ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the agricultural activity of rearing silkworms and by providing a comparative overview of some of the ways market forces stimulated nineteenth-century silk production. It explores the technology and design embedded in the very yarn itself and in its component silk filaments. The silkworms used for most textile production cannot be reared to successfully produce quality silk on food other than mulberry leaves. They thrive best on white mulberry, which is cultivated as a crop and harvested to feed silkworms reared indoors. Transgenic breeding and other manipulations have made new kinds of silkworms. Sericulture is an agricultural activity involving mulberry tree cultivation, the rearing of delicate temperamental insects, and the reeling of filament from their cocoons. The purpose of sericulture is the production of silkworm cocoons that will yield silk filament to be made into thread. The cocoon is an elegant solution to the problem of providing a secure shelter for the pupa's metamorphosis into a moth.
