Silk farm

Today we went to see a silk farm. It’s part of an organisation that’s reviving traditional Khmer craft techniques. The skills were lost during the Khmer Rouge period. The organisation trains young people in traditional skills including wood carving, stone carving, silk painting, silver plating, lacquer work and silk weaving.


Seeing the whole process of making silk, from the Mulberry trees through to the finished product was fascinating. Some of the patterns woven (like the one this woman is working on) are so complicated it takes the weavers a really long time to train. They use hand looms and one scarf takes 3 days to make. I’d have loved to have a go at weaving but it wasn’t possible. The extra is of the process to extract the silk from the cocoon. (They did stress that the caterpillars are dead before the cocoons are put into the boiling water, they aren’t boiled alive.)