spider silk

The Victoria & Albert museum in London is showing until June a cape and a shawl entirely made of spider thread.

This process comes from the island of Madagascar and is famous for a long time but isn't used considering the complexity and the time needed to produce a piece of cloth.

The spider thread is known to be more resistant and more elastic than the thread produce by silkworms, but it isn't possible to cultivate this species because it's carnivorous. The spiders are collected around the city and then released after giving their natural gold thread. More than one milion spiders and four years were needed to create this cape. It was made by Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley and a team of 80 people.

Spider thread cape

Spider thread

Pattern of the spider thread cape with annotations