On a recent day trip to Wuzhen we went to the Yida Silk Workshop, a famous old-timey brand of silk that has been making silk tapestries, scarves and other things for over 100 years. In the back of the store they have a wooden warehouse where you can see the silk looms and how the products are made. There were a few women who were making solid colored silk fabric and the looms looked much like colonial looms in America. (Only made with bamboo instead of wood.) We were impressed, until we looked towards the back of the warehouse and saw the biggest, most complicated piece of “machinery” I have ever seen.
It was a silk loom, invented entirely without electricity or modern parts. It was the size of a small schooner, and had enough rigging to make a 16th century galleon jealous. This thing was such a beast, it took two people to operate it, one to actually work the loom and the other to sit on the second level and do…well I have no idea.
This massive loom doesn’t make simple things like scarves or shirts, it was invented for one purpose only, to make silk brocade. The son of the founders of the company wanted a better way to make brocade and worked for several years with a few assistants before inventing this beast. And beast it is, it has over 2000 parts and can perform over 100 different “steps.” This is used only to make silk tapestries and such with complex patterns and designs (usually involving dragons). It is so time consuming that only a a few inches can be done in a day, which led to an ancient saying that, “one inch of brocade equals one inch of gold.”
The obvious question that comes to my mind is: why? It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for a pretty piece of silk. What’s the point? I guess that’s why I’ll never become a silk master. But I’m glad there are some crazy people in the world that keep these old traditions going.
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