State Silk Museum

The State Silk Museum was founded in 1887. The museum building was built as a station for Caucasian silkworm breeders and constitutes a Cultural Heritage Monument.

When you visit the museum, you’ll learn about the people in Georgia who knew the secret of making silk fibres before the common era, as well as about the special properties for which Georgian silk is famous, and the prizes won by Georgian silk at the international exhibitions of Tunisia in 1850 and London in 1862. More recently, in 1998, Georgian silk was awarded a platinum star from the European Quality Committee at the Spanish exhibition.

The museum houses a diverse collection of items related to silkworm breeding, from both Georgia and sixty-one other countries around the world. Here you will see the oldest collection of silkworm cocoons from the world’s silkworm breeding countries, with 5,000 species and varieties; a collection of 19th-century handmade fabrics from the Caucasus; a collection of French silk Jacquard fabrics from the 1860s; a collection of more than 400 pieces of German lace; and more.

For those interested, you can learn about the entire process that begins at the silkworm and ends with the finished fabric.