The Tragedy of Weighted Silk

     From my post last week, there were a few questions about weighted silk and how it destroys itself. It’s a very unfortunate process and much to the sadness of curators and museum attendants everywhere, there isn’t really a solution to prevent it.

Weighted silk is a unique 19th century invention. In an attempt to restore some of its weight lost in the process of making silk, various metals were added. You might be wondering why one would want to add weight to silk, a decided light fabric. The answer is quite economical.

 Typically, fabrics are sold by the length, be it yard or meter. Silk at this time was sold by its weight. However, during the degumming process, whereby the silk fiber is extracted, a portion of its overall weight is lost. Thus, sellers of silk lost money as they were not able to resell it for as much as they had bought it for. From here, the seemingly genius idea of bonding the silk fibers with various metals wan born. This restored some of silk’s weight and allowed the vendors to sell silk at the same price or more than what they bought it for.  

There were some cosmetic benefits to this type of silk. The added metals improved drapability. But overall, it made the fabric more brittle both while wearing it and storing it. Now storing it is a big problem. Not only for the ladies wearing it at the time storing it in their trunks, but now as museums have held onto these dresses for upwards of 100 years. Because the metal is bonding to the fibers, it slowly degrades the silk resulting in a shredded appearance shown below.

    Caring for these objects can be hard as almost anytime you touch them or take them out of storage, you risk furthering the damage. Often pieces of the silk flutter to the ground, severed from the rest of the fibers bonded to it. This means that pieces like this often cannot be displayed for very long, if at all. One way around this is to display the item lying flat so there is no downward pressure that would otherwise be caused from hanging it. It also means that documenting this pieces is imperative. These pieces will not exist forever and it is very important that pictures are taken for posterity. Similarly, pictures of the damage should also be captured for comparison. As the silk ages, it will shred more.

    Now for the past two weeks I’ve discussed my experience with textiles. I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss my personal favourite.

    The Victoria and Albert museum in London, England is simply magical. While I have never been in person, I have explored their website and online content extensively. You can find their website here. If the pictures alone don’t intrigue you, there are many articles and videos that take you behind the scenes and offer a deeper look into their collections. I truly cannot recommend this enough.
There’s a very interesting video that’s a deep dive in Dior’s fashion and his characteristic silhouette. You can find that here. I love Dior’s fashion and its importance to women’s history but that’s a post for another day.