The Art of Making Silk

While in Siem Reap we took the opportunity to visit the Artisans d’Angkor, an organization set up in the 1990s to help recover and teach traditional Khmer handicrafts that were nearly lost during the time of the Khmer Rouge and the following civil war (which lasted until the early 1990s).

One such art is the art of silk making, and we took the tour of their silk farm to see the many steps it takes to make silk and weave it into cloth.

Below is a brief outline of the process:

The silkworm larvae are raised inside on large trays. They are fed a specially bred type of mulberry leaf so that they will create the iconic “gold silk” of Angkor.  (Here’s a video to prove that these really are live silkworms!)

Once the larvae are a few weeks old, they create their cocoon. About 20% of the cocoons are left alone to create butterflies to lay the next batch of eggs.

The rest of the cocoons are set in the sun to kill off the pupa.

The dry cocoons are boiled to separate the outer skin (raw silk) from the inner skin (fine silk).

The incredibly thin threads of silk from the raw or fine silk are unraveled from the cocoons and twisted together to make silk thread that is wrapped around a spool.

The thread is “spun” onto a large machine to lovely straight warp for weaving fabric.

And then the actual weaving can begin!

The actual weaving is done in several different ways and on different looms, depending on what pattern the designer wants — flat, three-dimensional, one-colored or multi-colored.

It was fascinating to see the whole process from beginning to end. It was also somewhat reassuring to know that even though these workers have to put up with hundreds of tourists watching them work each day, the business is set up as a cooperative and offers its workers a living wage.