Evaluative Report

Luxury, beauty, refinement, sensuality, elegance -silk is synonymous with all of these qualities. Silk fabric has unique properties. Silk - a whole culture, the history of which more than one millennium. It was praised for his life and gave great wealth, studied it and want to get the great rulers of antiquity. And today silk became available to almost everyone, from what has not lost its value, relevance and appeal. I chose silk as  a silk production was of great importance. I noticed that some authors were describing and compare  their love and women with silk. The power and beauty of this material inspire them.

 Preparation of silk has interesting stages that attracted me.  Silk is one of the most expensive materials.In my research I tried to find a lot of information about ways of silk production, the ways of use, history of it, types of silk and making process.

Also I found about healing properties of  spider silk, they way of recycling spider silk about the use of silk in military affairs and knitting methods.  Tried to make it to each by a few.   After I did research about oriental silk carpets.  The technique of sewing carpets. During the holidays I went to carpet museum in my country and I admired my ornaments, which tells the history and culture.

In my blog I am telling about famous and unique silk shawl which we produced in Azerbaijan in the small city Sheki where there are a lot of silk fabrics. To get more information about it I found out some open workshops stores where they produce this shawl. After my visits I understood how delicate it is and got a great pleasure. I admired by people who were doing everything by hand and work hard without any new technologies. I began to appreciate it all more.

From the fact that the number of workshops on silk getting less it  was hard to find any workshop in process. But it makes more curious about it. Also it is not easy to find reliable information from workshops, natural ink, natural silk fibers in such old places. The most problematic thing was to find anything about silk shawl kalagayi , there was not any web information about such ancient thing.

And I still regret they could not take a picture in some places where were not allowed. This ancient places and traditions make us look at the world differently.

Silk has different meaning  and  function in different cultures, I wish I could visit such places a lot. It is a great pleasure to do what you enjoy and I enjoy it much. The most experience I got in those places full of natural dyes of plant, different ornamental wood cast which made of pear, walnut trees. The most important thing is manjilig. This is a hand machinery uses to decorate kalagayi. Also I heard some fact and myths about silk and about instruments. I learnt about new plants like zirinj, sumag, dog-rose, wild rabbit apple, narinj, nazbitki which used in the difference color and shades.

 For further projects I should improve more in doing something myself, maybe testing materials dying them or pattern making. More experimental and more practical research.For this project mostly I gained information from books, web, workshops, museums and collecting leaflets from museums and shops. But mostly for research I prefer going to such places, communicate with people. It helps more than web search.

Feedback from other   help me to do everything in a right way and inspired  me to do research and you are more organize. 

“Trust me - Silk”
― David Eddings

Bibliography.

1.    Seki Kelagayisi(2011) Sheki city.Baku: Indigo

2.    Vidadi. M. (2005)Beslesen Ipek olar. Baku : Sedef

3.    biysk.ru (2010) [ Online]. Available from: http:// www.onsilk.ru/legend
www.biysk.ru/~karman/mat_vol_nat_chelk_legenda_chelk.htm

4.    superstyle.ru (2009) [ Online]. Available from: http://superstyle.ru/19jul2007/silk_

5.    mt-handels.eu (2011) [Online]. Available from: http:// www.mt-handels.eu/rus//hist

6.    youtube.com (2013) [Online]. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyFc2FhIDP4&feature=player_detailpage 
7.    texeresik.com (2012) [Online]. Available from: https://texeresilk.com/article/silk_information_dictionary
 8.    Mary S. (2007) Silk. USA: Yale University Press

99.    Phillipa S. (2004)The Book of Silk. Singapore: St John’s Press

10.Mary J.P. (2001) Silk and Secrets.UK: Signet