: Nylon was touted as
: the manmade miracle fiber which was synthetic silk-- an it
: certainly swept the market in lady's stockings, but if silk and
: nylon are chemically similar then I'd expect a silk kayak skin
: would stretch when wet.

Nylon was invented during WWII as a replacement for silk in parachutes when the material was no longer available. Screen printing is cheezy. I can't picture the highly sophisticated Chinese aristocrats five centuries ago wearing shirts that said "My mom went to Shanghai and all I got was this stupid screen-printed silk T-shirt."

m