Today the weather has cleared with just the light shower in between sunny patches.
We resume our exploration of Lyon in the silk weavers quarter. From the mid 16th century to the late 19th century Lyon was a major centre for the production and weaving of silk. The silk quarter sits on the steep slopes of the hills just to the north of the city centre.
Here for centuries, families have lived and weaved silk in cottage industry workshops, stacked one on top of each other. Silk weaving is very labour intensive and needless to say the industry has migrated to China, India and Brazil which are also the main producers of silk. There are just two silk weaving businesses left in Lyon which specialise in the complex and expensive weaving of fabrics and braid for the clergy and the army.
We learn all this and a heap more on our tour of a working silk weaving museum. We are totally astounded by the complexity and the intricacies of the weaving looms. The invention in the early 1700s of a weaving machine that was controlled by a long paper punch card like an oversize pianola roll, stretching for 20 or 30 metres, depending on the pattern. As the museum guide said “this machine represents the beginning of the computers.” The “punch card “determines the pattern although the weavers still have to remember which colour to slip though on each weave. These machines are still in use to day; incredible.
Once you have seen how silk is produced you can not begrudge them a single cent for a nice tie or scarf made of silk; just how we felt about the opal miners in Lightning Ridge.
Part of the range of coloured threads...
All the different colours used to weave the pattern...
All those strings are used to lift the threads to form the pattern...
The finished product coming off the loom...
Incredible as it may seem the two "pictures" below are actually woven in silk....
The lady at the silk museum suggests we might like to see the Tromp l'Oeil just 7 minutes walk away. We take her up on her advice. Appartently Lyon has a tradition of painting Tromp l'Oeils on the side of big ugly buildings.
Our last adventure for today is to navigate just one of the narrow, unnamed rabbit warrens of passageways called “traboules”. The traboules have been formed as apartment blocks and buildings were built and rebuilt over the centuries. These are bit like the passageways we used to use to get from the top of Spring Hill down to the Queen Street mall, only a lot narrower and more sinister. In the middle of the day we were a bit nervous, at night the traboules for us would be a no go area for sure.
Some of the doorways into the taboules are grand....
but most are very ominous...
Inside the taboules the scernery ranges from the picturesque....
to the near slum....
Another day in France another lot of goodies to admire and try.
Yummy liqueur flavored chocolates shaped and wraped to look like wine bottle corks....
