History of silk

No one knows for sure when silk was discovered. According to a Chinese legend, it was discovered about 2700 B. C. in the garden of Emperor Huang-Ti. The Emperor ordered his wife, Hsi-Ling-Shi, to find out what was damaging his mulberry trees.

Hsi-Ling-Shi found white worms eating the mulberry leaves and spinning shiny cocoons. She accidentally dropped a cocoon into hot water. As she played with the cocoon in the water, a delicate, cobwebby tangle separated itself from the cocoon. His-Ling-Shi drew it out and found that one slender thread was unwinding itself from the cocoon. She had discovered silk.

Hsi-Ling- Shi persuaded her husband to give her a grove of mulberry trees, were she could grow thousands of worms that spun such beautiful cocoons. It is said that Hsi-Ling-Shi invented the silk reel, which joined these fine filaments into thread thick and strong enough for weaving.

No one knows how much, if any, of the story is true. But historians do know that silk was first used in China. The Chinese guarded the secret of the silk worm. Disgrace and death faced the traitor who disclosed the origin of silk to the outside world. Only the Chinese knew how to make silk for about 3,000 years.

Silk Making Spreads

China carried on a profitable silk trade with western nations in the days of the Han Dynasty (founded in 202 B.C). Traders from ancient Persia (now Iran) bought richly colored silks from Chinese merchants. Camel caravans blazed routes across Asia, transporting silk from china to Damascus, the market place at which east met. From Damascus, silk was taken to the Roman Empire, where there were riches to exchange for it.

As early as the 300’s B.C., the western world heard rumors of the strange worm that spun silk threads. Bit no one in the west saw the worm until A.D. 550. At the time, Persia controlled all silk that came out of China. Persians sold it at fabulously high prices.

The Roman, or Byzantine, emperor Justinian objected to paying high prices to the Persians. In about 550, he tried unsuccessfully to find a trade route from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to China that would bypass Persia. He later sent two monks to China as spies. Risking death the monks smuggled out silkworms eggs and mulberry seeds in hollow bamboo canes. This adventure ended the Chinese and Persian silk monopolies.

During the next few hundred years, various peoples learned how to raise silkworms and take silk from the cocoons. The Muslims brought silkworms to Spain and Sicily in the 800’s and 900’s. By the 1200’s, Italy had become the silk center of the west. Silk weaving began in France in the late 1400’s. The French soon rivaled the Italians as silk manufacturers.

Silk weaving became an important industry in England after large number of skilled Flemish weavers entered the country in the late 1500’s. The first silk factory in the United States was built in Mansfield, Connecticut in 1810.

(Source: The World Book Encyclopedia)

Silk Glossary