[VOL III] DYEING AND WINDING SILK

DYEING AND WINDING SILK

Cover Image: Dyeing and Winding Silk / China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by G.Paterson – ALAMY Image ID:2X55N2T

*Silk dyeing and finishing is a process that involves applying color and finishing treatments to silk fabric.

Hour after hour the growing line extends,
Nor time nor circumstance controls its ends;
Soft cords of silk the whirling spoles reveal,
If smiling fortune turn the giddy wheel.

HAVING destroyed the chrysalides, and wound off the produce in its primitive state, (*Vol. i., p. 56. Vol. ii. p. 8, et seq.) from the cocoons destined for filature, the mere husbandry of silk gathering is concluded. And so short is the period, in France only six weeks, consumed in this species of culture, that no harvest yields a return of greater facility and certainty. In a country where trade is conducted, not by companies, or associations, or partnerships, but by individual exertion, the culture and produce of silk are peculiarly suitable, as affording a means of employing small capital with every prospect of early revenue. Females devote much of their time and their talents to this occupation; they are either engaged in feeding and rearing the worms, winding off the cocoons, or in general tending to the magnanière. Sometimes the patriarch of the family purchases cocoons, by which the risk of rearing is avoided, and fills up his daughter’s leisure time with the process of filature. There are, of course, some nurseries or factories, where silk is prepared expressly for exportation, but in general the manufacture is for home-consumption. The Chinese dislike foreigners, from practice and national institutes, therefore less attention is paid to objects of external commerce here than in other countries; besides, all kinds of trade are held in very low estimation in China, as they were of old in Athens and in Rome.

Time, intercourse, letters, religion, are gradually working such a revolution in the social condition of this old empire, that the imperialists are beginning to understand the meaning of the term brother, and henceforth the productions which Providence has confined to the soil of China, will probably be exchanged, systematically and generously, for those of other lands, by which the distribution of happiness over the face of the globe must necessarily become less partial than before.

Around a pool, of a foot or two in depth, sheds or open corridors are arranged, appropriated to different parts of the process of cleaning and preparing the floret for market. Beneath one series are the females employed in the less laborious duty of reeling the raw silk that has been brought from the magnaniere, or purchased for filature from the feeders. From the reelers’ verandas, the material is consigned to those of the washers, and dyers, and bleachers, successively.

Little celebrated for integrity, the total forgetfulness of that high quality by the Chinese is flagrantly conspicuous in their preparation of silk for the loom. Imperfections in the texture of this delicate fabric are sometimes of early date, originating in the impurity of the water used in the cocoon kettle, or in neglect of the winders to the attenuation of the threads during filature. In addition to these causes of inferiority, another is induced by the dishonest dye. Having washed out the gum, formed the threads into hanks, expressed the moisture, and suspended the silk on bamboo bleaching-poles, the operative’s work appears to be correctly performed. But raw silk is an insatiable absorbent, so that if the dyer be deficient in honesty, he can, by a very slight deviation from its path, retain moisture in the hanks, capable of increasing the weight of the article by ten per cent. In other countries, purchasers are permitted to test the raw material by enclosing a sample in a wire-cloth cage, and exposing it to a stove heated to 78° of Farenheit, by which the increase of weight, that is, the amount of the fraud, is detected; but the Chinaman will not permit a barbarian to doubt his honour in any respect.

Europeans, or rather English, distinguish raw silks into three classes, which they denominate organzine, tram, and floss. The first, being very tightly twisted, is used in the finest and best descriptions of silk-cloths; tram, which is much less twisted, serves for the weft, but is of an inferior quality to organzine; floss, which is not twisted at all, consists of the short, broken, and rejected parts; this is collected, carded, and spun like cotton. These three species, formed from the fleuret by twisting or throwing, are now called hand silk; they must all be submitted to the process of boiling, in order to discharge the gum from them, otherwise they would be harsh to the touch, and unfit to receive the dye. The original native colour of the yarn varies but little in different countries. In Anglo-India we find silk yellow, french-white, and fawn colour; while the only naturally white produce we yet know of, comes from Palestine. The silk-growers of Kazem-bazar with their yarns with a lay made from the ashes of ” the arbor-fici-Adami”; but the species being rare, the larger portion of their exports retains its native bright and beautiful yellow.