Albania's women silk makers weave big dreams for ancient trade

Albanian women have long been famed for their stylish and colourful traditional attire that some still wore until relatively recently.
And few were more chic than the women of Zadrima who wore their own handmade silks and headdresses, their fine gauze blouses set off with belts and swathes of red silk.
But that age-old know-how was almost lost until silk making was dragged back from the edge of extinction by a group of local women who now master every stage of production, from raising the silkworms to weaving the precious fabric.
"The history of silk" in this region of northern Albania nestled between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea "goes back to the 10th century", ethnologist Aferdita Onuzi told AFP.
Often the silk was exported and it was particularly prized by the Italian and French nobility.
But Albania's postwar communist regime centralised it all to a single factory for processing and weaving silk, which was completely destroyed after the fall of the dictatorship in the early 1990s.
Then massive emigration and competition from synthetic fibres nearly killed the tradition.
But for the last 15 years or so Franceska Pjetraj and her family, along with other women in the picturesque region, have been working to revive the craft.
"It is a tradition as old as Zadrima," said Franceska, 30, who has opened a workshop with her mother Mimoza.
"In the past, women here dressed in silk -- it was one of their joys," she added.
Like other women in the long impoverished region, they are also weaving dreams of a better life.
"Here, everything is done in an artisanal way, from cultivating and extracting silk threads to weaving and completing the final product," said Mimoza, 54, a nurse.
The Zadrima region is ideal for white mulberry trees, whose leaves are silkworms' favourite food.
"Raising a silkworm is fascinating," said the younger Pjetraj while tending to her caterpillars, which are carefully installed on the shelves of a dark barn.
"They are like babies -- they demand as much dedication and love as children," she added.
Some seem disturbed at the slightest noise, while others continue weaving their cocoons, secreting the famous silk thread.
"Their life cycle lasts five to seven weeks," Pjetraj said, "and during this time they must be fed and given close attention".
Delicate and highly sensitive, the worms cannot tolerate temperatures above 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit), nor cold or humidity, much less pesticides. And thunderstorms really frighten them.
"From cocoon to thread and from thread to weaving, it is an art," said her mother Mimoza. "It requires skill, patience, but also passion."
The cocoons are harvested before the butterflies leave them. They are first plunged into a bath of boiling water to soften them, then brushed with a small broom to unravel the threads, which are stretched and then woven.
Last year Mimoza and her daughter were able to produce 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of silk thread that was transformed into stoles, skirts and blouses.
"Happily we have no shortage of orders," said Mimoza, "because of our high quality and competitive prices."
Hundreds of other women have followed their example in Zadrima and its surroundings and taken up breeding silkworms and artisanal weaving.
Rozana Gostorani, 18, hopes one day to see the silk she weaves on the runways of big luxury fashion brands.
"It is a very ancient trade... and also a high-quality art. I think (fashion houses) like Versace or Dolce & Gabbana should draw inspiration from the garments we produce here," she smiled.

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