On May 27, under the encouragement of Prof.Dominique Cardon, who is a member of the academic committee of the State Administration of cultural heritage protection of the State Cultural Relics Bureau, the "Silk Silk Road International Research Alliance and the French National Academy of Sciences, Madame Alix Reverchon noted batches of Silk Samples from 19th century Lyon to the China National Silk Museum. Museum Director Zhao Feng flew to Lyon to accept the generous gift.

Initial examinations revealed close to 2500 silk samples, all of which date back to the entire 19th century, with the majority coming from the 20’s and 39’s. They include single yarn, plied yarn and fancy yarn made of materials including silk and modern man-made fiber. The colors of these silk samples come from the entire range of the color spectrum. This batch of samples are enormous in size, varied in shape, diverse in materials, complete in colors and credible in origin, providing invaluable insight to researchers, and increasing China National Silk Museum’s resources.

According to relevant sources, these previous samples came from an internationally renowned silk company—the Bouscarle Company. This company was founded by Luxembourg Bouscarle (1833-1905), and,upon his passing, was inherited by his son Louis Bouscarle (1873-1941).Luxembourg Bouscarle used to work at a madder dyeing workshop, but went bankrupt after synthetic dyes replaced plant-based dyes. Louis Bouscarle graduated from Lyon Business School and Textile Institute. He connected the Western silk capital Lyon with the entire world, especially China; in fact,within these samples contained high-quality silk from Shanghai and Tussah silk from Guangzhou.

Lyon is situated in Southeastern France, and was an important city on the corridor connecting the Mediterranean Sea with Northern Europe. It was a prosperous city even back in its Roman days, and later as a silk capital flourished economically, bestowing the city large political voices. In the 17th century, Lyon became the European Silk Capital:the silk used by the French aristocracy at that time was produced in this very city. Even today, Lyon is still an important global silk manufacturer, an expert in man-made fiber and synthetic dyes. As it were, these samples were items symbolic of the that era when the use of man-made fiber and and synthetic dyes replaced their counterparts derived from silkworms and plants.(translated by Bi Ran)