The term is first recorded in England in the fifteenth century. The male equivalent in England was a ‘silkman.’ From the mid-fifteenth century onwards, seamstresses in England were responsible for linen pieces stitched with linen thread, while silkwomen worked with silk and metal. These women were not members of a formal (male) guild, but carried out their training and conduct in a comparable manner, with an apprentice/ journeyman/master system.
Sources:
- ASH, Kate (2012). 'Silkwomen', in: Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (eds.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, 450-1450. Leiden: Brill 2012, pp. 522-523.
- DALE, Marian K. (1933), 'The London silkwomen of the fifteenth century', The Economic History Review, vol. 4, issue 3, pp. 324-335.
- LEVEY, Santina M. (1998). An Elizabethan Inheritance: The Hardwick Hall Textiles, London: The National Trust, pp. 43-44.
- SUTTON, Anne F. (2006). 'Two dozen and more silkwomen of fifteenth-century London', The Ricardian, vol. 16, pp. 46-58. For the full text, click here (retrieved 31 March 2016)
- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: ‘silkman’.
Digital source of illustration (retrieved 1 July 2016).
GVE