Cambodia & Culture : Exceptional handicraft, Silk from the kingdom

The magnificence of traditional Cambodian costume is truly breathtaking. Dresses, "sampots" and various shirts ("av") compete in elegance and luxury, and are traditional items of clothing worn by Khmers for public and private celebrations, particularly weddings.

Traditional Khmer dress is particularly well illustrated in dance performances, notably the Royal Ballet. The diversity of styles and decorative motifs is overwhelming, and the colours and textures of the fabrics are irresistible. The most beautiful Khmer garments showcase an extremely noble material, silk, obtained from the fibre extracted from the cocoon of a famous lepidopteran, Bambyx mori, or "mulberry bombyx".

Bombyx caterpillars feeding on mulberry leaves

Techniques

Silk-making techniques were probably brought to Cambodia by Chinese emigrants, whom the Chinese Zhou Daguan (the author of the famous Memoirs on the Customs of Cambodia, after a stay of almost a year at Angkor in 1296-1297) explains were present at Angkor in fairly large numbers.

Chinese silk was clearly much sought after by the rulers of Angkor. Once acclimatised in Cambodia, locally-produced silk was of sufficiently high quality to be included in the gifts offered to the Ming emperor of China (1368-1644) by the Tchenla ambassadors: the Chinese imperial annals mention pieces of Cambodian silk among the offerings.

A visit to a silk-making workshop (such as the "Silk farm" run by Artisans d'Angkor in Siemreap, or the silk village at Koh Dach, near Phnom Penh) allows you to observe the entire cycle, from the mating of the butterflies to the weaving of the cloth, including the phase during which the hatched larvae feed on mulberry leaves and grow, The cocoons are then exposed to the sun to kill the chrysalis before it pierces the cocoon (this would render the cocoon unusable). Finally, the spinners extract the fibres used to make the threads from the cocoons, which are immersed in boiling water.

The yarns produced are then dyed and wound onto beams for the warp yarns, or onto bobbins for the weft yarns. Production remains traditional: a far cry from the automated processes used in modern textile factories to produce fabrics in industrial quantities.

Weaving

Weaving is usually carried out on fairly small manual looms, which are operated by weavers who patiently weave the weft threads one by one between the layers of warp threads, producing barely one metre of fabric per day for the most complex fabrics. The cost of silk and the very low productivity of weaving largely explain the sometimes very high prices reached by certain silks. The complexity of the patterns on these fabrics demands a level of mastery that can only be achieved after many years of practice.

At the same time as weaving techniques were being developed, dyeing techniques were being created using the country's plant resources. Various plants are used to give the raw silk thread the desired colours. For example, red can be obtained from chips of sangke wood (Combretum quadrangulare) or tamarind leaves; yellow is mainly produced from the bark of the prahout tree (Garcinia vilersiana), found in the highlands of Cambodia... It should be noted that the natural colour of bombyx cocoon fibre in Cambodia is a slightly deep yellow, rather than white like Chinese silk. This is due to the particular variety of Cambodian mulberry tree whose leaves are used to feed the bombyx larvae. Cambodian silk is sometimes used undyed, with its natural colour.

Plants used for dyeing

Painting

One of the most original dyeing techniques used by Cambodian craftsmen, "hol", better known in the West as "ikat", consists of creating patterns by wrapping certain portions of the threads to protect them from colouring. Traditionally, banana fibres were attached to the threads in this way; today, banana fibres are more often than not replaced by nylon. To obtain the desired patterns, patterns are used to indicate precisely which portions of the yarn need to be protected.

“Hol" dyeing process

Reputation

Today, Cambodian silk enjoys an excellent reputation on international markets. It is highly prized for its exceptional quality, and the handmade nature of the fabric helps to enhance its value. The various products made from silk can be purchased from the countless shops in tourist towns or from the stalls in many markets. Beware, however, of counterfeits and low-quality products imported en masse from neighbouring countries.

To find out a little more about Cambodian silks, two books are recommended: Technique of Natural Deying and Traditional Pattern of Silk Production in Cambodia (bilingual Khmer-English), published by the Phnom Penh Buddhist Institute (ISBN: 978995050023), and A Pocket Guide to Cambodia Silk, by Cornelia Bagg Srey, published in 2017 (ISBN: 9780692853023).

Text and photographs: Pascal Médeville