Thai Silk The silk thread of Thailand's silkworms is a natural gold color and one cocoon consists of one thread that is often as long as 500 meters. The majority of Thai silk production takes place in the Chiang Mai area! Silk is used in the production of fabrics used in high-class fashions, silk stockings, silk fabric boxes, silk flowers, silk neckties, etc.

Legend of Thai Silk	How to Buy it	Silk Production
Thai Silk Products	Recognizing Real Silk	Summary
Weaving in the North

According to legend , silk was first discovered in China by Empress Si Ling Chi when she was sitting beneath a mulberry tree in the palace garden enjoying a cup of tea. Suddenly, a cocoon, which had been attached to the tree, fell into the Empress' teacup. Attempting to remove it, she was fascinated to discover a very fine thread start to unravel.

The Chinese guarded the secret of silk for thousands of years.  It was the cloth of emperors and gods and became a great source of wealth.  The secret was protected by enforcing dire penalties.  Anyone found guilty of smuggling silkworm eggs, cocoons or even seeds of the mulberry tree was put to death.

A secret doesn't remain secret forever. Another legend maintains that eventually the knowledge escaped China through a Chinese princess who married an Indian prince in the first century A.D. The crafty princess is said to have smuggled silkworm eggs out of the country in her headdress and fed the caterpillars on leaves from mulberry trees which grew in India.

Over the centuries, the knowledge spread to other countries in Asia where silk producing was quickly adopted.  There are no records to indicate exactly when silk making began in Thailand, but fragments of silk 3,000 years old have been found among the ruins in Baan Chiang, which some archaeologists believe was the earliest civilization in this part of the world.  In any event, at some point in the distant past the Thai people gained the knowledge and, over the centuries, developed a very unique type of silk.

Many people do not realize just how complex the process of producing silk is.  First of all, the insect which produces the silk fiber, although called a silkworm, is not a worm at all, but a caterpillar.  When these tiny caterpillars emerge from their eggs, they are only about a centimeter long and about a millimeter or two in thickness.  When first born, they are dark green in color, and have a voracious appetite.  From the moment of birth, they are fed mulberry leaves which have been carefully washed, dried and chopped. In the early stages, they must be fed around the clock, so great are their appetites.

The vast quantities consumed by these caterpillars cause them to grow at a very rapid rate.  In fact, they grow so rapidly that their skins cannot contain their bodies.  For this reason, they shed their skins four times to allow them to grow before they finally spin their silken cocoons.  It is during this time that the silkworms' bodies are slowly filling with the liquid raw material of silk.

The final stage of its existence as a caterpillar is the spinning of its cocoon. With rapid movements of its head, the liquid silk spins from a gland on the lower lip of the caterpillar, which hardens on contact with the air forming a thin triangular ribbon.  Spinning thousands of tiny figure-eight shaped loops of silk, the silkworm will spend four or five days at this task without stop.

The cocoons are gathered and placed in a boiling cauldron.  The pupa is removed and three or four fibers are gathered together and attached to an overhead roller. Northeasterners are particularly fond of this stage of the process, as the boiled pupa is savored as a tasty delicacy; it tastes like corn and is very rich in protein.

The silk fibers are slowly unraveled from the cocoons, wound onto wooden spindles, and then spun into thread or yarn.  The silk fiber of Thailand's silkworms is a natural gold in color, and one cocoon consists of a single fiber that is often as long as 500 meters.

At this stage, the silk yarn is washed and bleached until it is creamy white, and is then ready to be dyed any color. Originally, only vegetable dyes were used, but the Thais love of vivid colors soon led to the use of synthetic dyes, which are colorfast and more permanent than vegetable dyes.  After this, the threads are washed and stretched, and when dry are wound onto drums ready for the weavers.

Thai silk produced in this manner, differs considerably from that made in the other major silkproducing countries.  Chinese silk tends to be smooth and satiny, while Indian silk tends to be softer with richer colors and a more crinkly look. Italian silk has the refined and elegant look of high fashion, and Thai silk projects the natural blended textures and patterns that are so characteristically Southeast Asian.

The silkworms of Thailand are grown primarily on the Korat Plateau in the northeast region, although the majority of silk production takes place in the Chiang Mai area.  At some of Chiang Mai's silk centers in the Sankampaeng factory district, visitors have the opportunity to watch the entire silkmaking process from threading the original fiber off the cocoons all the way to the weaving of the final fabrics. On the small hand looms at these factories, one skilled weaver can produce only about four meters of cloth in a single day.

Most of these silk weaving centers have their own factory showrooms with an incredible array of products for sale with a wide variety of colors, styles, patterns and textures to select from.  There are also many noteworthy fabric shops located in the city proper, which often feature designs from the different weaving centers around north Thailand, and sometimes Laos, as well.
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How to Buy it
SILK is a spun commodity that requires more knowledge and understanding than most people think, and the types of silk produced in different parts of the world have their own unique sheens and textures.  If we take silk pieces from the four main world producers and place them side by side, we immediately see these differences. Chinese silk tends to be smooth and satiny, while Indian silk tends to be softer with richer colors and a more crinkly look.  Italian silk has the refined and elegant look of high fashion, and Thai silk projects the natural blended textures and patterns that are so very Southeast Asian.

Many visitors to Chiangmai and the North are under informed about the various silk types. Some expect to see the Chinese type because that's what they're used to.  Others are not familiar with the material types at all and have to rely on the advice of others when buying.  Neither of these is really acceptable when looking for the fine silk of Thailand. It will help to know what silk is, how it's made, what kind of price ranges one should be looking for and some simple material tests that every consumer can apply themselves while in the process of buying.
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Silk Production the process of silk production varies a bit from country to country. The raw silk material is a natural product of the silkworm, which is a type of moth that feeds on the mulberry bush.  When the silkworm moves from the larva stage to the pupa stage of development, it spins a cocoon like all other moths and butterflies.  This cocoon comes from the larva moth's salivary glands and is woven through a complex set of mechanisms within the moth's anatomy.  The finished cocoon is pulled from the mulberry bush and placed in a vat of boiling water, which separates the silk thread of the cocoon from the caterpillar inside.

The silkworms of Thailand are grown primarily on the Korat Plateau in the country's northeast region, although the majority of silk production takes place in the Chiang Mai area.  The silk thread of Thailand's silkworms is a natural gold color and one cocoon consists of one thread that is often as long as 500 meters. Each thread is too thin to use alone so many threads are combined to make a thicker, more practical fiber. The raw silk threads are washed and bleached before being placed in vats of hot dyes.  The result is washed again and stretched before being put through a final dying process.  After the final dying and drying, the threads are wound onto drums and sent to weaving shops where the silk cloth is produced.  At some of Chiang Mai's silk centers in the Sankhampaeng factory district visitors have an opportunity to watch the process described above with a running commentary by one of the factory's staff.  Some of the silk production centers maintain their own mulberry gardens where they grow silkworms, and a visit to one of these includes all aspects of silk production from the cocoon growing stage to the weaving of the finished product.  At these, hand operated looms are often used and one weaver produces only four meters of silk cloth in a single day.
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Thai Silk Products the Thai silk product range includes everything from fabric lengths in 2-ply and 4-ply to small silk handkerchiefs.  Within the range are shirts and blouses, scarves and neckties, bathrobes and kimonos, men's suits and ladies silk jackets, and bedcovers and furnishings.  Prices vary, but generally the handkerchiefs and neckties are at the lower end while suits, jackets and bedcovers are at the higher end.  Prices sometimes differ greatly depending on whether you buy at a factory site or in a shop or stall at Chiang Mai's Night Bazaar.

In selecting silk products, shoppers should be aware that a new line of imitation silk is also sold in Chiangmai. This cannot be found at the silk factories and their showrooms, but sometimes it is seen at the various night bazaars and some of the smaller shops.  Some visitors to Thailand, because they are not familiar with what real Thai silk is, have mistakenly purchased the imitation and later disappointingly found out they purchased Imitation silk. This happens because producers of the imitation product label it "Real Thai Silk" and the uninformed shopper is none the wiser.  In order to determine the authenticity of the product for yourselves we'd like to provide you with some guidelines and a few simple tests to carry out on your own.

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Recognizing Real Silk the question is, "how can you be sure that the silk fabric item you wish to buy is actuary 100 percent Thai silk and not the imitation, which is made of polyester?" There are five basic guidelines for determining the answer to this question. Consider the price, the weave, the lusters, and the print and what we call the Burn Test.

There is a big difference in price between the I 00-percent sills items and the imitation items. Generally for a 100-percent silk item you should expect a price of anywhere from 600 Baht to 2,500 Baht, depending on the item, whereas the same item in imitation silk will be priced at anywhere frown 100 Baht to 250 Baht.  In both lines of course some larger and more extravagant pieces will be priced higher, but as a guide these ranges should be sufficient.

The weave is another area which will allow the shopper to immediately see the difference between the real silk and the imitation.  The real silk weave is completely handmade of a natural fibre and thus clearly shows small flaws or joins in the thread along the warp and the weft.  The imitation polyester, on the other hand, is a machine-made fabric and has a perfect surface with no flaws or bumps.  This aspect can be most important to the unknowledgeable shopper in that what appears to be perfect in polyester is actually the imitation of real silk.  Luster is the third guideline feature, and a small light test shows whether a fabric is real or imitation.  The 100-percent Thai silk is made with one color for the warp and one color for the weft.  This is what gives Thai silk its natural sheen and luster and it's what makes Thai silk so unique in terms of color tones and blends.  Thus, when you hold a piece of I 00-percent silk up to the light the overall color tone will change depending on the angle of light.  With the Imitation, regardless of what light angle You hold it in, it shines white.

Whether a fabric is real silk or imitation is also easy to determine by looking carefully at the print.  A 100-percent Thai silk piece will have the printed pattern on one side with only an outline of the print on the reverse side When both sides are held up to the light, only the full print side will change color.  The colors are not evident on the reverse side.  With an imitation print, the pattern print and colors can be seen on one side while a plain color can be seen on the reverse side; and, both sides shine white when held to the light.

The final feature here is the Burn Test.  If you take a thread or two of 100-percent Thai silk and light them with a flame, it will leave a fine ash and smell like burnt hair.  As soon as the flame is taken away the threads will stop burning.  When the imitation silk is lit, on the other hand, it will drip, it will burn black smoke, and it continues to burn after the flame is taken away.  This Burn test is really unnecessary if you're familiar with the other features discussed above.  It is, however, a certain way to determine authenticity when in doubt.
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Summary
Thai silk is one of the finest fabrics in the world. It has very distinctive features that are fundamentally different from the Chinese, Indian and Italian silks One could not say that any one of the four types is superior to the others, but the process of manufacturing, the patterns and colors used do make the silk types different. With the high regard in which Thai silk is held throughout the world, we hope the information in this article will assist shoppers in getting what they want.  There are, to be sure, some who would prefer the lower priced imitation product because of its lower cost value; but for those who expect the real thing, we want to make sure you have the information to avoid disappointment.

Why Does Good Quality Thai Silk Cost More? General characteristics of Silk

 

1. Washing and bleaching the silk threads
Because the silk threads are a natural fiber from the cocoon of the silkworm, they are held together by a glutinous substance. Washing and bleaching is necessary to remove this substance from the silk strands, so that colors can be uniformly and permanently absorbed in the dying process.

In substandard processing, this step is often skipped, so when the threads are dyed, the color cannot be completely absorbed by the threads due to the presence of the glutinous substance. When the dyed fabric is later washed, this "glue" washes out and takes color with it, so the silk loses luster and becomes much more pale in color.

2. Dying silk threads
Color dyes come in varying levels of quality and price. High quality dyes are readily and uniformly absorbed by the silk threads and bond with them in such a way that the colors are virtually permanent. Such colors remain bright and vivid even with exposure to the sun and repeated washing. Certainly, dyes with good quality can be more 10 times expensive than a cheap dye. Substandard processing uses cheaper dyes, which do not have these lasting qualities.

3. Weaving
Much of the silk from other countries is woven by machine, using raw silk material (the silk threads have not been previously bleached and dyed). Then the woven silk fabric is bleached and dyed in a single process. This results in a woven silk fabric which has both warp and weft of exactly the same color. This tends to give the fabric a "flat" appearance, without the depth of color one associates with high quality Thai silk.

Good quality Thai silk is woven on hand looms (Gee-Gratoog).  The warp and weft are not of the same color, which is what gives Thai silk its natural sheen and luster, and makes Thai silk so unique in terms of color tones and blends.  If you hold a piece of good Thai silk up to the light, the overall color tone will change depending on the angle of the light. However, with machine-woven silk, regardless of what light angle you hold it at, it looks the same.

There is also the tightness of the weave.  Good quality Thai silk begins with a warp of 2,000 threads for a 1 meter width, which produces a very tightly woven fabric.  Producers of substandard quality silk may use 1,800 threads in the warp (or even sometimes as low as 1,600) along with poor weft fabric.  All of these factors will make for a looser weave, and also presents problems when the fabric is sewn into a garment, because the material will tend to pull apart in the process.

4. Final soaking in a chemical solution
This is the final step in the production of high quality silk fabric.  The purposes of this all important step are several: to preserve the sheen and luster of the fabric, to add weight and make the fabric soft and smooth, to make it easy to iron and wrinkle-resistant when worn. Producers of substandard quality silk usually skip this step, because it is not something readily apparent to the naked eye of the buyer.

The different approaches taken in these four areas of silk production are what create the difference between high and low quality Thai silk, and also explains why the prices differ so widely between them.  It is really up to the consumer to decide whether to save money by buying poor quality fabric, and be disappointed later, or to spend more and buy Thai silks of the best quality which will be a lasting source of pleasure.  
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Weaving in the North:
Maintaining a Tradition
A new building sits back from the main road in the Sankhampaeng factory area.  It's long, narrow and white. Surrounded by green fields and mountains in the background, it seems out of place on a newly cleared flat of brown land.  In the building sit hundreds of women at hand looms, spinning cotton in the traditional way.  The only difference between this setting and that of the past is that all the women are together in a large area.  Before they were at home in their village or in small groups at home factories. This is a new development in Chiang Mai's weaving industry, for a large cotton-making operation has placed the traditional loom in a new, large factory setting.

Down the road at one of Chiang Mai's largest silk factories, a woman sits alone with large bamboo trays on either side and a charcoal fire burning in a concrete bucket at her feet Over the fire is a small iron kettle with three iron prongs leading from the edges upward. These prongs lead up to a narrowed top where a bamboo spool holds silk freshly extracted from a cocoon.  The woman holds the cocoon in a boiling liquid with a set of bamboo thongs in one hand, and she delicately manoeuvres the silk upward to the spool with her other hand.  She is preparing silk for the weavers.  Nearby, a group of women sit with the finished silk on a large round spool, and from it they wind the thread onto smaller spools that can be used in commercial application of the thread.

Those two greatly contrasting scenes are real, and they are indicative of one of northern Thailand's oldest and most precious arts, the art of weaving. Whether in cotton or silk, the traditional hand loom is responsible for the fine and beautiful woven fabrics so well known to the North.

There is something strangely prescient about this very Thai way of maintaining a tradition. The woman we saw spooling silk thread from the cocoon in the kettle is one of many hundreds in the Chiangmai area who spend their days working over such kettles, and often working over larger vats where many work at the same time, processing the tens of thousands of cocoons that come in from the local mulberry nurseries where silkworm are raised, and from the more productive silkworm area of Thailand's Northeast.

In the actual hand loom setting, there are various types of looms, and there are many loom sizes. Silk or cotton thread, produced here in the North through a long and complex process, is wrapped around the many boards of the loom and run to a central board, which is then attached to the main moving mechanism and connected with the loom foot pedal. On some of the older looms, used for weaving the delicate designs we see on cotton and silk Thai skirts and blouses, the thread is fed into the loom from a large spool that hangs near the weaver's head. This thread, in large bunches and very long lengths, is pulled across the top of the loom down over the back at an angle to a low board, and then up to the flat board section where the thread is pulled through at the weaver's hands.  In this way, the weaver has more dexterous control over the pattern to be weaved, and wrapped boards of thread in other colors can be inserted at the proper time.

On a larger, more complicated loom for broad rolls of silk on cotton cloth, the thread is most often already wrapped around rolls that are specifically made for lengths of mass-market fabric. This is a more advanced mechanized process also, but the loom itself is basically the same. In any of the larger silk or cotton factories of Chiang Mai, a combination of the smaller, simpler looms and the larger, more complex looms are used.

Further north, in the town of Chiang Khong in Chiangrai Province, we see a more basic type of hand loom. This is the homemade loom of bamboo that was once the universal loom in northern Southeast Asia. It is now often referred to at the Lao hand loom because of it's common use in Laos, but actually it is typical of the very old looms of Chiang Mai also. This loom is now most common not only in Chiang Khong, but also on the other side of the Mekhong River in Laos, and in the weaving villages of Vientiane ( Laos) and those of Northeastern Thailand (Esarn).  It is on these looms that the very famous Lao, Thai and Khmer silks and cocoons were woven for centuries.

Today, Chiang Khong is a lively woven textile center on the Thai-Lao border, and many of its styles and patterns are distinctly Lao because of the neighboring influence across the Mekhong.  The silk and cocoon pieces woven in the Lao and Northeastern Thai areas are often of a different texture and quality because of the raw materials used, because of the more traditional patterns in weaving, and because of the older, more traditional hand looms themselves. The products are often of rougher texture and character but no less attractive.

The process of silk and cotton spinning in northern Southeast Asia begins with the growing of the raw materials: silk from the silkworm cocoons; cotton from the cotton fields on the plains of Chiangmai.  By the time the actual weaving begins, a great deal of work and time has already gone into this local industry.  Once the spinning begins, the main tool is the hand loom, and with the loom the weavers of the North continue a refined and artistic tradition that the Thai apparently are intent on maintaining indefinitely.
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