What kinds of silk are there?
The two main types of silk are cultivated silk and wild silk. Cultivated silk is finer, smoother, rounder, more uniform in size and shape and color, and has much longer thread filaments than wild silk. The silk filaments are anywhere from 500 to 1000 meters long in one cocoon. It is also the most expensive. Silk bedding made from cultivated silk will cost you the most money but will also be the most durable. Cultivated silk is referred to as mulberry silk. Tussah silk is wild silk. Its shape and color are less uniform than mulberry silk because the worms aren’t fed an exclusive diet of mulberry leaves. Instead they have to fend for themselves and eat what they can find such as oak leaves. The tannin in oak leaves affects the color of the filament thread the silkworm weaves which means the thread will range in color from a light off white to a dark tan. It has a rougher texture than cultivated silk but is still beautiful. It typically has little to no luster to it.
