The Sarah's Silks Story
1970s
Sarah's mom makes handmade dress-up pieces, and instills in Sarah the value of creative play. Here's a picture of the first dress-up Sarah and her mom dyed and sewed together - she's a lion!
1980s
Sarah joins the Peace Corps and works in Guatemala as a maternal healthcare nurse. She falls in love with bright, beautiful textiles and the concept of simple, multi-purpose toys.
1994
Sarah's 4 year old son Josh loves to play pretend and is often asking her for costumes. Sarah dyes Josh a square of green silk to use as a dress-up piece that he could use to make into a Peter Pan costume. She finds that it is easy. to do, a beautiful color, is soft and "not itchy," and Josh uses it to be Peter Pan! Success!
The next day Josh wants to be a turtle, so Sarah helps him tie the silk on his back as a shell. It works! Next, he wants to be Superman - so Sarah dyes blue and red for a tunic and cape. Before long, Josh has a whole basket of silks to use for dress-up.
One day a teacher asks Sarah for a rainbow silk for a special birthday celebration. Together with Josh, Sarah figures out that with red, yellow, and blue she can dip dye the whole spectrum! Rainbow soon becomes the most popular colorway for the neighborhood children.
Sarah thinks that many children would like to use their imaginations with Playsilks so she begins offering them for sale in local shops. She also begins sewing and making capes, skirts, princess hats, wings and many other open-ended toys all out of silk. Stores around the world hear about the silks and start to stock them!
Sarah's other sons, Noah and Morgan, inspire many of the toys that she designsover the next 20 years. Josh, Morgan, and Noah all attend Summerfield Waldorf School and Sarah participates in workshops and teacher trainings to learn more about early childhood education and imaginative play, which inform her toy designs.
2000s
Sarah's husband Mike wants to join in! Together with Josh, he travels to China to see how Playsilks are being made. They visit the family-owned factories where the silk toys were handpainted and sewn.
Mike and Josh also visit the Chengdu Waldorf School, which is near where Sarah's Silks toys are still produced today.
2024
Sarah's Silks has been family run for over 30 years! Mike has recently retired...
...and youngest son Morgan has taken over as CFO!
Josh and his fiancé Madlyn, do all of the creative marketing work.
Sarah still designs all of the toys with 3 things in mind:
Are they open ended (would children use the for many different things)?
Do they inspire the imagination (are they beautiful)?
Are they made of natural, sustainable (and not itchy) materials?
