“Silk” – the beauty recipe long famed about since ancient time appeared in the renowned beauty recipes of the royal courts of Japan and China in which the precious characteristics of silk filament was recognized as the skin nourishing ingredients that was as precious as gold.
With the special production process in CEILK’s innovation, the silkworms actually “weave” the silk pad naturally, resulting in the pure, flat gold silk pads.
A small village in Mae Sai district, Chiang Rai province, northernmost of Thailand, villagers live in an organic, toxic free, and friendly lifestyle in the embrace of nature. It is here where the innovation emerged from the traditional sericulture, to create “gold silk filament” which is naturally “woven” under the thoughtful production process that also helps balance the ecosystem.
Journey of the gold silk pad starts when the silk farmers feed fresh mulberry leaves (leaves that contain high protein and nutrition) to the silkworms and keep rearing them for 28 days. The silkworms are tended with care and once they are fully grown, the body starts to be clear and the gold silk filament is ready inside. Now the caterpillars are ready to spin their cocoons. However, instead of letting them spin the cocoons around their bodies as usual, kind grandmas and aunties select and clean about 300 – 500 caterpillars and place them on wooden frame stretched with smooth mesh in order for the caterpillar to freely move and start “weaving” the silk filament naturally. It is the duty of these kind grandmas and aunties to carefully look after the “weaving” process of the silkworms and absorb the waste from silkworms to guarantee the silk pads are clean. Additionally, while tending the silkworms, these ladies also sing to them and carefully take care of them for 72 hours until the natural gold silk pads are complete.
After that, all the silkworms are moved to the nursery nest to keep them warm until there comes a day beautiful butterflies will fly away to the whole wide world.
With this special “weaving” process that requires no heating, the natural protein created by the silkworms is still attached to every single silk filament which cannot be found in silk threads made with other methods. More importantly, this process allow thousands of beautiful butterflies to live until the day they can spread their wings and fly to the world of nature instead of being boiled to death and spooled the silk filament out as they would have been in the traditional sericulture process.
All these steps that are meticulously carried out to produce CEILK’s cosmetics does not only yield 100{1e9df3ff221fec67f2b46c55bd82e9961ae187e1b606f79864c8b507548386d0} natural silk filament and marvelous results for your skin, but also return happiness to the nature and community.
From a Woman with a Beautiful Heart to CEILK’s Beauty Products
Ms. Jinnaluck Chummongkol, founder of Jinnaluck Mulberry Saa Paper Co., Ltd. is the developer of silk filament pads to become beauty products under the CEILK brand. The Company has worked with Queen Sirikit Sericulture Center (Naan, Chiang Rai, Pha Yao, and Chiang Rai Rajabhat Institution) to develop knowledge that leads to the new uses of silk by changing silkworms’ behavior and processing to creating products of higher value than usual silk products.
CEILK was founded with determination, confidence, and strong intention to preserve the wisdom of local community as a legacy owned by Thai people and to create skin care products from nature made in the North of Thailand; the pride in helping people in the community by generating additional income and stable career; the intention to help reduce the amount of firewood needed for combustion in the silk boiling as well as to develop products for higher values. Despite several attempts of foreigners who tried to purchase the product licensing, she foresaw that the new creation of silk pad will add alternatives to farmers who do not wish to solely boil and spool silk filament for weaving. Over the past years, there has been an implementation of farmer community form. In the past, the villagers made monthly income from working in the rice field, gardening, or silk weaving of approximately 1,500 Baht per person. Nowadays, as they turned to producing silk filament pads, they are making over 10,000 Baht per person by rearing silkworms to “weave” the natural fresh silk pads and selling them to the Company. Their produce, which is totally handmade and does not require any machine or chemicals, is brought to be developed as silk skin cream and facial spa mask ready to be distributed to others in the overall society and country, bringing happiness to the fulfilled life along the way of complete self-sufficient.
Currently, the Company is in the process of negotiating contracts with private companies from China, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, and South Africa who are interested in purchasing the silk filament products which are in the process of getting ready for export in the near future.