the.com/silk
Worm spit, woven into the fabric emperors killed to keep secret.
means A soft, lustrous fiber spun by silkworms, woven into a smooth and prized fabric.
from From Old English 'seoloc' or 'sioloc,' borrowed via the Baltic and Slavic trade routes — Old Slavic 'shelkŭ' — from a distant source that traces, somewhat shakily, all the way back to the Greek 'Sēres,' the name for the silk-producing peoples of the East (almost certainly the Chinese). The very word, in other words, walked the Silk Road westward alongside the cloth itself, getting reshaped by every tongue it passed through.
- source
- Spun from cocoons of the mulberry silkworm
- thread length
- One cocoon unwinds nearly a mile
- trade secret
- China hid the method for 2000 years
- strength
- Pound for pound, tougher than steel wire
- smuggled out
- Eggs hidden in hollow bamboo canes
silk road — ancient trade network connecting china to mediterranean, 2nd century bce to 15th century ce
thai silk industry — jim thompson revived traditional weaving in northeastern thailand starting 1947, making it globally famous
como silk district — italian city producing 90% of europe's silk since the 15th century
bengal silk weaving — murshidabad region in india historically produced finest silk, now unesco protected heritage craft