Neckties - Silk history from 27 B.C.to 1204.

Neckties Silk history from 27 B.C. to 1204

400's : The Chinese silk draw-loom was introduced into Japan

The Chinese draw-loom was introduced into Japan during the fifth century by Korean immigrants (or prisoners-of-war) who had learned the technique during the Chinese conquest of their own country. Although sericulture spread quickly, Japan did not fully become open to Chinese cultural influences until the reign of the Tang dynasty in China, and the Nara period (A.D. 646-794) in Japan.

565 - 578 : silk sericulture come to Byzantium

The Sassanids kept a firm grip on their monopoly over the silk trade with China and, as demand for the precious commodity increased, Byzantine merchants were forced to pay higher and higher prices. Meanwhile, in an attempt expand his empire's industries, the Emperor Justinian desperately sought some way to produce this costly raw material locally. Available information the cultivation and manufacture of silk was vague and incomplete. Greek writers believed that Chinese silk grew on "wool trees," somewhat like cotton bolls or kapok. Finally, a group of Nestorian monks from a monastery in Central Asia told the emperor the legend of a Chinese prince who a century earlier had managed to smuggle the secret of silk out of China. According to this story, the king of Khotan also eager to obtain the secret of silk, requested the hand of a royal Chinese princess in marriage, counting on the fact that a Chinese bride would go to great lengths in order to maintain a supply of for her own gowns. All depended on whether his own bride would be clever enough to succeed. The king's assumption proved correct and his hopes were gratified when his bride, despite the risk involved, successfully smuggled mulberry seeds and unhatched cocoons past the Chinese border guards by hiding them in her elaborate headdress ... which is how, according to the legend, the king of Khotan was finally able to produce silk in his own country.

The monks offered to travel to the distant land in Central Asia over which the king of Khotan had once ruled, and where worms had now been bred for over a century. They promised to learn the secrets his mysterious art and bring them back to Justinian. The emperor was enthusiastic about the plan, and in turn promised to ewer favors on the monks if they succeeded in their quest. According to the imperial Byzantine historian Procopius, who tells the story, the monks returned two years later, "bringing with them a large quantity of silk seeds concealed in it bamboo canes. The monks tended the seeds carefully until they hatched, and then fed the larvae day and night on a diet of mulberry leaves. Thus did sericulture come to Byzantium."

It was during the reign of Justinian I's successor, Justinian II (565-578) that worm breeding and the cultivation of mulberry trees spread into Syria, Calabria, Sicily, throughout the Peloponnesus, and as far as Armenia.

800's : Islam and Byzantium influence and the Silk Road

Following a century of victorious Islamic conquests, the newly rich Muslim caliphs and traders sought to recreate, in their mansions and palaces, the interiors of the desert tents they had lived in as nomads.

Meanwhile, despite the growing influence of Islam throughout the empire, Byzantine art continued to develop, although official imperial art fell under the sway of the intensified middle-eastern influence now coming from Islamic Persia.

Byzantine Empire owed its unity in large part to a common language, Arabic, and a common faith, Islam. Tang dynasty China was cemented by its expanding silk and porcelain trade, and by the spread of Buddhism, the common religion of the people of Central Asia. As a major trading route, the Silk Road played a decisive role in propagating the art and philosophy of Buddhism, a pacifist doctrine that originated in northeast India during the sixth century B.C. The spread of Buddhism generated a heavy traffic of pilgrims and missionaries traveling between India, China, and Central Asia, with the city of Dunhuang as the region's major cultural and religious center.

A late Tang dynasty mural discovered in Cave near Dunhuang shows the armies of Zhang Yiuchao regrouping in order to reconquer lost territories and re-establish free movement of goods and people over Silk Road. Elsewhere, a fresco depicts traders, travelers, pilgrims, and emissaries who used the Road: Turks, Arabs, Persians, and black Africans.

Tang dynasty the silk weave was considerably refined

Among other developments representative of the new, extremely varied textiles woven under the Chinese Tang and Song dynasties were the distinctive kesi silks. All-silk tapestries had already been woven by Han artisans, but during the Tang dynasty the weave was considerably refined. Up to sixty-six threads were used per inch for the warp and up to three hundred eighty for the weft, a split-tapestry technique representing amazing skill and progress. Tapestries from this period were used as bindings for religious books and scrolls, as decoration in palaces, and occasionally for making imperial robes. The weave was fine enough to reproduce works of art, and some artists even took up the study of tapestry in order to execute their own works directly in cloth.

Capital of the Abbassid Empire (A.D. 750-1258), Baghdad became a center for all the major trade routes of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The golden age of the Abbassid dynasty was during the reign of Harun al-Rashid, whose opulent court was later described in The Thousand and One Nights. The fame of Harun al-Rashid's kingdom traveled far beyond its frontiers, and ambassadors visited his court from places as far-off as Tang dynasty China and Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire. The silks produced in the caliph's workshops (known as tiraz) illustrate the syncretism of Indo-Persian and Hellenist influences grafted onto Islamic and Arabian culture.

Under the rule of the Fatimid dynasty (A.D. 909-1171), Cairo rivaled Cordoba and Baghdad in the sumptuous decoration of its mosques and palaces, but only fragments of the Fatimid weavers' work has survived.

756 : silk sericulture arrived Europe

Cordoba, ruled by the Umayyad caliphate from A.D. 756, became an international artistic and intellectual center famed for its poets, philosophers, and musicians. The caliph, Abd al-Rahman, encouraged the expansion of sericulture throughout Moorish Spain. This local silk provided a direct supply for the tiraz factories set up by Syrian weavers who had brought their Chinese-style draw-looms to Spain and North Africa. It had thus taken this sophisticated technology some twelve centuries to travel from China to Europe-and even when it finally did arrive, it was confined to the Muslim world.

1000's : The crusaders brought Europeans in contact with eastern cultures

The crusades heralded an entirely new phase in the relationship between Christian West and Islamic East. When the European crusaders arrived in the Middle East, they were stunned by the wealth of this new-found civilization and immediately attempted to colonize it on the pretext of recovering the Holy Land from the Muslims. The crusaders attacked mercilessly wherever they encountered opposition, whether Muslim or Byzantine. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 was a particularly grievous example. Despite the destruction wrought, the crusades brought Europeans in contact with eastern cultures, giving a fresh impetus to western decorative arts.

Neckties Silk history from 1204 to 1498