Maison de Canuts

Last week we decided to explore the sights on the other large hill in Lyon called Croix Rousse. This area is known for being the epicenter of France’s silk industry. The remarkable thing about silk coming from France is often still hand-made as they’ve been doing for centuries. We went to the main silk house found in the travel books since it was the one that gives tours. Our guide was a sweet animated woman that gave the tour in both French and English. Sometimes I felt lost, however, after listening to her explain something to the French group for about five minutes then turn to us and give us a few sentences of information. She did get major points, though, for telling the French group to stop yapping while she was trying to give us our English part of the tour. For the tour we were taken to a large room with tall ceilings that housed two huge wooden plank machines that took up the entire room. There were different wooden levers and string throughout the machine. At the top of it there was a holed pattern of paper being fed into the machine much like the ancient computer printer we had circa 1995. The tour guide demonstrated how the two different machines worked, following the pattern that was being fed through as the silk worker would string different threads whilst moving their foot up and down on a lower lever after each layer. She explained that an average silk pattern had around thirteen different colors that the worker had to memorize the order of as they strung the silk through. She then told us about a recreated silk they made for the palace of Versailles that had over a hundred colors of thread. Obviously, this is not how all the silk in France is produced. They do also make use of machines for simpler and cheaper silks (like the ones we purchased afterwards). The tour continued in another room where the enthralling process of the larva stages of the silk worm were explained to us. All in all, we were extremely pleased with the way we chose our afternoon in Lyon and returned to our apartment with quite a unique souvenir. Not to mention, the best lunch that I think I’ve had in Lyon so far! (It was steak covered in a white cheese sauce with au gratin potatoes and a lemon tarte). Whether it’s silk or food, the French sure know how to enjoy the finer things in life.