Event: Rare Spider Silk Textile Exhibit
by Lauren on Sep.23, 2009, under Science Event
Where: Museum of Natural History
When: September 23, 2009 10am-5:45pm
Cost: $16 for general public, $12 for students and seniors
A spectacular and extremely rare textile, woven from golden-colored silk thread produced by one million spiders in Madagascar, goes on display Wednesday, September 23, in the Museum’s Grand Gallery. This magnificent contemporary textile, measuring 11 feet by 4 feet, took four years to make using a painstaking technique developed more than 100 years ago that is just now being revived.
Drawing on the legacy of a French Jesuit priest who worked with spiders in Madagascar in the 1880s and 1890s, the silk involved the efforts of 70 people who collected the spiders every day from Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and the surrounding countryside. A dozen more people were needed to extract the silk fiber with hand-powered machines. The silk fiber for this intricately-patterned textile was derived from the spider Nephila madagascariensis, which is renowned for the lustrous golden hue of its silk fiber. Previously, the only known spider-silk textile of note was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and it was subsequently lost.
The textile is on loan from Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley.
:exhibit, gold, museum, silk, spider, textile
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