Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Estates and gentry income/Textiles/Importing Silk

Importing Silk

During the Sixteenth century a new trend was becoming prominent amongst royal and upper class residents of England. This new trend was to wear silk; however one dilemma in England was that there were few if any who could make it in England meaning that it had to be imported.

Silk was one of England’s largest imports in the seventeenth century, and for good reason. In London, “[f]ashion followers in the 17th century used ribbons everywhere to decorate shoulders, tie sleeves, close shoes, encircle hats, or join collars” (1), these ribbons that were so commonly used were made of “prime, thrown silk”(2). However silk was not only a personal fashion statement, it also was a way of showing how prosperous you and your family were. One example of this is that those who were quite prosperous in this time wore silk knit stockings opposed to those who wore wool or cotton stockings (3).

The importation of silk was a very prosperous industry to be in during the Seventeenth Century. London alone went from importing £118,000 of silk in the year 1622 to importing £344,000 by the end of the century (4). Silk ended up being between twenty three and twenty nine percent of England’s total imports (5).

The next question of how one would begin importing silk is a relatively simple one, if a group had the right contacts or business. The importation of silk was through chartered companies (for example the British East India Company or the Levant Company (6)), that would bring it from the Mediterranean and Italy to England (7). The main route of transportation was by sea as it was the most direct, leaving a Mediterranean Port and arriving in an English Port (like those in Lancashire).

References (1) Ordoñez, Margaret & Welters, Linda. “Textiles from the Seventeenth Century Privy at the Cross Street Back Lot Site”, Historical Archeology 32, no. 3 (1998): 86. Accessed January 31, 2012. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616632. (2) IBID. (3) Ordoñez, Margaret & Welters, Linda, 83. (4) Peck, Linda. “Creating a Silk Industry in Seventeenth-Century England”, Shakespeare Studies 28 (2000): 225-226. Accessed January 31, 2012. URL: http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=21&sid=757cfabc-c195-4a1f-a18a-db2e997eb095%40sessionmgr13&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ibh&AN=40890. (5) Peck, Linda, 226. (6) IBID. (7) IBID.