Talk:Silk

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Peabody Essex Museum Edit-a-thon Spring 2014

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Tussah

Maybe Tussah should get its own subsection describing it. It's not really a type of silk, but a different way of harvesting silk. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.59.55 (talk) 04:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes Tussah should have its own subsection- where most silk worms eat only one species (Bombyx eat only mullberry) the Tussah, or wild, silk worms live naturally in tropical or semi-tropical forests. Their silk is gathered after the moth emerges. The caterpillars eat all kinds of different trees, all rich in tannin, so the silk is beige to brownish toned. This fibre is naturally golden, very long staple (3"+), strong, lustrous, and more resilient than cultivated "white" silks. It dyes beautifully, with colours slightly muted by the soft undertone of beige. from AuroraSilk.com - Cheryl Kolander author of :Silk Workers Notebook, 3rd ed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.192.115 (talk) 23:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Odyssey Reference (19.232-235)

In the Odyssey, 19.233, it is mentioned that Odysseus wore a shirt "gleaming like the skin of an onion" (varies with translations, literal translation requested).

The comparison of Odysseus' tunic to the skin of a *dried* onion is actually on two grounds: (a) that it glistened, and (b) that it wrapped the body perfectly due to its softness. Furthermore, verse 235 is somewhat ambiguous, but one of the possible interpretations is that many women (who also made clothes for their families) wondered about the fabric and/or the weaver's skill. The original text reads:

τὸν δὲ χιτῶν' ἐνόησα περὶ χροῒ σιγαλόεντα,
οἷόν τε κρομύοιο λοπὸν κάτα ἰσχαλέοιο·
τὼς μὲν ἔην μαλακός, λαμπρὸς δ' ἦν ἠέλιος ὥς.
ἦ μὲν πολλαί γ' αὐτὸν ἐθηήσαντο γυναῖκες.

And I noted the tunic about his body, all shining
as is the sheen upon the skin of a dried onion,
so soft it was; and it glistened like the sun.
Verily many women gazed at him in wonder.

(The English translation comes from http://www.perseus.org)

--212.107.31.35 09:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Post-Byzantine Literary Reference

A very close parallel can be found in Erotokritos, the famous 17th century romance by Vincenzo Kornaros written in the Cretan dialect. In Part II, v. 415-420 the poet describes the (fictional) Prince of Byzantium as he appears before his host, the (fictional) King of Athens:

Eφόρειε κάποιαν φορεσάν, π' όσοι κι αν τη θωρούσι,
ίντά'ναι, πώς να γίνηκε, δεν ξεύρουσι να πούσι·
ήλαμπε τόσο κ' ήστραφτε, που κάθε φως θαμπώνει,
και η λαμπυράδα τση η πολλή την ομορφιάν τση χώνει·
γιατί δεν ήτον μπορετό κιανείς να του σιμώσει,
και [η ακτίνα] τω' ρουχώ' να μην τον-ε θαμπώσει.

He wore a certain dress, which none that looked at it
could say what it was or how it was made;
it glowed and shone so much that it dimmed all other lights
and took its beauty from its great shimmer;
for it was not possible for anyone to go near him
without being dazzled by [the radiance] of his clothes.
(Ad hoc translation from Cretan Greek into English)

This is arguably an allusion to the silk riches of the Byzantine Empire and, most likely, a direct reference to the Odyssey itself.
212.107.31.35 (talk) 17:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Trade Expansion

<blockqhuote>Perhaps the first evidence of the silk trade is that of an Egyptian mummy of 1070 BC. In subsequent coenturies, the silk trade reached as far as the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa.

Egypt is farther from China than India or the Middle East, so how does it make sense that expansion to those areahs happened "in subslequent centuries"? Nakamura2828 17:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to know how to wash silk... Not about silk actually, but about "reetha", which is used in washing it.Needsinfo 11:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

silk-producing goats

Someone with greater interest in the topic could push this info into the article:

Jeffrey Turner or Nexia Biotechnologies developed silk-producing goats. =)

By injecting the orb weaver gene into the father of Mille and Muscade, Nexia bred she-goats whose mammary glands are able to produce the complex proteins that make up spider silk. Their milk looks and tastes like the real thing, but once its proteins are filtered and purified into a fine white powder, they can be spun into tough thread. [1]

• http://www.nexiabiotech.com/en/03_bio/05.php

-- Sy / ^(talk) 21:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

That is cool. I'm going to add it to the spider silk article though, because this page is about silkworm silk. Tocharianne 03:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Mommes Merger

Mommes is an orphan article that is only linked to from here. I can't think of any other article for which it will be useful to link directly to unit of measure for silk. Any objection to simply merging the article into this one? QuixoticKate 19:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I always support merging orphans, but how about a page for Units of textile measurement? We could include Denier (measure), Tex (unit), Thread count and Thread (unit of measurement) (a cotton yarn measure, equal to 54 inches according to the Thread disambiguation page). (I couldn't find any others.) Tocharianne 21:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a really interesting idea, but I'm not sure how to implement it. The other articles you've named aren't really orphans themselves (5-10 links each). Would we redirect all of those articles to the units of textile measurement article? Maybe the solution is to just create a "Units of Textile Measurement" category. I'm not sure it that really solves the orphan problem, but even though other units of measure have the same problem (see Abcoulomb in Category:Units of electrical charge, for example). QuixoticKate 16:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It's true they're not orphans, but they are stubs. (I always support merging stubs, too!) They basically are just different ways of referring to the same thing: the "density" of a fabric. The tex (unit) article says that the difference between tex/denier is just UK vs. US English, and the mommes article says that it's the silk equivalent of thread count. Tocharianne 17:04, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm persuaded that your proposal is the best solution, and I think I'm just going to go ahead and do that once I have time to do so unless anyone else weighs in in the meantime. QuixoticKate 17:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

It's done. QuixoticKate 17:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Silk as Mongol Armor

Can anyone try to go find verifications of the mongols under Khan using silk as part of their light armor as protection against arrows? I will go look myself, because this actually seems to make some sense to me. Ulgar 18:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Well that was quick. A google search of "Mongol Armor" led me right back to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_armour and lo, and behold, I found that it was right there in "Mongolian Armor". Therefore, I suggest that the Citation Needed be taken off. Sound good to everyone? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ulgar (talk • contribs) 18:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

I removed the citation tag and added a wikilink to Mongolian armour. Tocharianne 23:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, but another citation tag popped up for the claim that silk would be unbroken by the arrow head and arrows could therefore be easily pulled out of the "wounded" just by tugging at the silk shirt. I did another search, and found two sites (one linking to the second) that make such a statement. http://members.tripod.com/~whitebard/ca6.htm http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/War/WarArmor.html

The thing is, is that I'm not sure exactly how "expert" enough these sites are to verify the statements, and even if the numbers of sites saying this makes a point because these sites could have gotten their information from one another.

I have seen it mentioned enough times to adequately believe that this is doable and has been done with silk undershirts by the Mongols. I propose the removal of even that tag and making the section referencing Mongol use of silk not need more citing. Ulgar 15:47, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Bothersome Ulgar is back again. The paragraph is in the "other uses" section. The first paragraph in the section is just a collection of sentences all about random different uses of silk. The mongolian use of silk is a focused paragraph, and yet second to the miscellanious uses paragraph, messing a bit with the flow. I was going to just reverse the paragraphs (I still will for now) but looking up, I realized that if there's enough of a mention and resource for it, the subject could go under the Uses in History section or whatever, about Genghis Khan's Mongolian Empire. I'm not so bold yet, as things like citations and references are pending, but I want people to consider these things. Ulgar 15:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe that silk undershirts were also common in the west for the same reason. However while I have heard this from a number of re-enactors and museum staff I cannot find a referecne at the moment. If I find one I will come back and update this entry Arachrah (talk) 19:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Properties

The Properties section contains the following statement: "Its denier is 4.5 g/d when dry and 2.8-4.0 g/d when moist." Denier is a link to another article at Wikipedia that says denier is the mass of a 9,000-meter-long fabric fiber or filament, and the unit is based on silk, of which a 9,000-meter-long filament weighs one gram. Therefore, silk has a denier of one. From the denier article: "The denier has its standard based in nature, a single strand of silk is one denier." Furthermore, the denier article makes no mention of a unit of measurement like "g/d" as it is described for silk. In the statement, "Its denier is 4.5 g/d when dry and 2.8-4.0 g/d when moist," where are these numbers coming from? Where is this unit "g/d" coming from? According to the denier article, silk has a denier of 1, plain and simple, and the silk article should say so. It might even be a point of interest to note that the measurement (denier) is itself based on silk. JJR512 (talk) 18:00, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

"denier" is a unit of measurement, not a property. Colloquially it it might be okay to speak of a fiber's "denier" as you would of a container's "liters," but the proper terms are "linear density" and "volume." And as JJR512 wrote, the linear density of silk is exactly 1 denier by its original definition. The "g/d" units cited are ...wtf? The standard unit for lin. density is the "tex" anyway. Vreejack (talk) 18:59, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed the weird linear density comments (is 4.5 g/d when dry and 2.8-4.0 g/d when moist) and referred to silk as the standard for the den. Also added a little table comparing moth and spider silk weights. It's just a taste. A lot more could be done. This section needs work. Vreejack (talk) 20:12, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

This article should say something about the physical and chemical properties of silk. E.g. isn't it one of the strongest known substance (tensile strength) for its weight? Or am I confusing it with spider's 'silk'? Ben Finn 17:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Though silk is strong, you are confusing it with Spider Silk. It should still say physical properties of silk somewhere down the road. Ulgar 03:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

This section needs expert help. 24.11.163.195 (talk) 05:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Silk making process

the animal rights section says that silk can be made using other means. What are the other means? --Voidvector 23:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Silk-like materials can be produced by bacteria using genetic engineering techniques, google "Protein Polymer Technologies Inc.". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.11.163.195 (talk) 05:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi-I don't know (or want to) add this info- but It seems to belong there: Cheryl Kolander proprietor of Aurora Silk, Portland Oregon. Grows, sells, sources & dyes silks of all types one type She calls Peace Silk; "Peace" silk is where the life cycle of the silk producing caterpillar is allowed to progress naturally. The Winged moth lives to lay eggs for the next generation. She may have excellent images she might be willing to give to wikipedia 24.21.192.115 (talk) 11:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)RR Portland OR24.21.192.115 (talk) 11:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Silk worms

Silk worms are worms

No, they're caterpillars.

goats

goats make silk

They're genetically engineered goats that produce it in their milk.

It's one thing to make silk proteins, but quite another to spin them into fibers. Vreejack (talk) 20:15, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Silk in Islam

Silk is strictly forbidden in Islam for men except under some conditions. Women can wear as they please. Make research and make changes to the article accordingly...:-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.34.205.219 (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Uses section

While the first sentence or two in this section are useful, is it necessary to list every item that might contain silk? I think it might be sufficient to say that the material is used in clothing. Uses for parachutes, etc. could be left in. Thoughts?Bob98133 (talk) 14:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Ahimsa silk

This product is mentioned in the Animal Rights section, but without much detail and without references. Perhaps the new info and reference that was immediately reverted could be worked into this section or as part of the Obtaining filament silk section? It is interesting and as long as it isn't an entire section of its own or just a commercial link, I think the info adds to the article.Bob98133 (talk) 16:22, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

new table

The new table that was added is an exact copy of the table shown on the page referenced. Is this plagairism? The source is the UN - FAO. Are their materials in the public domain? Thanks Bob98133 (talk) 13:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thickness

How thick/thin is silk - 1mm/1μm/1nm/1pm?

Does that mean China had already mastered nano technology two millennia ago?Anwar (talk) 21:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Weighting

Someone ought to add a section describing the historical and possibly ongoing practice of "weighting"-- adding weight to-- silk by treating it with various chemical compounds, particularly those based on metals. Because silk is sold by weight, the practice increased the selling price of the silk.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Silk#Silk_Weighting

http://aic.stanford.edu/jaic/articles/jaic28-02-004_indx.html

Possible evidence that the practice continues in silk made in China:

http://www.bikudo.com/archives/trade_leads/24/6280/sell_weighted_silk_scarves.html

24.130.131.219 (talk) 07:19, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Link to Production section

Just a heads up: the article Underground City (Beijing) links to the Production section. -Samuel Tan 05:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Indian silk

This was added by 61.2.4.160, (19 November 2008), and was ewmoved "opining needs reference". Still it would be to find out more about coloring silk in natural ways.

As opined by Pandit Haraprasad Sashtri, silk production was quite prevalent in India as early as 600B.C.What is more interesting is that naturally coloured silks were produce by feeding the silkworms with leaves of different trees

Researchers from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore have discovered a way to create “intrinsically colored” silk by stuffing the worms with a mixture of mulberry leaves and fluorescent dyes.

Source: New Silkworm Diet Naturally Dyes Silk, Reduces Water Consumption-Ecouterre -- － Cy21 ➜ discuss 08:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Merge Indian Silk

Unless someone can greatly expand Indian silk, I suggest the material there be added here. - PKM (talk) 22:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support merge

Warrington (talk) 11:01, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Topically, it is better to merge it with Silk in the Indian subcontinent, since it basically includes the general information concerning this topic.--Balthazarduju (talk) 20:19, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

yes, you are right Warrington (talk) 21:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Why this image?

There are plenty of wonderful pictures which would illustrate much better the Chinese silk than this dark, big scroll, showing some barely visible mountains, which has nothing to do with silk, except for that this dark brown painting happens to be executed on silk.

This image really doesn't add much value to the article compared whit what is available otherwise.

There are huge amounts of ancient Chuinese drawings and paintings on Commons that show silk production, ancient Chinese working with silk, wearing silk, painting silk and so on, and all of the would fit in much better in this article. Just take a look at them here .

Warrington (talk) 15:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

There are plenty of pictures here which are clearly much better .

Warrington (talk) 16:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Some examples from commons:

• 
• 
• 
• 

I agree, Warrington. I think you should select the one you feel is the best, and replace the current image. —fudoreaper (talk) 02:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Bulletproof?

I have no idea how true this is but I heard somewhere that silk is bulletproof. There were cases in the west were a silk bandana, while not preventing a bullet penetrating the skull, had no itself been broken. If this is true or there is any evidence, does this merit a place in the article? The reason I ask is that I'm a chemistry undergraduate doing a tutorial on polymer chemistry and have a question along the lines of why is Kevlar used in bulletproof vests and silk used to make tights, not the other way round?

See Ballistic_vest. Short mention in this article makes sense, with link to ballistic vest. Bob98133 (talk) 13:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

i love silk i have to a project on it this will help me understand it=) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.66.32 (talk) 12:58, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Gandhi opposed silk production?

Currently in the Animal Rights section of the article we have the following text:

Mahatma Gandhi was also critical of silk production based on the Ahimsa philosophy "not to hurt any living thing." This led to Gandhi's promotion of cotton spinning machines, an example of which can be seen at the Gandhi Institute.

This does not concord with my understanding of why Gandhi promoted village level production of cotton and sounds quite dubious to me. I do understand that there are elements of Indian religious culture, particularly the Jains, who would take a position against silk but I am sceptical that Gandhi did unless someone provides a good reference. I have added a citation needed tag to this section of text. The next step, if no-one provides one, will be deletion. Oska (talk) 06:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but I think that this is just poorly stated. I think that the first sentence can be referenced, but I do not believe that Gandhi's promotion of cotton spinning machines was related to his distaste for silk. I would say that the second sentence could be deleted since it is not relevant to silk. The first sentence could use a fact tag, too, since it should have a reference. Bob98133 (talk) 20:19, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Thai and Indian silk history

I was reading the history section of the article, when I noticed that the Thai and Indian headings did not show any history at all. I can understand the Thai heading, since it has its own article, but the Indian heading only describes their process. Can someone fix this? Alphapeta (talk) 04:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Piezoelectric properties

The article on Piezoelectricity mentions silk as a piezoelectric material, but does not expand on this fact(if it's true). Neither does this article mention it. --211.30.103.9 (talk) 06:48, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Agree. I have added a sentence under the physical properties section w/ref. Bob98133 (talk) 13:20, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Human Rights

I'm not familiar with editing wikipedia, or its policies, so I'm not going to do this. But it seems odd to me that there's a section on "Animal Rights" but nothing on the deplorable conditions that children work under in India to produce silk. It's basically slavery. Burn scars, infection and disease are par for the course for children "as young as five". However, I can't find any more recent reporting than 2003 from Human Rights Watch. And I suspect it's not just India.

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2003/01/22/small-change —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.123.151.24 (talk) 17:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Notice

I have just updated the reference to Appendix E on Wild Silks in my draft on-line annotated translation of the 3rd century Chinese history, the Weilüe - as it has been listed in the references to this article for a long time but with no footnote given to it or, for that matter, to any other reference. I also added a reference to the similar appendix in my published book, Through the Jade Gate to Rome. I am aware that this might seem like blatant self-promoting, so I thought I should write a brief note here to explain and ask for guidance. These appendices of mine are mostly a series of quotes from other people, and together represent quite a wide collection of information on wild silks. If anyone objects to my referral to my own work, please say so and, if possible, provide other references for this section; alternatively, I could extract the references to the quotes from others I have given in my works, which would illustrate the information in this section. Please do not hesitate to let me know honestly what you think. Sincerely, John Hill (talk) 11:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Demineralizing wild silk

Though I agree the contribution from User User:Tom.gheysens has been written in a commercial manner, I argue that this new discovery seems of enough significance to be included in Wikipedia. To me it reads as if this commercialization is unintentional and that English is not his first language. I will try to re-write his section in a more general and compact manner to suit its weight relative to the rest of the article, and will include the proper references. As I am relatively new to editing Wikipedia, I welcome any assistance and/or suggestions. best wishes, Vincentsarego (talk) 14:47, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Types of silk

Dear User:Bobbytheonlyone: I started editing some of the notes you added to this article on silk when I realised that you have just copied the wording of these notes from the website you gave as a reference. This is not allowed under Wikipedia policy except for short quotes which are clearly marked as such, as this breeches copyright law. I am sure you made these additions in good faith, and they do contain a lot of interesting information but, for copyright reasons, I have now removed them. However, as there is so much good information here, I would be very grateful if you could rewrite the material yourself and then add it again to the article. Many thanks, John Hill (talk) 05:20, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Types of silk (again)

Dear User:Bobbytheonlyone - I notice you have reinserted the material I deleted which, as I pointed out above, is directly copied from another website. I don't want to start an edit war with you, but I am going to delete it again for the same reasons until either you or someone else rewrites the material in a way that meets Wikipedia's guidelines. Please do not take this personally - I did similar things when I first started editing on Wikipedia and had to be corrected. If you need help just ask here and I am sure you will find someone to help you with it. The information you added IS very interesting and I would like to see it included in the article, but in an acceptable form. I would offer myself to help you with this, but I am travelling overseas and extremely busy at the moment. Do not be disheartened, I am sure you can find a way of adding this information and referencing it properly. Finally, I thank you for removing the rather threatening-sounding message you had posted on my Talk page. Best wishes, John Hill (talk) 22:36, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Are there 500 countries on Earth??

"Over 500 countries produce silk" (near bottom) There are no so many countries on earth! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Galanom (talk • contribs) 16:12, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Nice spot, removed - Cold Season (talk) 17:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

ITC external link to trade data

Hello everyone, I am working for the International Trade Centre (ITC). I would like to propose the addition of an external link that could lead directly to the specific product trade data held by ITC. I would like you to consider this link under the WP:ELYES #3 prescriptions. Moreover, the reliability and the pertinence of this link can be supported by the following facts 1) ITC is part of the United Nations 2) No registration is required 3) Trade data (imports/exports) are regularly updated 4) The link gives direct access to the trade database referring to the specific product 5) The addition of a link to reliable data could provide an appropriate contribution to this article, as the maps presented among the external links regarding the global trade of silk refer to the year 2006. Thank you for your attention.Divoc (talk) 17:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

some findings place silk as early as 5000BC, earlier than wikiarticle indicated

http://www.silk-road.com/artl/silkhistory.shtml — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.99.131.84 (talk) 15:04, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Silk Sources

"The protein fibre of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons." < Silk is also produced by spiders, those nasty GMO silk goats, a "synthetic spider silk" (apparently used in making many things, including bulletproof vests (wow)), and general synthetic silk... So, WTF is that sentence doing claiming all silk comes from the one type of source? They even put a citation for that sentence, as if that's not one of the most commonly known facts about silk on Earth. And, the introductory bit of the wikia article carries on like that until the last two sentences. My guess is that a different editor added the sentences to fix it, but did not work it in in a way that got rid of it initially pretending that cocoons are the sole source. --174.19.244.195 (talk) 10:27, 18 April 2014 (UTC)