THAI SILK
Definition of Thai Silk and History
Silk is the natural filament produced by the salivary glands of silkworms that feeds on the mulberry bush. Silkworms are caterpillars where they spin their cocoons using a complex set of mechanisms within their bodies when they change from larva into pupa. The raw silk is bumpy and irregular but when the completed cocoon is pulled from the mulberry bush and placed in a vat of boiling water in order to separate the silk thread of the cocoon from the caterpillar inside.
Thai silk is produced by Thai caterpillars raised on Thai mulberry leaves by Thai weavers in Thailand, primarily on the Khorat Plateau in the country’s northeast region. The silk from Thailand’s caterpillars varies in color from light gold to very light green. A cocoon is comprised of one thread that is 500-1,500 meters long. A single filament is too thin to use alone so many threads are combined to make a thicker, more practical fiber.
Thai silk is usually soft but has a relatively coarse texture with uneven, slightly knotty threads. This quality makes it extremely suitable for weaving by hand. Thai silk has a magnificent, rich, exotic beauty and, with proper care, can last a century or more different from the Chinese silk that tends to be smooth and satiny and the Indian silk that tends to be softer but more crinkly and uses richer colors. It is also different from the Italian silk tends to strive for a refined and elegant look but this can easily be accomplished anywhere using mechanized weaving.
Thai Silk has triangular fibers which reflect light like prisms. It also has layers of protein that gives it a natural sheen and makes it lustrous and smooth. Silk is an insect fiber and superior to any animal or plant fiber. Thai silk fiber is strong but lightweight, elastic but supple.
History of Thai Silk
In Thailand, fabric weaving has been practiced since prehistoric times and rural society has regarded it as a women’s duty during spare time after work in the fields. The development of both colors and designs of the finished products have been a result of the weavers’ own imagination and a long heritage as well as some other factors. In the old days fabrics were a kind of status symbol; there were fabrics for the common people to be used either everyday or on special occasions like merit-making, traditional rituals or important festivities, fabrics for the upper class including the king and the royal family and finally those for the Buddhist monks.
Thai fabrics have a great number of designs, usually distinguished by region. Northern women have been considered very skillful weavers, especially of cotton fabrics. They started by weaving for domestic use and then produced for export as well. It is said that during the twentieth and twenty-first century BE the northern part of Thailand which was known as the Lanna Kingdom produced many good fabrics for sale in neighboring states, some of which were Pha Si Chan Khao, Pha Si Chan Daeng and Pha Si Dok Champa.
During the Sukhothai Period, about 700 years ago, besides the ordinary coloured ones, a five-colour fabric was produced, commonly known as Pha Benjarong. Different groups of people then produced their own fabrics; court people for example would make fabrics for themselves and ordered some fabrics from abroad. As history has it, silk began to be imported from China during that time.
Besides clothing, people began to use fabrics for other purposes such as home decoration (long flags) and other household items (pillows, mattresses, curtains). Fabrics during the Ayudhya Kingdom which was about 400 years ago assumed another important role besides materials for clothing and decoration-they were used as money. They were sometimes given by the king instead of money for rewards and often for the annual remuneration, hence the term Pha Wad Raipee (pha = fabric or cloth, wad = pension raipee = annual).
Empress Si Ling Chi of China is credited with discovering silk. While sitting under a mulberry tree in a palace garden having tea, a silkworm’s cocoon reportedly fell out of the tree into her cup. While removing it from her tea, she discovered the fine silk filament of the cocoon beginning to unravel.
The Chinese guarded the secret of silk for millenniums by putting to death anyone found guilty of smuggling silkworm eggs, cocoons, or mulberry seeds. Silk became the cloth of emperors and royalty and a great source of wealth. However, about 1900 years ago a Chinese princess who married an Indian prince is reported to have successfully smuggled silkworm eggs out of China in her headdress and then fed them with the leaves of Indian mulberry trees.
Since then, silk production has spread to other Asian countries and archaeologist have found silk 3,000 years old in the ruins of Baan Chiang, Thailand, which many of them consider the earliest civilization in Southeast Asia. Thais have developed a type of silk that is considered one of the finest fabrics in the world. They use a unique manufacturing process and have unique patterns and colors.
Types of Thai Silk
There are many types of Thai silk, such as smooth Thai silk, rough Thai silk, two- tone Thai silk, striped Thai silk, taffeta, and dupion silk.
Smooth Thai silk
Smooth Thai silk has a shiny, satin-like finish. It’s suitable for all purposes, particularly clothing and interior decorating. The “standard” width was formerly about 37 inches/94 centimeters and is available in 2-ply and sometimes 4-ply. Starting in 2003, our Thai weavers began producing silk at a standard width of 40 inches.
Rough Thai silk
“Rough” Thai silk is beautiful and textured but not really coarse or rough. It is soft. It’s also sometimes called “nubby” Thai silk but as of mid-2006 we began calling all these weaves Thai dupioni. It’s highly suitable for silk drapes and silk curtains, and silk upholstery fabric if cotton backing is affixed. It’s also great for other interior design applications but it’s a fantastic fashion fabric currently popular with designers of luxury apparel and bridal gowns. The standard width used to be about 37 inches (94 cm) but starting in 2003, our weavers began producing silk at a standard width of 40 inches.
Two-Tone Thai silk
Two tone iridescent Thai silk is way cool and extremely pleasant to the eyes. Depending on the angle at which it is viewed, the fabric color changes. Producers produce this iridescent effect by using two different colors when we weave the cloth. Their actual fabric used for our page backgrounds clearly shows the contrasting colors of the warp (vertical thread) and weft (horizontal thread). Everyone can choose the colors of the weft and warp to produce your own unique two-tone Thai silk.
Striped Thai silk
When we talk about “striped” we talk about the type of weaving technique. We produce striped Thai silk by alternating between smooth Thai silk and rough Thai silk during weaving to produce a physical pattern in the material. This can be used in conjunction with a color pattern as well. Many patterns are available and “striped Thai silk” may not actually result in “stripes” at all.
Taffetta and dupion silk
Taffetta is a silk fabric made from white silk cocoons. It varies from country to country. Dupion is an interesting textured Thai silk fabric made using mixture of silk from both long, smooth, white cocoons and short, rough, yellow cocoons.
White cocoons are smooth, white and about 60-100 meters long. A yellow cocoon is short, rough, yellow and about 20-30 meters long. However, every cocoon of both types also has three parts which vary in quality and character. The silk threads of the outer part are large, short and more textured filaments. In the next part of the cocoon, the filaments are smoother and longer than the first type but not as fine or expensive as the third type which is best.
Thai Silk Trading
German academic Ferdinand von Richthofen is credited with inventing the term “Silk Road” or “Silk Route” which was actually neither a road nor a route but rather a trade network. It started in China and stretched across South Asia to Middle East Asia and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It probably bypassed Thailand. Few merchants or travelers went from one end of the complex network of passages and routes to the other. Silk, spices and other low-weight, low-volume, high-value luxury items were traded in relay-fashion along the Silk Road from one trader to the next.
These three maps were produced by Mark Graham and are based on data gathered mostly from UNCTAD/WTO (2002), Datta and Nanavaty (2005), and correspondence with Ron Currie, the former Secretary General of the now defunct International Silk Association. It should be noted that these maps are not intended to present an absolute or comprehensive picture of the global silk industry. There are undoubtedly a number of significant omissions in the maps due the unavailability of countrywide data for a number of nations. Furthermore, the symbology and shading of countries is not an attempt to convey any sort of binary information; it is instead simply a strategy to highlight dominant players at a national scale.