Sericulture
Producing Léa Silk begins with village weavers placing silkworms on trays of mulberry leaves where the worms consume 25,000 times their original weight in leaves during a 40-day period, at the end of which the worms commence spinning their cocoons. The forming cocoons are then transferred to twig bundles where the cocoons are completed in one week.
Raw Silk Yarn
Completed cocoons are unravelled in boiling water and the resulting raw silk yarn is hung to dry. The raw yarn’s natural colouring ranges from light beige to bright yellow. To maintain its strength, the raw yarn is not bleached. The dried raw yarn is then immersed in a liquid made by running boiling water through the ashes of coconut husks and banana leaves. Doing this removes sericin, a stiffening substance, from the silk fibres. Again hung and dried, the raw yarn is ready for dyeing. Colours are selected carefully to compliment the yarn’s natural tint.
Dyeing and Weaving
To ensure the silk fibres are not damaged or negatively affected, only vegetable and non-toxic chemical dyes are used to achieve the lustrous colouring of Léa Silk. The traditional method of dyeing is by immersing raw yarn in a dye solution to ensure even penetration. Once dyed, hung, and dried, the yarn is reeled onto a tautening spool and stored until needed as warp or weft yarn. When needed as warp, the dyed yarn is unwound from its spool through a warp comb, which converts the yarn into equal lengths of warp thread. Warp ends are then inserted into a weaving comb, thread by thread. The weaving comb is mounted on a loom where the warp is interwoven with a corresponding weft- similarly processed, but with threads being thinner than the warp. A weaver can produce half a meter of silk fabric in five hours.
Solar Dyeing
Developed by Léa, this innovative method employs dye mixed with a fixative which reacts to sunlight. Raw silk warp threads are extended tautly in direct sunlight to lengths of between 20 to 40 meters distance from the warp comb into which the thread ends have been inserted. A group of weavers, each having an individual pot of colour, uses paintbrushes to apply their dyes to the threads randomly. Sunlight fixes the dyes in eight hours. When the randomly dyed warp is interwoven with a raw weft, a silk fabric with a subtle yet dazzling rainbow effect is produced. A variation of the solar dyeing technique is when Ms. Léa applies her design to a length of raw silk fabric that has been stretched in direct sunlight. After the fixing period, a complete length of hand painted silk fabric has been produced.
Quality Control
During fabric production, great care is taken to ensure uniformity of weft thickness and spacing and that borders are straight. Upon fabric completion, close scrutiny ensures no broken warp threads, holes, or foreign particles have spoilt the quality of Léa Silk.
A Unique Process Hand Painted
Silk from Thailand
Portrait of an Artist |
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International artist, renowned for her freehand designs on silk, Ms. Léa has been living in Thailand since 1987. During her vocational training with lace manufacturers in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, she focused on design. After her arrival in Thailand, Ms. Lea began to explore the properties of plain-woven rough and smooth Thai silk. Applying the “hot-blow” technique, Lea now paints freehand, that is, without first sketching any pattern. Ms. Lea’s distinctive designs on Ban Reng Khai silk have received national and international recognition. This was affirmed by the award of membership to the world-famous International Silk Association, located in Lyon, France. Ms. Lea’s work includes both abstract and figurative silk paintings, as well as fabric designs suitable for interior decoration, furnishings, and fashion. Under Ms. Lea’s bold and sweeping brush strokes, fabrics suddenly awake to a new life of amazing vividness. Daring colour combinations, applied in freehand style to form patterns and designs of great harmony and originality, have won Ms. Lea recognition all over the world. She has received several international awards for her work. In Thailand Ms. Lea has received certificates of appreciation from HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana and HRH Princess Soamsawali. In the Netherlands, Ms. Lea was knighted for the work she has done at the village. She has also appeared on local and international radio and TV shows. By exploring ways of combining modern, avant-garde fabric design with Thai silk, manufactured following centuries-old local techniques and traditions, Ms. Lea has built an artistic bridge between the old and the new as well as the East and the West. Group exhibits: 1978 International Women’s Festival, Cairo, Egypt 1983 International Women’s Festival, Hilversum, The Netherlands 1989 Contemporary Thai Art, Bangkok, Thailand 1992 International Women’s Art, Bangkok, Thailand 1993 International Designers, Frankfurt, Germany 1995 New York Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, USA Single exhibits: 1990-1996 Annually, Rotunda Gallery, Neilson Hayes Library, Bangkok, Thailand 1994-1995 The Promenade, Hilton Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand 1994 The Regent Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1995 Gallery Anders Midttum, Stavanger, Norway 1996 Studio Lynn Matsuoka, Tokyo, Japan 1996 Gallery Beni, Tokyo, Japan Publications: 1992 Book “Ban Reng Khai, A Village in Thailand” |
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International Awards |
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Léa and her silk have been recognized as outstanding by many organizations. A summary of the awards achieved are listed below: |
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