My mobile for the China entry took all the pieces I’d dyed of those colors. I wanted to have more for myself so began dyeing with galls (oak galls) for the brown-grays and blacks. I spent most of the week recreating the dye which meant practically starting from scratch even though I had lots of notes from the first time. These silks are all degummed which is the way we usually think of silk. They were in the same dye pot as the blacks in the next photo! I pretty much used the old Chinese recipe that called for a handful of sumac at one stage.
These sheer and not-so-sheer but stiff silks are all undegummed. That means the sericin from the silkworm when making the cocoon has not been removed. Organza is an example. “Silky” silks are all degummed like in the photo above. In all my experiments the undegummed silks took the dyes extremely stronger. That surprised me. I got blacks on these and the brown-grays on the degummed silks. Both dyed exactly the same.
Here is a close up of the black silks. The backgrounds for both are Japanese obis.
This is how I made my strings of the silks. With a glue gun I made blobs on the monofilament to hold the pieces in place.
Fascinating! Never heard of servicing before.
Fascinating, as usual. It’s interesting about the gummed vs degummed. Who would have thought. Hi
Beautiful work, I love the way you exhibited them, but don’t understand what is the ‘monofilament’
Every day is a school day, never knew organza was gummed silk??
thanks Joan
It’s like fish line. Clear, plastic string. Get at sporting store or hardware.
Peggy
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Great Article