Golden-Colored Spider Silk On Display Through October 3

Friday, September 03 8:57 am

Spider Silk. Credit: AMNH\R. Mickens

Time is running out to view what took four years, some 80 people, and over one million golden orb spiders from Madagascar to create: an 11-by-4 foot, naturally golden-hued textile on display in the Museum through October 3.

For more than 100 years, people have tried to extract silk from spiders, but the spectacular, rare fabric showcased in the Museum Grand Gallery is the only surviving textile made out of the silk of these hairy, eight-legged creatures.

“I was blown away by its wonderful, lustrous, golden color,” says Museum Curator Ian Tattersall. “Only one other spider silk textile was ever exhibited, in Paris around 1900, and that has subsequently been lost, so this is unique in the world” (To hear more from Dr. Tattersall on the spider silk exhibit, go here).

Golden orb spiders—the largest of which can grow to the size of a human hand—produce golden-hued silk that is stronger than steel but is conveniently elastic and lightweight. Because of these rare properties, people have envisioned potential applications for spider silk in battle, surgery, and space exploration, among other fields. But unlike silkworms, which can be easily farmed to produce mass quantities of silk, golden orb spiders are cannibalistic in nature, making them difficult to hold in close quarters and to extract silk filament in big quantities.

Despite the obstacles, American fashion designer Nicholas Godley teamed up with art historian and textile expert Simon Peers to build a complex spider silk harvesting operation in Madagascar. The pair hired locals, who collected over 3,000 spiders per day by using long bamboo sticks to tear down the spiders’ golden-colored webs, which can span the length of a one-lane road.

Once gathered, groups of 24 spiders—which can each produce about 80 feet of silk filament—were placed into hand-powered spools, after which dexterous hands twisted the filaments into strands of varying thickness, ranging from 96 to 960 individual thread strands.

Altogether, 1,063,000 spiders supplied 995,000 threads for Godley and Peer’s brilliant fabric, which is adorned with stylized birds, flowers, and other traditional Malagasy designs.

“It goes to show that it is possible to bring back a really complex tradition almost from the dead,” says Dr. Tattersall. “This is the apogee of what has been done, because it’s using all these old techniques and all these wonderful surface patterns to create something that’s totally new.”

For more on the spider silk exhibit, check out the video below.