The worm and the mulberry tree
he glamour world of silk owed its beginning to an unglamourous moth. In fact all silk worms are actually moth caterpillars. The silk moth has a shour, thick body, stout legs and broad white wings crossed by faint lines, spots and wrinkles. It also from 200-500 pin-head sized eggs upon and suitable surface, gluing them down with a mucilaginous secretion. These eggs are hatched the following spring.

Moving rapidly through the stages of worm to cocoon, it begins to spin the outer known as the floss, and then winds a continuous thread around its body. Thia spinning operation lasts about two days after which it is a complete cocoon. Within 10 days after the chrysalis has formed, the adult emerges, lays its eggs, and alas, dies.

The food of the caterpillar is preferably the foliage of the mulberry tree. In Thailand the most widely used varieties of mulberry leaves are Mon Noi and Mon Ta Dam. Several other species and also be substituted.
Scruplous cleanliness, abundant fresh air and an ample supply of mulberry leaves are essential to all stages of the silkworm's growth. Absence of any of these conditions results in a variety of moth diseases, and subsequently, a poorer quantity and quality of silk.

Thai silk differs from western, Japanese and Korean silk in iths texture. In a piece of Thai silk, only the weft is made of silk thread, which has been reeled within the country. It is the weft that gives Thai silk its sheen and texture. About three parts of weft is used to one part of warp in normal silk, However, Thai filature is not uniform in size to form the warp, and it has to be imported - mostly from Japan, some from Korea. The Thai Government is making strenuous efforts to correct this situation with the advice of Japanese silk technicians. Cross breeding among Japanese silkworms has already produced a variety of worm that spin longer and stronger filament than the native worm. Thai hybrid worm flourishes in Thailand. Around-the-year warmth stimulates its amorous advances to about seven times a year as against three times per year in Japna where the cold climate is a bit inhibiting. Our Thai silk is essentially raw silk - sometimes also referred to as wide silk. The thread is not twisted. Together with incidental knots during winding and reeling, a yarn of rather special texture is unintentionally produced.

The Dyeing Process
hai silk is yarn-dyed; and therefore it has to be processed in hank form by the weavers. Rather unsophisticated equipment is used but this does not impair the quality of the dye. Vegeteble dyes were used till fairly recently but about twenty years ago, and largely through the efforts of an American named Jim Thompsom, the Thai weaver was introduced to imported chemical dyes. The reactive dye is the latest type of dye being used in the Thai silk industry. It's fast colour properties and simplicity of operaton make it very suitable to local conditions. After dyeing the de-dummed silk is rinsed, shaken on a pole and dried in the sun where upon it is ready for weaving. The silk now goes through a number of processes briefly described below before becoming a finished product.

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Sizing

The silk warp is dippd into a tub containing a starch mixture. It is the rinsed and dried.

Winding follows
The sized yarn is unwound from the hank by a hand-spinning wheel on to a bobbin to form a packeged yarn for warping.

Warping
egins with putting a number of yarn packages on to a creel, which is a simple affair made of bamboo. Yarn from all the packages is drawn together and wound on to a warping board to form a warp

Beaming is essentially a process of spreading chain warn into a uniform sheet of required width and then winding it onto the loom beam. The chain warp is at first put through a tensioner which consists of a pair of simple wooden plates clamped together by adjustable screws. Adjustment of there screws regulates the tension of the weave. When the whole lenght of the warp has been wound, the warp beam is ready for fixing on a loom.

Looming is a two-part process consisting of harness tying and loom setting. Loom setting is a standard practice almost everywhere, but the harness tying method used in Thailand is different and interesing. The harness is formed by simply tying each end of silk warp by a pair of cotton loops through the loom width to serve as heald shafts. The method of tying harness determines the woven characteristic of the fabric. Twill, satim or fancy fabric requires differnt methods of harness tie and a number of heald wafts. As many as 200 heald shafhs are required to produce a specially elaborate design.

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Special Characteristics of Thai silk weaving
here is a special type of silk fabric produced in many districts in north and north-east Thailand which is locally called Matmi, which needs special weft preparation. It is, in fact, a dyed-to-pattern weft fabric with the warp dyed in plain colour. Every pick must be inserted in its exact locaton on the design, or else the design is faulty.

Thai silk fabric is always woven on the loadlly made wooden hand-loom. In general, both typed of looms, that is, the simple native throwing shuttle and the Chinese flying shuttle are employed.

Solid colour or plain fabric is usually woven on the flying shuttle loom while fabric of elaborate design is produced on the throwing shuttle. The former technique speeds up weaving to 90 picks per minute.

Beside standrad silk in three different qualities, silk brocade is also woven in Thailand. The demand for it is very limited, and it is used mainly for ceremonial costumes and brical robes.

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Inspection - the final touch
nce woven,Thai silk needs little of finishing. Routine inspection of every bolt is done, necessitating a little fault mending at times. In some instances the silk is gently pressed. This lustrous heritage - Thai silk - is undoubtedly the crowing glory 'chaada' of the Thai handicraft industry.

Photo A

The mulberry, on which the silkworm is wholly dependent for its growth, is found in Thailand in many varieties, some of which were introduced from abroad. Two varieties, "Mon Noi" and "Mon Ta Dum" are popular. Various diseases and pests prey on the mulberry and one of the main objectives of sericultural research and training is the eradication of pests and disease and the educaton of growers to properly care for all-impertant plant.

Photo B
The photo compares a group is silkworm eggs to a common match, approximately 4 cm. in length. The eggs shown are approximately 8 to 9 days old and are a dark grey in colour, and should hatch and where form the 10th to tho12 th day. Upon hatching, the worms are immediately given a small quantity of finely chopped mulberry leaves. They will begin crawing over and feeeding on the leaves and will consume huge quantities of mulberry leaves until about the 25th day, when they will begin to spin their cocoons. During this period of growth, the worms will sleep every therr four days and upen awakening each time will shed their skins as they grow larger.

Photo C
The worms shown in the photo are ready to be transferred to the spinnging racks, to which they will attach themselves and spin their cocooms. It normally takes two days for this process, after which the worm will exist in a chrysalid stage. Ten days later the chryslis will have become a moth. During this stage, the cocoons to be kept for breedingn are selected for their firmness and texture; the others will be used for making silk thread.

Photo D
Photo shows sericultural workers feeding the young worms on carefully selected young mulberry leaves, stripped from the branches. The worms will alternately feed and rest, shedding their skins each time they begin feeding again until they ready to spin their cocoons.

Photo E
These worms are approaching the cocoon-spinning stage and are fed of the larger, older mulberry leaves. It is no longer necessary to strip the branches; the worms attach themselves to the leaves and consume them quite rapidly, eating constantly.

Photo F
After their ten-day domancy, the cocoons are collected, sorted and processed. This includes selection of the finer speciments for reproduction and the rest for converting into silk. As this point, the creature inside is nearly a moth, the adult stage of its life cycle. The local Thai silkworm produces a cocoon which yields form 150-200 metres of silk thread. With research and experimention, over the years, that figure has been raised to 400-500 metres per cocoon.It was discovered that use of cocoons crossbred with Japanese cocoons (average yield 1,143m) would result in a worm with a silk thread yield of around 800 metres -- nearly double the optimum yield of the native Thai worm.

Photo G
The photo shows cocoons after removal of the chrysalis inside. Some cocoons are selected for their firmness and texture and the moth inside are kept for reproductive purposes. In the way, it is assured that the strains remain strong and continue to improve their output with successive generations.

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