Eri silk

What is Eri silk?

Eri silk is a wild silk, spun from the cocoons of the silkworm Samia ricini. This worm is domesticated, and apart from the mulberry silkworm it is the only one that people rear fully under their care. The cloth is made mostly in India's northeast, above all in Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya, and on a smaller scale in a few other Indian states. Thailand also rears the worm. Eri feels soft, and the yarn spun from it is often described as cottony, though some lots come out smooth and with a sheen. The fabric looks denser and darker than mulberry or tussar silk, and it is heavier too. Its natural colour runs from white to a faint gold, and sometimes towards rust red.

Where does Eri silk come from?

The word eri comes from era, the Assamese name for castor, the plant whose leaves the worms eat. Reared across northeast India, the silk also appears in smaller pockets of Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka are named too. Thailand received the worm in 1974 and now grows eri in 28 of its provinces, where heavy rain and humid air suit it. The sources record no legend or early date for the craft. What they describe is a living rural practice tied to castor, and in Thailand to cassava as well.

How is Eri silk made?

Eri caterpillars feed on castor leaves, and in Thailand on cassava leaves too. After about thirty to thirty-two days the worm leaves its feeding place and looks for somewhere comfortable among the leaves to spin its cocoon. That cocoon is open at one end. The moth can walk out before anyone touches it, and only then are the cocoons collected and the silk spun. Other silks are usually boiled with the pupa still inside, to keep one long unbroken filament. Eri is not like that. It is a staple fibre, made of shorter lengths spun together, which is why the yarn can look more cottony than most mulberry silk, even when a batch is soft and glossy.

Colours, motifs and borders

Colour here is mostly the worm's own. Eri silk comes in natural shades, white through to a pale gold, with some cocoons tending to rust red. The spun yarn can be coarse or fine, and the woven cloth reads as dense. Compared with mulberry or tussar silk it looks darker and feels heavier. The sources describe no particular motifs, borders or pallu for eri, so the interest lies in the texture of the yarn and the softness of the finished cloth rather than in a patterned design.

Styles of Eri silk

Eri sits apart from the better-known silks. Mulberry silk, and tussar as well, give long continuous filament; eri is spun from shorter staple lengths. Mulberry and tussar do not have an open cocoon. Eri's cocoon can be emptied by the moth itself, and this is what earns it the name peace silk, or Ahimsa silk, when the worm is spared. Alongside Samia ricini, the sources mention Bombyx mori, the mulberry silkworm, as the other silkworm people have fully domesticated. Eri itself varies in feel: some yarns are soft and shiny, others plainly cottony.

What Eri silk means

The open cocoon is the reason for the other names. Since the moth leaves of its own accord before the cocoons are collected, eri is called peace silk, and Ahimsa silk as well, after the principle of doing no harm. Indian output in 2007-08 reached 1,530 tonnes, or 73 percent of the country's wild silk production that year. Vegan fashion has taken it up: the designer Lucy Tammam used eri silk in couture collections for evening and bridal wear.

Questions people ask about Eri silk

Good reading and sources

• Eri silk on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data