All silk begins as the small ovoid cocoon of the silkworm. These cocoons are stirred in hot water to degum and free the silk filament, drawing as much as a mile from each. The filament is then wound on a reel into thread, and the thread dyed and woven on a loom into the cloth itself. A single scarf needs a hundred cocoons or more.

Silk production began in China, which maintained a monopoly on sericulture until the first millennium AD. One legend tells of the Khotanese princess who smuggled a silkworm from China to Turkestan, but silkmaking most likely spread the same way as other technologies: through trade along the Silk Road.

The Yodgorlik Silk Factory in Margilan, Uzbekistan, is one of the few places where silk products are still made by hand in the more-or-less traditional way.

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