Plate No. 094fabric
The honey color of undyed wild silk.
- First documented
- 1700s
- Origin
- China, China
- Fiber
- silk
- Weave
- plain weave, slubbed wild silk
- Family
- plain
Plate No. 094 · fabric
Pongee
Pongee is a soft, thin, naturally tan plain-weave silk woven from wild or semi-wild silk, its handloom origins leaving a faintly uneven, nubby surface. Its undyed honey color was its signature, the mark of the wild cocoon, and it reached the West in quantity as an inexpensive everyday silk for summer suits, blouses, and linings. The same family of cloth carries other trade names by region, but pongee kept its sense of the plain, useful, undyed silk of the countryside.
Named for
From a Chinese term meaning woven at home or by oneself, for the handloom silk of the countryside.