Textile Textbook: A Stroll Down the Silk Road
Discover 8 varieties of silk and how best to use them in your home
It takes a silkworm only a few days to spin a thousand yards of silk fiber into a cocoon, but a fabric mill needs thousands of cocoons to make a yard of fabric. Compare that to around 50 bolls of cotton needed to make a yard of fabric, and you can see why silk often carries a high price tag. Historically, silk was an important item of commerce, used in both decor and apparel, and entire civilizations arose along the silk trade routes, the most famous being China’s Silk Road. Today, the finest silks still come from Asia and Europe, where textile mills have been cultivating silkworms for centuries. Fortunately, advances in production mean that this prized fabric, while still often pricey, is no longer prohibitively so, and there are many fine examples of poly-silks on the market that allow for the luxe look on virtually any budget.
1. Purple silk. This bedroom is poised to set a romantic new trend —let’s call it royal simplicity. In the Byzantine empire, silks were commonly dyed “Tyrian purple,” using a dye made from mollusks endemic to the Phoenician coastal town of Tyre. Just as it takes thousands of silkworms to create a yard of silk, so too did it take thousands of mollusks to make a single gram of dye. The high cost of production ensured that purple silk was available only to aristocrats, and its luxury made it a prime target of sumptuary laws, which eventually forbade its use in ancient Rome.
Today, no sumptuary laws prevent us from lavishing our beds with quilted throws and tufted silk headboards, and the material is far more easily acquired. Still, it’s hard not to feel like royalty in its presence.
2. Patterned or embroidered silk. Purple silk isn’t the only choice for luxurious bedding: Patterned or embroidered silk will always look rich, and checkered versions are making a big comeback of late. Draw your inspiration from this elegant but unfussy bedding ensemble, but do consider backing your coverlets in a cotton sateen or something similar that is more easily spot-cleaned than sensitive silk.
Plenty of designers would be scandalized by the sight of delicate silk being used as dining chair upholstery. As strong as the fibers themselves may be, silk is often considered a risky choice for anywhere but the most formal and infrequently used gathering spaces. The sun will shred it if you don’t apply a UV-resistant film to your windows, for example. This is why an extra layer of interlining, or “bump,” is always recommended for silk draperies.
Silk is also notoriously difficult to clean. As one of my dear clients recently discovered, sitting on a silk-covered bench after applying coconut oil will result in a premature reupholstery job.
Silk is also notoriously difficult to clean. As one of my dear clients recently discovered, sitting on a silk-covered bench after applying coconut oil will result in a premature reupholstery job.
Since silk works so well in so many applications, it can be a great way to tie a room together. A stately silk check travels across this sanctuary from pillow to pillow and down to the gathered bedskirt.
3. Dupioni. Dupioni is the picture many of us have in our minds when we talk about silk, and indeed it’s one of the most popular varieties for home decor. It’s a strong, irregularly slubbed fabric formed from double cocoons, known as dupions. It also happens to dye more readily than raw silk and makes an excellent base for embroidery.
Here we see an example of an embroidered silk. The smooth, slippery fabric holds tightly to the embroidered fibers with minimal puckering.
4. Raw silk. In contrast to dupioni’s sparsely slubbed texture, raw silk is distinguished by its fine strie, an uneven stripe caused by irregular intervals in the dyeing process. There can be no exact repeat on a stried fabric, as the placement of each color is impossible to predict, but designers love it for its unique and unexpected texture.
5. Tussah. This is a type of raw silk that forms the substrate for dupioni.
Springy and with sparse, irregular slubs, tussah is woven from the silk of uncultivated (that is, wild rather than farmed) silkworms in Asia.
Springy and with sparse, irregular slubs, tussah is woven from the silk of uncultivated (that is, wild rather than farmed) silkworms in Asia.
6. Silk taffeta. Though you’ll now find taffeta made of cotton, wool and man-made fibers, silk taffeta remains the original standard-bearer, prized for its richness and lush drape. My personal favorite application is as a wide cabana-striped drapery. Vertical or horizontal, it’s all gorgeous to me.
7. Faille. A lightweight fabric traditionally loomed from silk, with a small horizontal rib that resembles a very fine grosgrain, faille is the base for moire, another drapery-weight fabric with a characteristic wavy, watermark pattern, achieved by pressing the fabric with engraved rollers.
8. Lightweight silks. These silks need not drape at all: Sometimes they’re best rolled directly onto the wall, like this moire wallpaper — a beautiful reminder that while silk, like all fabrics, has its limitations, there are certainly no hard and fast rules for its use around the home.
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