.: Work in progress: Mature silk worms feed on mulberry leaves.
Silk: The noun hangs heavy with its own sense of history and luxury. For 2,000 years, its production, called sericulture, was kept a state secret in China; anyone who revealed it was punished with death.
Long before the Silk Road opened up, the Middle Kingdom emperors’ preciously guarded exclusive rights to wear silk, which is believed to have first been produced around 6000 B.C.
Several millennium later, around 1720, silk production was introduced to Java by then governor general of the Dutch East Indies, Hendrick Zwaardecroon, who also dabbled in coffee and spices.
Indonesia’s early silk production was a failure, possibly because silk worms need constant temperatures and tons of mulberry leaves to survive.
The advent of fans and humidifiers has enabled silk production in Java and Sulawesi; Bali has now also joined Indonesia’s growers, developing an agritourism sericulture business.
Sutera Sari Segara’s operations manager Tri Edy Mursabda believes growing silk will not only supply
locally grown and woven silk
in Bali, but also create employment and re-green marginalized farmlands in Gianyar, Bangli and
Badung.
Happy and proud: Operations manager for Sutera Sari Segara, Tri Edy Mursabda, harvests silkworm cocoons in Mambal, Bali.
“We opened here in Mambal around one month ago,” Mursabda says. “We grow mulberry here on almost a half hectare of marginalized farmland.
We also have farmers in other areas planting mulberry trees and growing silkworms.
“We then buy the cocoons and process them to silk. We have support from the forestry department because we are helping to re-green unused farmland.”
Growing silk and then weaving it is a time-consuming process; it takes a month from egg to cocoon for the silkworms to form the threads that are then handwoven, the cloth gaining just 20 centimeters per day. The fabric, with 4,000 threads per meter width, demands two people spending 10 days of intricate work setting the looms before the weaving begins.
Getting it done: Hand-weaving natural white silk is a time-consuming process; the cloth gains just 20 centimeters per day.
Built within the village of Sibang Kaja, the silk farm has been absorbed into the local community with existing Balinese properties.
The farm is a seamless addition to the village — it is part of its fabric, tucked behind ancient Balinese walls; a simple sign only tells the visitor this is something out of the ordinary.
Tender care: Spinning the threads is delicate work.
The staff too are part of the village, the local men constantly tending to the silkworms, the local women weaving from the cocoons.
“At present we have five women weaving and five men caring for the silk worms. All were trained by specialists we brought in from Java. The women could weave after a week, but it took three months before they could weave unsupervised,” explains Mursabda, adding that the women show remarkable skill.
Bombyx mori first-cross Chinese and Japanese silkworm eggs are bred in Java and Sulawesi and sold in packets of 12,500, just like seeds for the garden.
However, tending them is rather more demanding. Placed in a sterile box, the eggs hatch out
miniscule grey silkworms that are sat on a bed of chopped mulberry leaves.
The worms eat nonstop and within 20 days have increased their body weight 10,000-fold.
Closer look: Tiny gray silkworms munch on mulberry leaves. They will increase their body weight 10,000 fold in the coming 20 days.
“We need to keep the temperature between 24 to 28 degrees and the humidity at 60 percent.
Otherwise the worms fail,” says Mursabda, standing in the growing room, which has wet sacks lining the floor to maintain humidity and fans to cool the air.
This simple system is easily copied by the silkworm farmers from Bali’s drier regions, says Mursabda. Farmers can then harvest around 30 kilograms of silk cocoons per month; at Rp 25,000 (US$2.50) per kilogram, that can mean a sizeable supplement to a family’s monthly income.
Each cocoon consists of more than 100 meters of silk; to find the thread that will unwind this length, the cocoon is boiled.
“14 cocoons are then unwound together and spun; that gives 20 denier silk thread. This is then spindled and ready to be dyed for the hand-weaving process,” explains Mursabda.
Currently, Sutera Sari Segara dyes and weaves traditional Indonesian ikat in glorious colors, the silk with its tri-prism structure catching and bending the light.
The organization also weaves natural white silk that is lightweight and bears that indefinable sheen of pure silk.
China’s ancient Emperors would approve.
— Photos by J.B. Djwan
