| Publication Overview It would be difficult to write a boring book about silk. The fact that Ava Gardners glossy pyjamas or Marie-Antoinettes luscious bedhangings both originated from a tiny hole under the mouth of a squidgy little caterpillar is astonishing enough to rival the most inventive science fiction. Silk tells the story of this extraordinary natural fibre from evidence of its use as long as 7,000 years ago to the technical innovations of recent years, including the possibilities offered by genetic modification.
Sericulture is animal husbandry at its most delicate and precise, and was originally only conducted by women. For more than 3,000 years the Chinese managed to keep its secrets to themselves until, so it is said, a princess leaving the country to marry a foreign prince managed to smuggle some cocoons tucked into her elaborate headdress. But China was to remain the chief source of raw and woven silk for many centuries; from 650BC, with the development of the famed silk routes, the history of the material becomes the history of global trade, of East-West commerce, of migration and of cultural exchange.
Silk is now so readily available and relatively inexpensive that we have perhaps lost our sense of wonder at its qualities. We are used to its gloss, its caress and its brilliance, unlike the Romans. Their first recorded sight of silk in 53BC was the Parthians jewel-bright battle banners, whose dazzling colours were apparently so overpowering that the centurions fled in a rare instance of military panic.
Even today no synthetic fibre has yet been developed that can match silks range of attributes: its strength, its elasticity, its ready absorption of dye, its low heat conductivity and flammability, its resistance to bacteria. Owing to these qualities silk has been put to a huge range of uses, from fishing lines to bowstrings, hot-air balloons to dental floss, surgical sutures to paper, parachutes to lampshades; and to make the most luxurious and desirable clothing and furnishings.
While the first half of this book explores the history of silk, its trade, its production, and its uses through the centuries, the second half brings the focus up to date, concentrating on fashion (with an emphasis on couture), and the more experimental end of the furnishing fabric trade. To this extent the book has the feel of a modern manifesto for silk and may disappoint those readers hoping for a more lingering drool over Genoese velvets and Spitalfields gowns. However, it is thick with facts and figures, rich with illustrations, such that even a flick-through, past images of embroidery and complex jaquard weaves, floating chiffons, crisp organzas, and a wonderful double-page spread of life-sized cocoons and their aforementioned squidgy architects, should serve to reignite some of that Roman sense of wonder, but without its accompanying panic.
Ros Byam Shaw |
