MASP

This English textile from the eighteenth century features fine floral silk embroidery on taffeta (a word of Persian origin that designates an interwoven material). Taffeta is a finely woven textile that was, in this case, also produced by the silkworm, a caterpillar that secretes a one-kilometer-long thread in order to build its cocoon. The most ancient traces of silk textiles have been found in Chinese archaeological sites that are over 4,700 years old. Between 206 BC and the year AD 220, China established important trade routes with the West, eventually creating the long route that would become known from the nineteenth century on as the Silk Road, attesting to the importance of the material. Around the eighth century, this textile technology was brought to Europe, particularly the Mediterranean nations. Beginning in the fifteenth century, some manufacturers were set up in England. Local production accelerated even further when French Protestants settled there after fleeing religious persecution brought about by a decree from King Louis XIV in 1685. Dating from the decade of 1730, this textile piece was made before the English Industrial Revolution, and therefore all stages of its production were handmade, demanding complex technical knowledge combined with certain specific abilities. The weaver, often a woman, was in charge of breeding the silkworms, unspooling the very long thread from the cocoon, preparing the fibers and coiling the hanks, preparing the pigments in several colors and ensuring their durability, and finally, constructing the textile in the loom and embroidering motifs into its surface. It becomes evident, then, that the myth associating women with simple domestic chores is a powerful ideological discourse.

— Mariana Leme, mestranda em teoria e história da arte, ECA-USP, e integrante da equipe de curadoria, MASP, 2019

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