A silk industry was first recorded in china about 2600 BC, its secrets spreading along the silk road to reach Constantinople in AD 550. In the fourteenth century it was established in England.
The early centres of the English silk industry, Spitalfields, Norwich and Canterbury, benefited from the arrival of the Dutch or Huguenot silk workers. In 1718 John Lombe discovered the secret of the Italian throwing machines and built a water-poered silk mill at Derby, begining the factory system.
In the 1820s the French Jacquard loom began to supersede the old drawloom, enabling the designs to be greatly increased, and in the 1830s power looms were first used to weave plain coarse spun silks.
With the gradual removal of tarrif protection, the silk industry had to struggle for survival and from 1824 onwards its progress was erratic, the silk throwing industry reaching its zenith around 1850. The decline began with Cobden's Free Trade Treaty of 1860, and was furthered by the advent of artificial silk. Thereafter, apart from a brief interlude of relative prosperity in the late 1920s and 1930s, the industry gradually diminished.
Contents:
The silk industry
The British silk industry
Sericulture
Silk throwing
Silk waste spinning
Silk weaving
Glossary
Further reading
Places to visit
