Golden Spider Silk
23 Mar 2024- 6 July 2024
The Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar
As a companion exhibition to Fashioning an Empire: Textiles from Safavid Iran, this captivating installation delves into the fascinating world of golden spider silk, unveiling its extraordinary history and remarkable properties.
For centuries, spider silk was coveted by those seeking to compete with the silk arriving from China and flooding the wealthy wardrobes and bedchambers of Europe. Golden Spider Silk charts the histories of the fascinating players determined to harness this rarest of silks, from the inception of the idea by the Frenchman François-Xavier Bon in 1709 to modern-day creators. The process of extracting a single ounce (28 grams) of golden spider silk requires 23,000 spiders.
“ There is no precedent for spider silk textiles on this scale, either for the technical complexity, or for the quality of silk used. ”- Simon Peers, Creator
Curated by Tara Desjardins, this exhibition presents three exquisite textiles and a stunning cape created by Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, showcased in the Middle East for the first time. The four works on view have been crafted from the rare silk of golden orb-weaver spiders indigenous to Madagascar, famous for the golden colour of their webs. The exhibition also includes five manuscripts depicting historical European attempts to document or produce spider silk.
More information can be found online here.
Image: Courtesy of The Museum of Islamic Art.
