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The mulberry silk moth which produces silk is indigenous to China and the silk industry originated in that country at a remote period. The secret of silk culture was jealously guarded in China and only penetrated to Japan in the 3rd century A.D. Although according to a legend a Chinese princess took silk worm's eggs wrapped in her hair to India, silk culture was never fully developed there owing to the religious ban which forbad the killing of the silk worms. The first country to import silk from China was Persia.
The earliest surviving Chinese patterned silks were discovered in 1910 by Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan on the route opened by the Chinese for silk trade with Western Asia in the 2nd century B.C. These fabrics reveal an intricate technique of tapestry weaving and the designs consist of fabulous birds and beasts, scrolls, wave patterns and cloud forms.
Aristotle is the first European writer to describe the silk worm. The material was much prized by the Romans. The Emperor Justinian recorded his interest in the weaving of silk, and Byzantine designs have great strength. The earliest Persian silks belong to the Sassanian period. Sassanian silks were remarkable for their colours. Vegetable, mineral and animal dyes were used, the most prominent colours being dark blue, intense green, red, brown, purple, yellow and black. Syrian weavers adopted the technique and many of the designs of the Persians, and when these latter were conquered by the Arabs, their art vigorously influenced that of their conquerors.
Islamic traders carried Persian methods as well as the actual silks both cast and west. From the 7th century onwards Persian silks were more generally influential than the Chinese. The fine silks produced in Persia under the Seljuks ( 1037-1256), a Turkish dynasty, were at first close in design to the earlier Persian textiles. Later, the formerly angular patterns gave way to flowing, scroll-like motifs. The Kufic script played an important part in the development of these designs, which much resemble, and probably stimulated, those later evolved in Europe during the Renaissance. Sicilian silks of the 12th century show an interesting combination of these Seljuk designs with the Byzantine practice of introducing formalized human figures.
Oriental fabrics presented in 800 to Charlemagne by Haroun al Raschid inspired him to establish his own silk industry, but examples of this work have not survived. In the 14th century Lyons became a centre for the production of fine fabrics probably owing to the settlement in that place of silk weavers from Lucca. Etienne Turquet, a cloth merchant of Italian descent was also largely responsible for promoting the silk industry of Lyons by gaining the patronage of Francis I. The industry prospered during the reign of Henry IV ( 1589-1610) when a silk weaver, Claude Dangon, invented a special loom for more readily weaving patterned silks. In the 17th century Cobert reorganized the Lyons factories and prepared the way for the great activity of the 18th century, when silks for Court use were ordered from Spain, Russia and Prussia.
Changes in fashion, which suddenly favoured muslin more than silk, followed by the French Revolution, almost ruined the Lyons industry. It revived, however, under Napoleon, who favoured wall hangings of silk, and commanded women of fashion to wear Lyons silk. Lyons remained the most important centre of the silk industry even after the Jacquard loom, power-driven first by steam and then by electricity, had replaced individual labour.
Apart from its use as a textile, silk has served an important purpose as a particularly durable support for much Far Eastern, especially Chinese, painting.
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