designboom illustrates the several stages of sericulture, which begins with hatching silkworm eggs ...



image © designboom

an ounce of silkworm eggs yields about 35,000 worms, during gestation, which lasts approximately three weeks, the eggs
must stay between 25 and 31 °C, in a tray with high humidity. as they hatch, each of the tiny creatures must be carefully
moved to a ‘petri dish’, a circular flat bamboo tray, to be fed with fresh mulberry leaves several times a day.
when the baby silkworms emerge from their eggs, they are really tiny, about the size of a lowercase ‘i’, and almost black.
from the moment they emerge they start eating with an enthusiasm that never abates.
when designboom entered the farmer’s household we could hear them constantly chewing.
the worms are protected from harmful flying insects by wrapping the trays in homespun cotton.




image © designboom

the newly born silkworm only eats mulberry leaves. a silk farmer must have a ready supply of mulberry leaves and fruits
close at hand, even one missed feeding can kill the sericulture. there are times of the year when the mulberry leaves are not
around... continued food shortages can decrease the quality of silk any survivors make.
if there are shortages anyway, lettuce makes a decent emergency dish, as long as it is well-washed (pesticides kill)
and dried thoroughly.




image © designboom

despite revolutionary changes in methods of manufacture, the ultimate basis of silk remains the tiny, inconspicuous-looking
silkworm and the most critical period in silk production comes during the silkworm’s brief life span of around 20/24 days.
nearly all silkworm-producing moths belong to the family ‘bombycidae’, of which one member, ‘bombyx mori’ is responsible for
most of the world’s silk.




image © designboom

at the beginning every few days, the worms need to be moved to a clean tray with fresh food.
members of the farmer’s household must spend a growing amount of time to their bamboo trays, also because
silkworms produce quite a lot of excrement and cleaning the trays is not a job for the weak-stomached.
they continue feeding and moving the silkworms, dividing the colonies when the silkworms are too large or hungry for
the numbers in that tray. by the fourth week, the largest of the silkworms will be more than 5 cm. long, fat, and hungry
enough that they need to be fed every day.




image © designboom

an easy test confirms their readiness to cocooning. the farmer picks them up and looks between their rear pair of legs,
from the underside. if there is a gray mass there, the caterpillar isn't quite ready, but if it's milky and translucent, the silkworm
has pooped its last and is definitely ready. the worms suddenly stop eating and raise their heads - another sign that they are
ready for the all-important job of spinning cocoons.




image © designboom

at that stage they are removed from their feeding trays.




image © designboom

the ‘bombyx mori’ worms are now inserted in a specially woven circular bamboo scaffolding, which will make the cocoons
more uniform in shape and easier to collect.




image © designboom

again, worms are protected from harmful flying insects by wrapping the trays with fine nets.
there seems to be always a few dead silkworms in each tray. while a dramatic increase in the mortality rate is reason for
concern, silkworms are insects, and farmers can expect that less than half of the silkworms will reach full maturity.




image © designboom

each silkworm now doubles itself up on its back, and by contracting secretes, from an opening under its mouth, a steady
stream of liquid silk, coated with sericin, which hardens on exposure to air. they're starting to lay out the support strands for
their cocoons, although they may not yet be serious about cocooning.




image © designboom

some of the larger caterpillars are climbing the walls of the tray (they've done this before, to shed their skins, but this time
their heads are pointing toward the lid) and the busy silkworms are guided by figure of eight movements of their heads, to
dispose the liquid silk in layers, forming the cocoon.




image © designboom

after some 36 hours, the worms are sealed within a yellow cocoon, embarked on the process of metamorphosing
into a moth.




iimage © designboom




image © designboom

the worms have spun thousands of gossamer little cocoons.




image © designboom

the satisfactory cocoons are now in a clean tray. see the lustrous, golden color.
care must be taken not to damage them when removing from the old trays.
the entire process, from silkworm egg to complete cocoon, takes about twenty-five days.
silk worms transform themselves, inside the cocoon, into a chrysalis and then into a butterfly...

most of the cocoons are used for the next step in silk making but some of them leave the cocoon as a butterfly.
it usually secretes a liquid onto the silk threads to dissolve them, so it can emerge.
the new moths must be moved to another tray so the mess they make while mating and laying eggs doesn't get all over
the hard-earned silkcocoons. the males (small) will die once the deed is done, while the females will stick around to
lay about 200 - 300 eggs each.

step 1: raising silkworms & harvesting cocoons	step 2: thread extraction	step 3: dyeing	step 4: spinning	step 5: weaving	step 6: ikat