Spider Silk Tapestry

American Museum of Natural History

If you're planning a visit to the American Museum of Natural History this weekend, be sure to check out Spider Silk, a new textile exhibition. The strands of over one million Nephila madagascariensis spiders were collected in Madagascar over a four-year period to produce one extremely durable, lightweight, and intricately-woven piece of cloth.

The golden color to the textile is completely natural, one of seven types of silk that the spiders produce. And unlike with worms, spiders are not harmed in its collection. Each individual thread in the tapestry is composed of 96 lines of pure spider silk, and the dense, decorative brocade threads are made of up to 960!

This type of spider silk is not viable for commercial use because of how hard the raw material is to acquire. Spiders must be gathered in the fields each day, get "silked" by machine for 20 minutes, and then rereleased outdoors. But the natural properties are of the textile are desirable and completely unique. It is thin, soft, strong, lightweight, adhesive, audible (strands utter a metallic twang when plucked), colorful, and renewable.

via NPR

Comments (12)

too cool - and i love the fact that producing the silk doesn't harm the spiders. will visit this weekend!

posted by lmonyc on October 2nd 2009 at 7:55pm
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I read this cost $500,000 to make, so I guess I won't be buying one to drape on my sofa anytime soon...

posted by modtramp on October 2nd 2009 at 8:48pm
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This textile is astonishingly beautiful!

posted by jacasi on October 2nd 2009 at 9:18pm
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i'm just wondering...if the cost wasn't prohibitive and the spiders aren't harmed would vegans wear/use this kind of silk?

posted by mkw on October 2nd 2009 at 11:37pm
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That is mind boggling! Beautiful textile, thanks for sharing.

posted by sassydo on October 3rd 2009 at 2:55am
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How long before engineers do a synthetic version of this?

posted by ebanfield on October 3rd 2009 at 4:05am
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Is it hypoallergenic?

posted by SeanG on October 3rd 2009 at 4:54am
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I hope this'll still be there whenI visit next week. I've got major ick-problems with spiders, but this is amazing.

posted by Bee T. on October 3rd 2009 at 11:11am
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That's amazing!

posted by seattlegirl on October 3rd 2009 at 1:51pm
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I'm totally creeped out by it, but it's totally amazing and totally pretty.

posted by fatalefemme on October 4th 2009 at 6:59pm
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In response to mkw- I believe if we could get the spiders to sign an agreement affirming that they experienced no pain or suffering during the collection of the silk, and also guaranteeing the spiders 33% of all proceeds from all silk sales, vegans would wear/use it.

posted by CuzaDrew on October 5th 2009 at 12:24pm
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with the ick factor...regular silk is harvested from worms..is that so much better than a spider? haha

posted by Cambra on November 12th 2009 at 9:51pm
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