Spider silk tapestry

True confessions- I don’t like spiders.

photo by Noreen Crone-Findlay copyright

Give me a butterfly, a bee, a ladybug, a dragonfly any day, but spiders…. eep… the closest I like to get to spiders is at the end of the  ‘pick up the spider and take it outside‘ tool  in the photo.

It’s even better if it’s my husband who is the one picking up the spider and marching it outside. erg.

Have you heard about the spider silk tapestry that is on display at the  American Museum of Natural History?

Two artists, Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, have worked out a way to put spiders (special big honkin’ ones in Madagascar- they are big enough for people to eat them. erg.) into a harness (!) and milk the silk out the spider’s spinerettes like milking a cow. (The mind boggles).  And, yes, the people who were putting the spiders in the harnesses got bitten. Which is saying a lot, as the spiders are at least 4 inches across. erg erg erg.

The spiders have to be caught and kept away from each other because they’ll eat each other if they are given the chance. Nice.

So,  1 million, 63 thousand of these boogers were caught and ’silked’ to create the strands of silk to weave the spectacular tapestry that is one of a kind.  It took almost 5 years to spin the sticky, light, soft and highly elastic, golden colored strands of protein.

Every single thread in the tapestry is made up of 96 single strands of spider silk!

Not ONE strand was broken in the weaving! wow….

Will it ever be done again. Nope.

Here is the link to the press release: spider silk tapestry

I was pleased to see a pic of the loom, but have been frustrated by not seeing how the spinning and weaving were done.

Here’s the youtube video about the tapestry:

There is also an exhibition about the silk road coming soon… it looks fabulous.

Have you ever wondered exactly how  a spider spins silk? Now you know…..