The health of the Como district in the beginning of this decade appears not very reassuring to many observers as it is showing a structural contraction.

The crisis of this district, which is tied to a much larger crisis in the competitiveness of Italian textiles in particular and of the Made in Italy in general, put the companies of Como into the challenge to regain international competitiveness.

The pure silk textile which are raw worked or white degummed or dyed with light colours can show some small faults due to dark places on the warp or weft yarns.

This problem has been deeply studied by the Stazione Sperimentale per la Seta and the Centro Tessile Serico in order to recognize the impurities and find a way to eliminate them.

The basic raw element for the production of silk fabrics is raw silk yarn mainly coming from China.

The quality features of that yarn are measured with Chinese methods, that is to say that the yarn faults are evaluated on black boards (seriplane).

This method is completely subjective and couldn’t be repeated on the same yarn sample.
The classification of raw silk, following the Chinese method is nowadays based on the results of these tests.