Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
The Textile Museum presented Pamela Kaplan this morning talking about her journey to India to observe mulberry silkworm farming and the resulting processing all the way to fine silk fabric. She observed it as a cottage industry in Bangalore.
And she's now trying her hand at small scale silkworm cultivation at home.
The life cycle of the mulberry silkworm
Eggs like poppy seeds
They eat masses of mulberry leaves, don't eat anything else, don't drink, just plow through mulberry leaves
They have teeth!
Back in Bangalore
Delivering
She's active with the collection of the Textile Museum and is writing a series of articles.
And she showed silk from other cultures, including Chinese gold work thread, hair thin strands of silk wrapped in metal. You'll recognize this from my past blogging about goldwork embroidery.
Very well organized talk. I only pictured the high points on the silk process, though she also discussed the workers and how they literally live at the workplace.
I think if you Google on Textile Museum you can probably see more, including a short video she created of part of the process.
