Thai Silk

Thai Silk is one of the most beautiful fabrics you’ll ever see.  It has very distinctive features that make it very different from Chinese or Indian silks. Thai silk is smooth with a rough uneven texture unlike Chinese silk which is very smooth and satiny or Indian silk which is very soft but with a crinkly texture.

Although invented by the Chinese and it’s secrets guarded for a very long time, Thai silk can be traced back as far as 3000 years ago by pieces of fabric found at ruins in Baan Chiang.

Thai silk begins it’s journey with the silkworm, or more precisely a caterpillar named Bombyx Mori,  hatched from the eggs of the silk moth. From the caterpillars birth it’s fed mulberry leaves around the clock  that have been cleaned, dried and chopped. They eat so much they grow at an alarming rate and actually shed their skins up to four times before spinning their cocoon. At about the one year mark they begin their final stage by spinning their cocoon. This process can take up to five straight days of the caterpillar making thousands of tiny figure eights of liquid silk that becomes hard on contact with the air.

At this point the cocoons are gathered and then boiled. The pupa is removed and the fibers are attached to an overhead spindle that unravels the cocoons very slowly. As with everything else the Thais waste nothing and the pupa is said to be a delicacy. The silk is then spun onto wooden spindles in preparation of being spun into thread.  This process can take up to 40 hours to produce just 1 pound of raw silk. One cocoon can produce a single fiber up to 500 meters long.

The silk fiber is a natural gold color and at this stage the thread is washed and bleached white, in preparation of being dyed. The thread is then dyed to it’s intended color, washed again and stretched onto wooden drums in preparation of weaveing the thread. The Thais used to use natural vegetable dyes but now use synthetic dyes which are colorfast and permanent as well as being more vivid.

Another defining characteristic of Thai silk is the fact that it’s hand woven and shows this in it’s uneven texture and slightly knotty threads. The Primary growing area for the Thai silkworms is the Korat plateau in the North East but the vast majority of the silk production in Thailand takes place in Chang Mai. You can visit the many different silk producers in Chang Mai and watch the entire process from beginning to end.

If you are searching for the best souveniers to bring back from Thailand then you have to bring home some Thai silk.