History of Silk Painting

History of silk painting

Silk is a beautiful gift from nature that has been cultivated for over 3,500 years. Ancient coloring and resist techniques were developed to embellish the woven cloth of silk and cotton that came from India and China. Gutta is probably the most recent development in the history of resist techniques, but the origin of the craft remains something of a mystery. Gutta involves the use of application of a starch-like substance to control the flow of paint on silk.

There are lots of unanswered questions about how the craft spread to other parts of the world. The earliest development of silk and silk painting took place in India around the second century CE, and it was shortly after that similar techniques were developed in China. Japanese art was heavily influenced by Chinese culture. The earliest complex art from Japan came between the seventh and eighth centuries. In the ninth century CE the Japanese became more culturally independent with its art, along with the spread of Buddhism. This is also around the time they discovered methods of silk production and silk painting. Early Japanese silk paintings were done with black ink or paint, and were generally monochromatic. Entering the 14th century Japanese artists began using a range of pigment, adding color to paintings. Between the 16th and 18th centuries silk painting began to spread from its origins in East to the West.

Silk painters from France and Hungary reported that their teachers acquired skills of the craft in France from members of the Russian Tsar’s family. During the Bolshevik Revolution, members of the Tsar's family dispersed throughout Europe. Many fled to Paris, bringing with them the secrets of silk painting using the substance called Gutta, and introduced the process to Western Europe. Gutta is one of several linear barrier resists currently used in the process of painting on silk and cotton. In the 1920’s, hand-painted silk designs began to appear in haute couture of France. The French loved the sensuous hand painted silk and in the 1920's, turned the gutta-serti technique into a very profitable industry.

It wasn’t until the 1970’s that silk painting really began to be popularized by artists in North America and it has been gaining popularity as a textile art ever since. The gutta techniques eventually became a valuable asset to the surface design and textile industries as designs could be developed on silk and then printed on commercial fabric.

Adapted by Mary Pendergrass from "Introduction To Silk Painting” by Jackie Shaw