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A GREAT PASSION FOR SILK
by Stefania Maffei
When I am asked how my passion for the silk started, I
say that it has always been a fascination for me. Both my husband and I love
nature, and in our garden we have beehives and a vegetable plot. Our
grandmothers often told us of the times gone by when they used to raise the filugelli (this was the ancient name for
the silkworms) on the cannicci
(another ancient name for the place were the worms are grown), and when they
told us these stories from their youth, there was always a kind of poetic
nostalgia, even though they were times of very hard work and
deprivation.
This nostalgia really infected me, and my desire to understand what our
grandmothers used to do has born in me the idea of restarting the breeding of
silkworms, and later on a little silk
hand-production.
I did a lot of research on silkworm production, as a kind of personal mission. But
the art of silkworm husbandry is not easy, particularly when there are so few
records. I started my research at the national archives in Lucca, as I live very near this marvellous
medieval town. I also scoured the internet and found an ancient Italian manual
on silkworm production, which I bought, and also some information about an
association in the south of Italy, where they practise the
breeding of worms as a form of “pet therapy” for disabled people. They very
kindly sent me my first set of
eggs.
I was not at all lucky with the first breeding, and all the worms died. However,
the second year was good and in the end we got our first cocoons.
Our research is still going on. My
husband discovered a manuscript in the national archives in Luccawith a drawing of a
reeling machine, and from it he was able to manufacture a small winding frame
and we have succeeded in trattura
(reeling the silk).
Now we have the matassine (little
hanks) of silk thread, and we are currently trying to track down the skills
required to revive this traditional art but we still need other machinery, such
as a spinning wheel to twist the thread and a loom to weave it on, and this
will complete the whole cycle.
THE MULBERRY
Mulberry leaves are the only food that silk worms can
live on. It is a plant pertaining to the class
urticali order Angiosperms,
family Moracae. The
Morus mulberry has various subspecies, but at their simplest it is the white
mulberry and black mulberry that grow best in Ital.
Of course it is the white mulberry that is needed for the
silk worms. The tree can reach a height of 10-12 metres, and has large leaves.
There used to be many growing in the Luccacountryside. In fact the majority of
peasant families used to breed silkworms, and of course needed to be able to
collect fresh leaves for them, and would have a tree within their
homestead.
Some areas around Lucca
are still referred to as the gelsaio
(trans: a forest or wood, of mulberry trees) for the great amount of mulberries
that were cultivated there.
THE BIOLOGICAL
CYCLE OF THE BOMBYX MORI
Classification: Class Insecta (insects), Order
Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Suborder Ditrysia (Moths, Butterflies,
Skippers), Superfamily Bombycoidea, Family Bombycidae, Genus Bombyx, Species B.
mori.
The silkworm larva hatches from a tiny black egg at the
end of April. The larva eats mulberry (Morus alba) leaves almost
constantly for 4 to 6 weeks until it is 7cm long. The white caterpillar moth
moults 4 times during this stage, until it metamorphoses into the
pupa.
When the worm is ready to start spinning its cocoon it
starts to fidget and toss its head back and forth, so at that point we set
little tripod-like stacks of dry sticks. The moth climbs the sticks and starts
spinning a white silk cocoon around itself, in a process that takes 3 or more
days. Inside the cocoon, the moth has become a pupa, in a hrad brown shell. In
roughly three weeks, the adult moth emerges. This white moth cannot fly. However
it reproduces and dies within about five days, laying from 200 to 500
lemon-yellow eggs that eventually turn black.
THE SECRET OF
SERICULTURE
Producing silk is a lengthy process and demands constant,
close attention. To produce high quality silk, there are two conditions which
need to be fulfilled. Firstly, the moth must not hatch out of the cocoon, and
secondly the diet on which the silkworms should feed must be perfect. The
mulberry leaves should be fresh, not wet, at natural temperature, and chopped up
in different dimensions according to the size of the growing
worm.
The silkworms feed until they have stored up enough
energy to enter the cocoon stage. While they are growing they have to be
protected from loud noises, drafts, and strong smells such as those of fish and
meat, and even the smell of sweat. When it is time to build their cocoons, the
worms produce a jelly-like substance in their silk glands, which hardens when it
comes into contact with the air. Silkworms spend three or four days spinning a
cocoon around themselves until they look like puffy, white balls.
After eight or nine
days in a warm, dry place the cocoons are ready to be unwound. First they are
steamed or baked to kill the pupa inside. The cocoons are then dipped into hot
water to loosen the filament. Each cocoon is made up of a filament between 600
and 900 metres long! Between five and eight of these super-fine filaments are
twisted together to make one thread, and is the wound off into a
hank.
This is one way of producing silk, but there is another
way which I prefer, which consists in letting the butterfly hatch and then
boiling the broken cocoons in water and natural soap made by hand with olive oil
in order not to weaken the fibres. Afterwards using carders and a spinning wheel
you can spin the fibres in the same way as you would wool.
THE ORIGIN OF
SILK
Sericulture, or silk production, has a long and colourful
history unknown to most people. For centuries the West knew very little about
silk and the people who made it.
Pliny, the Roman historian, wrote in his Natural History
in 70 BC that "Silk was obtained by removing the down from the leaves with the
help of water…" For more than two thousand years the Chinese kept the secret of
silk altogether to themselves. It was one of the most jealously guarded secrets
in history. This secret reached the Roman
Empire under the Emperor Justinian, thanks to two monks who brought
the eggs in a pilgrim empty walking-stick.
SILK IN LUCCA
The Lucchese were already expert weavers by 1100
A.D., weaving wool. Silk weaving as such started in Lucca in the 11th century, and the raw yarn was imported
from Sicily, Syria,Greeceand beyond.
Many
girls came in the town from the countryside in order to learn this art, and to
get to the stage when they obtained their own loom, they had to stay in the
master weaver’s house for eight consecutive years.
The first documents written on the cultivation of the mulberry in
the countryside outside Lucca can be found in the
city archives and go back to 1223, and it was then that the sericulture industry began, and it was this that
made Lucca
enormously prosperous. The
secrets of this art were jealously guarded by the Lucchese
families.
At the end of the twelfth century, Luccahad become known for its ‘Diasper silk’ – a medieval term for a silk weave, in which the pattern and ground are distinguished by texture rather than colour. The fabrics were woven in patterns of small, repeated figures such as animals (for instance the panther, which is found on the city’s coat of arms) and plants. Fabrics were often woven with gold thread, with confronted birds alternating with pairs of beasts, and heraldic designs of lions, eagles, peacocks and so on. Records tell us that there were more than 3,000 looms working at this time.
The Lucchese art of silk weaving eventually spread
to other northern Italian towns, and subsequently on to other European centres
of production such as Lyons, Flanders and
London. One of
the main reasons for the demise of the industry in Luccaitself was the exodus of weavers due to the battles
for power between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Tuscanyin the 12th century. However, the industry did
continue on a smaller scale right up until the 20th century. The Italian sericulture tradition experienced its
final boom between 1921 - 1930 with a national production of 47,000 tons of
cocoons, and a top record in 1924 of 5,000 tons. From 1931 onwards, the
production of silk diminished, the introduction of synthetic fibres during World
War 2 and cheaper Chinese imports bringing this ancient art to a sudden
end.
It is difficult to identify genuine Lucca silks, as weavers who left the city to work in
Florence, Venice,
Genoa and so on,
took their designs with them. However, you can find examples of Lucca
silks at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2 images can be accessed online) and
at the Musées des Tissus in Lyons, and of course
in Lucca itself at the Cathedral Museum.
If you would like to support us in our venture, you can
send us some equipment such as, carders, spinning wheels, or looms, or just send
a donation and I will send you some cocoons from our own stock. Just contact me
at my e-mail address.
We are now preparing a laboratory to organise workshops
and visits on natural silks for tourists and schools, and we also can let rooms
to combine the visit at our laboratory with the discovery of marvellous
Luccaand its
surrounding hills.
Join me in my journey into the magic world of the natural
silk.
by Stefania Maffei
When I am asked how my passion for the silk started, I
say that it has always been a fascination for me. Both my husband and I love
nature, and in our garden we have beehives and a vegetable plot. Our
grandmothers often told us of the times gone by when they used to raise the filugelli (this was the ancient name for
the silkworms) on the cannicci
(another ancient name for the place were the worms are grown), and when they
told us these stories from their youth, there was always a kind of poetic
nostalgia, even though they were times of very hard work and
deprivation.
This nostalgia really infected me, and my desire to understand what our
grandmothers used to do has born in me the idea of restarting the breeding of
silkworms, and later on a little silk
hand-production.
I did a lot of research on silkworm production, as a kind of personal mission. But
the art of silkworm husbandry is not easy, particularly when there are so few
records. I started my research at the national archives in Lucca, as I live very near this marvellous
medieval town. I also scoured the internet and found an ancient Italian manual
on silkworm production, which I bought, and also some information about an
association in the south of Italy, where they practise the
breeding of worms as a form of “pet therapy” for disabled people. They very
kindly sent me my first set of
eggs.
I was not at all lucky with the first breeding, and all the worms died. However,
the second year was good and in the end we got our first cocoons.
Our research is still going on. My
husband discovered a manuscript in the national archives in Luccawith a drawing of a
reeling machine, and from it he was able to manufacture a small winding frame
and we have succeeded in trattura
(reeling the silk).
Now we have the matassine (little
hanks) of silk thread, and we are currently trying to track down the skills
required to revive this traditional art but we still need other machinery, such
as a spinning wheel to twist the thread and a loom to weave it on, and this
will complete the whole cycle.
THE MULBERRY
Mulberry leaves are the only food that silk worms can
live on. It is a plant pertaining to the class
urticali order Angiosperms,
family Moracae. The
Morus mulberry has various subspecies, but at their simplest it is the white
mulberry and black mulberry that grow best in Ital.
Of course it is the white mulberry that is needed for the
silk worms. The tree can reach a height of 10-12 metres, and has large leaves.
There used to be many growing in the Luccacountryside. In fact the majority of
peasant families used to breed silkworms, and of course needed to be able to
collect fresh leaves for them, and would have a tree within their
homestead.
Some areas around Lucca
are still referred to as the gelsaio
(trans: a forest or wood, of mulberry trees) for the great amount of mulberries
that were cultivated there.
THE BIOLOGICAL
CYCLE OF THE BOMBYX MORI
Classification: Class Insecta (insects), Order
Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Suborder Ditrysia (Moths, Butterflies,
Skippers), Superfamily Bombycoidea, Family Bombycidae, Genus Bombyx, Species B.
mori.
The silkworm larva hatches from a tiny black egg at the
end of April. The larva eats mulberry (Morus alba) leaves almost
constantly for 4 to 6 weeks until it is 7cm long. The white caterpillar moth
moults 4 times during this stage, until it metamorphoses into the
pupa.
When the worm is ready to start spinning its cocoon it
starts to fidget and toss its head back and forth, so at that point we set
little tripod-like stacks of dry sticks. The moth climbs the sticks and starts
spinning a white silk cocoon around itself, in a process that takes 3 or more
days. Inside the cocoon, the moth has become a pupa, in a hrad brown shell. In
roughly three weeks, the adult moth emerges. This white moth cannot fly. However
it reproduces and dies within about five days, laying from 200 to 500
lemon-yellow eggs that eventually turn black.
THE SECRET OF
SERICULTURE
Producing silk is a lengthy process and demands constant,
close attention. To produce high quality silk, there are two conditions which
need to be fulfilled. Firstly, the moth must not hatch out of the cocoon, and
secondly the diet on which the silkworms should feed must be perfect. The
mulberry leaves should be fresh, not wet, at natural temperature, and chopped up
in different dimensions according to the size of the growing
worm.
The silkworms feed until they have stored up enough
energy to enter the cocoon stage. While they are growing they have to be
protected from loud noises, drafts, and strong smells such as those of fish and
meat, and even the smell of sweat. When it is time to build their cocoons, the
worms produce a jelly-like substance in their silk glands, which hardens when it
comes into contact with the air. Silkworms spend three or four days spinning a
cocoon around themselves until they look like puffy, white balls.
After eight or nine
days in a warm, dry place the cocoons are ready to be unwound. First they are
steamed or baked to kill the pupa inside. The cocoons are then dipped into hot
water to loosen the filament. Each cocoon is made up of a filament between 600
and 900 metres long! Between five and eight of these super-fine filaments are
twisted together to make one thread, and is the wound off into a
hank.
This is one way of producing silk, but there is another
way which I prefer, which consists in letting the butterfly hatch and then
boiling the broken cocoons in water and natural soap made by hand with olive oil
in order not to weaken the fibres. Afterwards using carders and a spinning wheel
you can spin the fibres in the same way as you would wool.
THE ORIGIN OF
SILK
Sericulture, or silk production, has a long and colourful
history unknown to most people. For centuries the West knew very little about
silk and the people who made it.
Pliny, the Roman historian, wrote in his Natural History
in 70 BC that "Silk was obtained by removing the down from the leaves with the
help of water…" For more than two thousand years the Chinese kept the secret of
silk altogether to themselves. It was one of the most jealously guarded secrets
in history. This secret reached the Roman
Empire under the Emperor Justinian, thanks to two monks who brought
the eggs in a pilgrim empty walking-stick.
SILK IN LUCCA
The Lucchese were already expert weavers by 1100
A.D., weaving wool. Silk weaving as such started in Lucca in the 11th century, and the raw yarn was imported
from Sicily, Syria,Greeceand beyond.
Many
girls came in the town from the countryside in order to learn this art, and to
get to the stage when they obtained their own loom, they had to stay in the
master weaver’s house for eight consecutive years.
The first documents written on the cultivation of the mulberry in
the countryside outside Lucca can be found in the
city archives and go back to 1223, and it was then that the sericulture industry began, and it was this that
made Lucca
enormously prosperous. The
secrets of this art were jealously guarded by the Lucchese
families.
At the end of the twelfth century, Luccahad become known for its ‘Diasper silk’ – a medieval term for a silk weave, in which the pattern and ground are distinguished by texture rather than colour. The fabrics were woven in patterns of small, repeated figures such as animals (for instance the panther, which is found on the city’s coat of arms) and plants. Fabrics were often woven with gold thread, with confronted birds alternating with pairs of beasts, and heraldic designs of lions, eagles, peacocks and so on. Records tell us that there were more than 3,000 looms working at this time.
The Lucchese art of silk weaving eventually spread
to other northern Italian towns, and subsequently on to other European centres
of production such as Lyons, Flanders and
London. One of
the main reasons for the demise of the industry in Luccaitself was the exodus of weavers due to the battles
for power between the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Tuscanyin the 12th century. However, the industry did
continue on a smaller scale right up until the 20th century. The Italian sericulture tradition experienced its
final boom between 1921 - 1930 with a national production of 47,000 tons of
cocoons, and a top record in 1924 of 5,000 tons. From 1931 onwards, the
production of silk diminished, the introduction of synthetic fibres during World
War 2 and cheaper Chinese imports bringing this ancient art to a sudden
end.
It is difficult to identify genuine Lucca silks, as weavers who left the city to work in
Florence, Venice,
Genoa and so on,
took their designs with them. However, you can find examples of Lucca
silks at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2 images can be accessed online) and
at the Musées des Tissus in Lyons, and of course
in Lucca itself at the Cathedral Museum.
If you would like to support us in our venture, you can
send us some equipment such as, carders, spinning wheels, or looms, or just send
a donation and I will send you some cocoons from our own stock. Just contact me
at my e-mail address.
We are now preparing a laboratory to organise workshops
and visits on natural silks for tourists and schools, and we also can let rooms
to combine the visit at our laboratory with the discovery of marvellous
Luccaand its
surrounding hills.
Join me in my journey into the magic world of the natural
silk.