Searching for American Silk: What’s in Your Attic?

"American Silk" chronicles an extraordinary tale of silkworms, global trade, technological innovation and marketing savvy in America.

Jacqueline Field is on a decade-long treasure hunt, looking for examples of American-made silk that tell the story of a once giant American industry.

For Field, a costume historian, her search for these echoes of the past began with reconstructing the story of the Haskell Silk Co., of Westbrook, Maine. In the 10 years it took her to trace and tell the company’s history, Field found only three items made of Haskell silk.

Since the publication of her book “American Silk, 1830-1930: Entrepreneurs and Artifacts,” from Texas Tech University Press, she’s discovered through readers and Haskell family descendents from Maine to Seattle what she’s long suspected – that valuable remnants of the company’s history survive in closets and attics across the country.

Now Field, who lectures on the history of silk, hopes to create a Haskell and American silk exhibition at a Maine museum.

“Anyone may have a Haskell or other American silk treasure among his or her vintage keepsakes,” Field said. “Most of the people who come to my lectures are familiar with American wool and cotton mills, but have never heard of silk mills. I hope this exhibit will restore silk’s rightful place in U.S. textile and popular history.”

Field’s book details how Haskell, which closed its doors in 1930, was one of more than 1,000 enterprises, large and small, that played a part in America’s century of silk manufacture. Despite the vast output, U.S. made silk items are hard to find.

Spanning the 1830s to 1930s, the American silk industry was the world’s largest. It grew out of efforts at silkworm culture and technical ingenuity during early, very small-scale, domestic silk production in homes and farms throughout New England. Eventually expanded to the Mid-Atlantic region and completely mechanized, the industry brought a historically scarce luxury within reach of most ordinary Americans.

“America democratized silk,” said Field. “In the end, a laboratory-made imitation – rayon – sounded the industry’s death knell. American silk faded away and was all but forgotten.”

Now she and her coauthors, Marjorie Senechal and Madelyn Shaw, have recovered an extraordinary story of silkworms, global trade, technological innovation and marketing savvy in Haskell and two other companies whose histories they’ve unearthed, the Nonotuck Silk Co. of Northampton, Mass., and the Mallinson Silk Co. of New York and Pennsylvania.

Field is a former costume curator and professor of textiles and design at Westbrook College. Recent publications include “Dyes, Chemistry, and Clothing: The Influence of World War One on Fabrics, Fashions, and Silk.”

Senechal, a professor of mathematics and history of science and technology at Smith College, is also the author of “Silk Unraveled!”

Shaw is vice president of collections and exhibitions at the Old Dartmouth Historical Society/New Bedford Whaling Museum and is also the author of “Silk in Georgia, 1732-1840: From Sericulture to Status Symbol.”

For more information on Texas Tech University Press please visit their Web site at www.ttup.ttu.edu.