When you buy a silk tie there are a number of decisions to make. If you're buying a patterned silk tie, one of the most important questions is whether you buy one with a woven design, or a printed design.
Woven silk ties (as the name suggests) have the pattern woven into silk itself as it is made. The silk used in woven ties is generally thicker and the patterns will be far less detailed than in printed silk. This will result in a woven silk tie being generally heavier in weight, producing a larger knot.
Printed silk ties will often use finer silk twill and have the pattern dyed onto the silk itself. This is generally done using a process called flat-bed screen printing. We use printed silk in our ties because it allows us to achieve smaller, finer and very detailed patterns. The ties will also produce a smaller knot.
To give you a better idea of how the process of printing onto silk works, we came across this great video by one of the last few silk screen-printers in this county. While silk printing used to be a much larger industry, it is now extremely niche, so please support it if you get the opportunity.