2019 Volume 27 Pages 79-87
The author conducted a restoration study of the 18th-century French court costume and is studying aesthetic sense and dyeing technique. Because costumes are being restored based on detailed research data such as composition data such as costume patterns and weaving techniques, weaving methods, etc. There is no previous study mentioning the reason such as silk costumes are lightweight.
In this study, from the survey of textiles in the Rococo era of domestic and overseas museums, it was hypothesized that the texture properties of this court costume texture might be related to silkworm varieties, and for four years from 2012, after obtaining the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, we restored court costumes from breeding of the original race of European silkworm variety. First of all, we bred Sevenne white of European silkworm cultivar, reeled the raw silk, weave a white cloth and made a dress. Next, again breeding it, restoring the fabric of Kasuri made of natural dyestuffs, making it into a court costume．These studies demonstrate that the characteristics of the court costume ‘light, three-dimensional form, and soft’ properties are attributable to the characteristics of the European silkworm cultivar Sevenne White, and due to differences in silkworm varieties. We clarified the importance of fiber properties and the aesthetic sense required in the Rococo era. The characteristic is clearly to have them as a result of the experiment, it became clear that the difference in the form of the dress is caused by the fiber characteristics of the silkworm variety.
