Silk
Deliciously luxurious
There is a lovely Chinese legend telling the story of the silk thread and the subsequent world-changing trade of silk fabric along the famous Silk Road. Somewhere around the year 2650 BC the young spouse of the then Chinese emperor one day sat under a mulberry tree sipping a cup of tea. Suddenly, splash! a strange little bundle of something landed in her delicate teacup. Even more strange: it began to unravel. Legend goes the young empress was mesmerised by the alluring shimmering of what was now a long thread. She promptly imagined herself wearing a sumptuous kimono woven from what seemed like a gift from heaven. And so she went on to invent the loom to weave this beautiful thread into a magnificent fabric that would literally change the face of the world, linking the East with the West.
Today, the best silk still comes from the cocoon of the Mulberry worm. Inevitably, over the centuries these precious worms came to be cultured (sericulture) in specialised farms. The fact that producing the silk on an industrial basis consumes considerable quantities of water and quite some energy to maintain steady temperatures is somewhat counterbalanced by the knowledge that the leaves to feed the silkworms come from mulberry trees. Mulberry trees grow on otherwise poor soil and don’t require the use of pesticides – which, by the way, would completely spoil the silkworms favourite meal…