Ancient Chinese silk products
2 min readThe business of raising silkworms and unwinding cocoons is now known as silk culture or sericulture.It takes an average of 25 to 28 days for a silkworm，which is no bigger than an ant，to grow old enough to spin a cocoon.Next，farmers will pick them up and place them one by one onto piles of straws.Then each silkworm，with its legs stretched out，will attach itself to the straw and begin to spin.
The next step is unwinding the cocoons，a process that is usually done by“reeling women.”The cocoons are heated to kill the pupae，which must be done at the right time；otherwise，the pupae are bound to turn into moths.？Once a moth makes a hole in a cocoon，the cocoon will become useless commercially.
To unwind the cocoons，first people put them into a basin filled with hot water.Then the reeling women find a loose end of the cocoons，and then twist them.Afterwards，the women carry the cocoons to a small wheel for unwinding.At last，two workers measure them into a certain length and twist them into so-called“raw”silk，which is then dyed and woven into cloth.
Embroidered works have become highly complex and exquisite.Take the Double-face Embroidered Cat，a representative work of Suzhou embroidery，for example.The artist splits the hair-thin colored silk thread into filaments-1/12 or even 1/48 of its original thickness-and uses these in embroidering，concealing in the process the thousands of ends and joints and making them disappear as if by magic.0 The finished work is a cute and mischievous-looking cat on both sides of the groundwork.The most difficult part of the job is the eyes of the cat.To give them lustre and life，silk filaments of more than 20 colors or shades have to be used.
Recently，further innovations have developed on the basis of two-face embroidery-the same design on both sides in different colors，and totally different patterns on the two faces of the same groundwork.It seems that possibilities hitherto unknown to the art may yet be explored.
