fell into her teacup .

Knowledge of silk production eventually left China via the heir of a princess who was promised to a prince of Khotan, likely around the early 1st century AD.

Though silk was exported to foreign countries in great amounts, sericulture remained a secret that the Chinese carefully guarded; consequently, other cultures developed their own accounts and legends as to the source of the fabric.

Even though some saw the development of a luxury product as useless, silk provoked such a craze among the high society that the rules in the Li Ji were used to limit its use to the members of the imperial family.

Researchers have found an early example of writing done on silk paper in the tomb of a marchioness, who died around 168[vague], in Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan.

In the same manner that one would sometimes estimate the price of products according to a certain weight of gold, a length of silk cloth became a monetary standard in China, in addition to bronze coins.

Many neighbouring countries began to grow envious of the wealth that sericulture provided China, and beginning in the 2nd century BC, the Xiongnu people regularly pillaged the provinces of the Han Chinese for around 250 years.

Under the Ming dynasty, silk began to be used in a series of accessories: handkerchiefs, wallets, belts, or even as an embroidered piece of fabric displaying dozens of animals, real or mythical.

[6] A 17th-century work, Jin Ping Mei, gives a description of one such motif: Golden lotus having a quilted backgammon pattern, double-folded, adorned with savage geese pecking at a landscape of flowers and roses; the dress' right figure had a floral border with buttons in the form of bees or chrysanthemums.

The caravans that travelled this route to exchange silk with other merchants were generally sizeable, constituting 100 to 500 people, as well as camels and yaks carrying around 140 kilograms (310 lb) of merchandise.

... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.China traded silk, teas, and porcelain, while India traded spices, ivory, textiles, precious stones, and pepper, and the Roman Empire exported gold, silver, fine glassware, wine, carpets, and jewels.

Centuries went by, civilizations, and dynasties were formed, prospered, or perished, but the route that linked the continents of Europe and Asia survived and expanded, becoming known as the Silk Road.

Some of the other goods traded included luxuries such as silk, satin, hemp and other fine fabrics, musk, other perfumes, spices, medicines, jewels, glassware, and even rhubarb, as well as slaves.

Starting in the 4th century BC, silk began to reach the Hellenistic world by merchants who would exchange it for gold, ivory, horses or precious stones.

Hellenistic Greece appreciated the high quality of the Chinese goods and made efforts to plant mulberry trees and breed silkworms in the Mediterranean basin, while Sassanid Persia controlled the trade of silk destined for Europe and Byzantium.

During the following centuries, the silk of Catanzaro supplied almost all of Europe and was sold in a large market fair in the port of Reggio Calabria to Spanish, Venetian, Genoese, Florentine and Dutch merchants.

As the cultivation of mulberry was difficult in Northern and Continental Europe, merchants and operators used to purchase raw materials in Calabria in order to finish the products, before reselling them for a higher price.

The sudden boom of the silk industry in the Italian state of Lucca, starting in the 11th and 12th centuries, was due to much Sicilian, Jewish, and Greek settlement, alongside many other immigrants from neighboring cities in southern Italy.

In 1519, Emperor Charles V formally recognized the growth of the industry of Catanzaro by allowing the city to establish a consulate of the silk craft, charged with regulating and check in the various stages of a production that flourished throughout the 16th century.

[44] At the beginning of the 13th century, a primitive form of milling silk yarns was in use; Jean de Garlande's 1221 dictionary and Étienne Boileau's 1261 Livre des métiers (Tradesman's Handbook) both illustrate many types of machinery which can only have been doubling machines.

[45] Towards the end of the 14th century, no doubt on account of the devastation caused mid-century by the Black Death, trends began to shift towards less expensive production techniques.

In the second half of the 15th century, drawloom technology was first brought to France by an Italian weaver from Calabria, known as Jean le Calabrais,[47] who was invited to Lyon by Louis XI.

[50] These materials, used for clothing, began to be produced locally instead; however, Italian silk remained for a long time amongst the most prized, mostly for furnishings and the brilliant nature of the dyestuffs used.

Following the example of the wealthy Italian city-states of the era, such as Venice, Florence, and Lucca (which had become the center of the luxury-textile industry), Lyon obtained a similar function in the French market.

In 1466, King Louis XI decided to develop a national silk industry in Lyon, and employed a large number of Italian workers, mainly from Calabria.

By the early 20th century, rapidly industrializing Japan was producing as much as 60 percent of the world's raw silk, most exports shipping through the port of Yokohama.

[11] Postwar Japan, through improvements in technology and a protectionist market policy, became the world's foremost exporter of raw silk, a position it held until the 1970s.