Me holding a silkworm cocoon (image: Emma Omote)
During my time at Kawashima Textile School I was lucky enough to join a demonstration with silk artist Mayumi Terakawa. Not only did she share an insight into her process, and let us touch her delicate works, but she also showed us how to get silk from the cocoons of silkworms.
Finding the first thread from each cocoon with silk artist Mayumi Terakawa (image: Emma Omote)
It was completely fascinating. I am rather embarrassed to say that it had never really crossed my mind what happens to the silkworms themselves. I soon found out… and was rather freaked out to find the silkworms reveal themselves when the cocoon had been spun out into a reel of silk.
Reeling the silk (image: Emma Omote)
A staggering 4000 cocoons are needed to make one kimono – and in order to spin those cocoons, the silkworms inside need 400kg of mulberry leaves to munch away on! Silk is a dying industry in Japan, and now only 1% of kimono silk is homegrown, simply because demand massively outweighs supply. The remaining silk producers in this country have an average age of 75 and young people don’t seem interested in the labour intensive work involved. Who knows what will become of this tradition in the coming years?
Several threads are reeled at once from the cocoons in the basin. One silk thread is three denier. (image: Emma Omote)
Doing this really made me appreciate the value of silk (good work all you silk worms!), and made me realise why people really treasure silk kimonos. It also made me appreciate just how much work goes into Mayumi Terakawa’s stunning art works – she retrieves the silk herself, spins it and then weaves it to her design.
Raw silk hand-dyed by Mayumi Terakawa (above) and samples of her gorgeous textile works (below)
Other Kawashima textile school posts here: Preparing and dyeing the thread / Preparing giant bobbins / Preparing the warp / Preparing the loom / Time for weaving! / Lessons in weaving, lessons in life / Colour magic / Silkworm encounter
