American Silk, 1830 - 1930

by Field, Jacqueline

• ISBN13: 9780896725898
• ISBN10: 0896725898
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-02-28
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

At one time America's silk industry was the largest in the world. Silk was late to be industrialized, well after cotton and wool. Nonetheless, nineteenth-century American entrepreneurs rapidly built a silk industry with levels of production once unimaginable. American Silk, 1830-1930 traces the evolution of the American silk industry through three compelling and very different case studies: the Nonotuck Silk Company of Northampton, Massachusetts; the Haskell Silk Company of Westbrook, Maine; and the Mallinson Silk Company of New York and Pennsylvania. The mills specialized in different products, from sewing-machine twist and embroidery threads to mass-produced plain silks and high fashion fabrics. The case studies span the development of the U.S. silk industry from its beginnings in the 1830s to its decline in the 1930s. Starting in the 1920s with the growth of rayon, the first of the synthetic imitators, the market share for silk shrank, and silk gradually returned to being a luxury at the top of the hierarchy of fabrics. But, for a time, American technological innovations and entrepreneurs succeeded in bringing the pleasure and aesthetic of silk within the reach of more people than ever before.

Table of Contents

Part 1
The Nonotuck Silk Company of Northampton, Massachusetts	p. 3
From Jamestown to Northampton	p. 8
Silk in utopia	p. 30
"The silk question settled"	p. 42
Machine twist	p. 62
Epilogue : the Nonotuck Silk Company	p. 77
Part 2
The Haskell Silk Company of Westbrook, Maine	p. 87
Small beginnings	p. 91
Transitions and expansion	p. 115
Product development and marketing	p. 133
Reorganization and decline	p. 154
Epilogue : the Haskell Silk Company	p. 165
Part 3
H. R. Mallinson & Company, Inc., of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania	p. 171
The making of H. R. Mallinson	p. 175
Mallinson Silks and Fabrics de Luxe	p. 196
Advertising and marketing : the Mallinson edge	p. 222
Epilogue : H. R. Mallinson & Company, Inc.	p. 248
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