ABSTRACT
Silk, a textile product beautiful and lustrous to the eye, soft to touch, and elegant to wear, had long been regarded as an exotic luxury by European consumers. Adornment with such a material represented wealth, power and status, and the secrets of its manufacture were eagerly sought after. Yet the process of diffusion was painfully slow and arduous. Silk manufacture originated in China in 2700 BC and its diffusion to Europe, via Byzantium and the Near East, took more than ten centuries.1 The Europeanization of silk manufacture began in the eleventh or twelfth century, when Italy established an industry. For the next four or five centuries, Italy retained its monopoly of this highly lucrative and prized industry, partly as a result of its imposition of stringent regulations to inhibit the transfer of textile workers from one locality to another.2 The efforts to establish manufacture in England began in the fifteenth century, but took almost three centuries to bear fruit. Silk fabrics were probably first woven in England in the second half of the sixteenth century, but the nascent industry was unable to satisfy aristocratic demand, and large quantities of high quality and expensive silks continued to be imported from Italy. It was not until the late seventeenth century that the English silk industry acquired an international reputation. By the early eighteenth century, England had become a significant centre of silk production. Based in Spitalfields (London), Canterbury and Norwich, the industry employed more than 300 000 persons in 1713, and had more than 8000 looms in operation in London alone.3
