Maggie: Garden Group's visit to the Silk Museum

I thought the museum visit and the film were very interesting, but I am perhaps biased.  One of the looms is just like the one I brought back from Québec, where I learned to weave, and much of the equipment was familiar to me. 

My loom is at the farmhouse in Lot-et-Garonne, just waiting for us to return there. And the museum reminded me of our visit to the silk factories in Suzhou, China, almost exactly 30 years ago.  I’ll look for some photos at the farmhouse next week.   I never worked with silk thread though.  Mostly wool or synthetics.

 

Sue took photos of me, in order to have a photo of the giant moth on the overhead shelf.  

  

She also asked me to take photos of the 7 low-warp (“basse lisse”) silk tapestries by Sarah Perret, inspired by the anatomical charts of André Vesale, a Flemish Renaissance doctor who was one of the first to practice dissection of the human body.  His book De Corporis Human Fabrica was published in 1543.  The “Fabrica” expo by Sarah Perret at the Musée is not a permanent one (it opened on April 2^nd) so we were lucky to see it.   

 

You can read more on the Musée website http://www.museedelasoie-cevennes.com/actu.html .

Publicity poster encouraging farmers to plant mulberry trees, and grow cocoons

Joyce wrote: 

Thanks Sue, for organising such a brilliant outing & you even booked great weather too.

Thanks Maggie, for the photos & all that information about the plants we saw. One photo that you might also have taken was that of the "règlement intérieur" for the factory workers (Anne bought a postcard of it); given a choice between prison & the factory, a young woman might have just hesitated - horrific!

best, Joyce.

It appears that the men are the bosses and the women are the workers