Silk and Mulberries Workshop
British Museum, 23 July 2018
A specialist interdisciplinary workshop, convened by Helen Wang, with presentations, summarised below:
Two projects: World Map of Silk and Global History of Silk
Prof Zhao Feng, Director, China National Silk Museum
Recently the China National Silk Museum has made two exhibitions, A World of Silks and A World of Looms, followed with two projects. One is the Global History of Silk, that would include the following sections:
1. Origin of sericulture and the classical silk manufacture, -3000 to -200
2. The Silk Road and silk transported to the west, -200 to +500
3. The transmission and exchange of silk technology on the Silk Road, +500 to +900
4. Expanding of silk production along the maritime Silk Road, +900 to +1500
5. Europe becoming a center of silk manufacture, 1600 to 1850
6. Globalization of silk, 1850 to 1950
7. Contribution of the Silk Road to the development of the world
And the other is the World Map of Silk, an interactive map, including information of archaeological silks, silks as museum and private collection, sericulture and silk craftsmanship as intangible cultural heritage, mulberry and sericulture sites, and loom and dyes. The world map of looms has
been made already during the loom exhibition.
Right now, both projects need international collaborations from the silk research institutes and individual scholars.
Morus Alba, Morus Nigra in Italy: diffusion, pruning, grafting and size
Prof Claudio Zanier, University of Pisa
M. Nigra was an indigenous tree of the Mediterranean basin, used for fruits and for medicinal properties since ancient times, long before silk cultivation. Silk cultivation is documented in Southern Italy around 11th Century C.E. Silk fabrics were produced first in Lucca (Tuscany) by the use of raw and thrown silk threads imported from Central Asia and China. In early 15th Century the M. Alba diffused in Piedmont and in Tuscany regions in Italy. For 2 to 3 Centuries M. Alba was cultivated as a tall tree, with little or any pruning and with limited grafting only. Documentary images show that this was also the case in China and in Japan. The evolution toward a smaller size and regular pruning and grafting took place both in East Asia and in Italy from late 18th Century and intensified in 19th Century: the evolution process was most radical in Japan, in China and much less in Italy and in the Mediterranean basin.
Britain’s Mulberry Heritage
Dr Peter Coles, Goldsmiths University / Morus Londinium
This paper took a brief look at how the black mulberry (Morus nigra) was introduced to Britain - with a few exceptions, the white mulberry (M. alba) has never been established here. The black mulberry first came to England with the Romans as a fruit tree and for its medicinal properties. The
main wave of introduced mulberries came after 1608/9 when James I tried to establish a silk industry here. The project failed because the climate was not suitable for sericulture. Of the hundreds or thousands of mulberry trees planted, most were grubbed out but a few — and their descendants — survive today. The Morus Londinium project, started in 2016, has so far traced nearly 550 mulberries around London, some of them very old, and is identifying when and why they were planted. There was a short-lived sericulture project in London’s Chelsea in 1720-3, based on 2,000 white and black mulberries. One or two of those trees are still growing.
Silk Projects at the V&A
Sau Fong Chan, Curator, V&A
This presentation highlighted projects at the V&A:
(1) Publication: Curators (and ex-curators) from Furniture, Textiles and Fashion and Asian Departments are collaborating on the production of a book on silk that reflects the breadth and strengths of the V&A collections (to be published by Thames and Hudson in 2020, edited by Ana Cabrera and Lesley Miller).
The aim is to produce an accessible introduction to silk and the techniques that have been used to decorate it from Antiquity to the present day, with a focus on particular objects and the stories they tell. It will use splendid photography, including macro images to reveal details of technique, as well as contextual images of methods of production and end uses.
(2) Textile blog for its silk content
https://www.vam.ac.uk/search?q=Ana+Cabrera-Lafuente&astyped=
Ana Cabrera-Lafuente’s blog from her Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the V&A. She has a webpage in the Research Department through which the blog can be accessed. Four more postings are anticipated. Her case studies focus on Iberian silks and embrace medieval silks, Renaissance
velvets and ecclesiastical vestments, scientific analysis of dyes and metal threads, and substantial work on provenance, and the V&A as a model for the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid, founded in 1912.
(3) Furniture, Textiles and Fashion (FTF) department
Two curators in the FTF have a particular research interest in early modern silks:
1. Silvija Banic, curator of textiles, 1500-1800 (ecclesiastical vestments, patterned silks; Venetian orbit)
2. Lesley Miller, senior curator of textiles and fashion before 1800 (French 18th century)
They are working on exhibition and gallery projects. Both are sorry not to be able to attend – the latter because she has an appointment to see a wonderful 18th-century silk gown.
(4) Research Department
The project on the James Leman album of early 18th-century designs is coming to a conclusion (The team includes Clare Browne, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at V&A, until last year senior curator of textiles before 1800).
(5) V&A East
The V&A is developing exciting plans for East London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, as part of LLDC's Olympic legacy collaboration, together with other world-leading institutions including UCL, UAL London College of Fashion and Sadler's Wells.
As we seek to develop new programmes and transform access to the V&A's collection and archives, the V&A East project is a hugely important opportunity for the future. Our pioneering curatorial partnership between the V&A and the Smithsonian Institution continues to develop, and V&A
teams will be running a number of events, activities and partnerships across East London in the
coming year.
https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/va-museum-to-open-a-second-venue-in-east-londoninspired-by-balenciaga-a3855496.html
https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/24012018-vanda-plans-25mcollections-centre-in-londons-olympic-park
The Italian Silk Industry in a Global Context
Prof Luca Mola’, European University Institute
Silk, Innovation and the State in Pre-modern China and Western Europe Prof Giorgio Riello, University of Warwick, and Prof Dagmar Schaefer, Max Planck Institute Among the different fibres, silk stands out also for its effects on values and knowledge dynamics – and for that matter the dynamic relationship between economic and intellectual changes. Silk was a matter concerning hands and minds, an object of cosmological and nature study and a source for reliable knowledge and everyday practices, generating pride and wealth. Perhaps more than cotton, linen and woollens, by the end of the seventeenth century, the minds of elites, scholars, merchants, farmers and artisans across the world identified silk technologies with the challenges and chances that any new phenomenon – for better or worse – brought about: “how to make things work”. We wish here to present some preliminary thoughts about a project that we are developing that attempts to think about the nature of technological innovation in the pre-modern (pre-1800) period through the lens of textiles and of silk textiles in particular.
We start with a bold question: what is innovation in the pre-industrial world? This apparently easy question is complicated by at least three issues. First, most of the scholarship on innovation deals with the modern period, especially the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when politicians and
intellectuals made innovation and novelty their major goal. Innovation became both professionalized and part of research. Second, a great deal of what has been written on innovation has been focused on Europe and the West. We seek here to adopt comparative and connective methodologies to underline how idiosyncratic the opposition between continental geographies is and the limitations of focusing on the West. Finally, by adopting a material culture approach, our project aims to extend established narratives and show how the understanding of innovation must be underpinned by serious consideration of the material nature of products and artefacts, their relationship with people (producers, traders, users, inventors etc.) and the meaning and significance that is attributed to material things.
The presentation ended with a consideration of the role that states played in silk production in Western Europe and China and thus contribute to two related key issues in innovation debates. The first concerns the stakeholders of innovation. Inquiring the role played by the state, we ask: Who are
its main actors, agents and institutions and how does the ‘intervention’ of the state manifest itself?
The second concerns the method of innovation: to what extent was innovation planned by the state and through which means? Put in other terms: how much has innovation historically been top-down (fostered by elites and institutions) or bottom-up (produced by practitioners, artisans and
entrepreneurs)?
Silk connection between Bengal and Britain: A story of complementarity and political economy
Dr Karolina Hutkova, LSE
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the British and Bengal silk industries were linked through three channels: the business interests of the English East India Company (EEIC), the interests of the British government in its Empire, and finally through the British political economy.
When compared to their global competitors neither of the two industries were producing high quality goods. The Bengal silk industry was supplying the British silk weavers with raw silk, in 1780-1830 over 50% of raw silk imports came from Bengal. In spite of the fact that the Bengal raw silk was of lower quality than silk from other parts of the world it found market as the British silk weavers unable to compete with superior French silk fabrics focused on the production of haberdashery for domestic and the American market. Bans on importation of silk fabrics and tariff protection allowed them to succeed. The relationship between the British and Bengal silk industries was upset by the switch from mercantilism to laisser-faire policies. This paper aims to draw attention to the effects of the changes in political economy on business. This is a topic less discussed in scholarship, especially in the period prior to the twentieth century. My paper uses the data of the EEIC to show the changes in the volumes of trade in Bengal raw silk and also the changes in the organisation of raw silk manufacturing in Bengal. The paper also draws on Parliamentary debates and reports to study the changes in the product mix and business organisation of the British silk industry. I argue that the complementarity between the Bengal and British silk industries was destroyed by the shift to laisser-faire policies. Whereas in Britain the adoption of laisser-faire policies reflected market fundamentals, i.e. high wages and shift towards mechanisation and factory production in silk industry, in Bengal the policies affected silk production indirectly through changes in business organisation. In Britain it was supposed that private entrepreneurs would be more successful in economic activities in India than the EEIC. Yet after the EEIC’s silk factories were sold off exports to Britain declined dramatically as private entrepreneurs lacked access to capital, specialised knowledge of silk production, and information about global silk markets. There continued to be demand for Bengal raw silk on the British market in the nineteenth century. Thus, the decline in imports of raw silk from Bengal did not reflect lack of complementarity between British and Bengal silk industries in the nineteenth century but was an unintended effect of the imperial policies.
Silk in Buddhism
Dr Susan Whitfield, independent (former Director, International Dunhuang Project)
In addition to a general interest in the diffusion of sericulture, moriculture and weaving technologies across Afro-Eurasia, which I outlined in a chapter of my latest book, Silk, Slaves and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road (University of California Press 2018), I am working on silk produced for and used by the Buddhist world, for hangings, furnishings, clothes, reliquaries and, in particular, for offerings to clothe stupas and Buddha statues. I am particularly interested in one piece at the British Library and, more generally, in what we can learn of trade and economics through the supply of this specialist market.
Investigating Asian colourants in textiles from Dunhuang – towards the creation of a tandem mass spectra database
Dr Diego Tamburini, Mellon Fellow, British Museum
The paper presented the results about dye analyses recently undertaken on Dunhuang textiles from the BM collection. An analytical protocol based on digital microscopy, multispectral imaging, FORS and HPLC-MS was used to identify the dyes in more than thirty textiles after building appropriate databases using reference materials. The results showed a broad range of dyes used, most of them typical of central China, that were often present in mixtures, indicating re-cycling and re-dyeing of textiles, as well as experimenting with dyeing techniques.
Two projects: Textiles as money on the Silk Road, and Paper money made of mulberry fibres
Dr Helen Wang, Curator, British Museum
The paper referred to two projects which have been completed and published as Textiles as Money on the Silk Road (special issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2013) and “Microscopical examination of fibres used in Ming dynasty paper money” - by Caroline R. Cartwright, Christina M. Duffy and Helen Wang (British Museum Technical Research Bulletin 8 2014), which set out to determine which kind of mulberry fibres were used to make Ming paper money . It also referred to collaborations with Zhao Feng on the Textiles from Dunhuang series.
Initial ideas for a Dunhuang exhibition – including textiles
Dr Yu-Ping Luk, Curator, British Museum
Luk Yu-ping who is now the China curator responsible for the Dunhuang collection at the British Museum surveyed some previous exhibitions about Dunhuang that displayed examples from the museum’s collections. She focused on a large-scale embroidery and raised some possible questions
for further research if a potential exhibition on Dunhuang was held at the British Museum.
Silk in Contemporary Cambodia: Making and Makers
Ms Magali An Berthon, PhD Candidate, Royal College of Art
The paper focused on one aspect of Magali An Berthon's PhD dissertation which investigates the definition of silk as intangible heritage, from raw material, craft practice to national production since the early 1990s in the light of the country's twentieth-century political upheavals. A large part
of this research is devoted to fieldwork, collecting data and interviews of silk weavers in Cambodia, to record their experience and examine their own agency in the practice of their craft. This newlyproduced material which focuses on the local makers’ experience aims to cast a new light on Cambodian silk craftsmanship as a cultural heritage through the notion of “embodied knowledge” (Marchand, 2008).
