Producing the spider silk—the only example of its kind displayed anywhere in the world—involved the efforts of 70 people who collected spiders daily from webs on telephone wires, using long poles. A unique piece of golden yellow silk brocade cloth, woven from spiderwebs, is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. To harvest enough silk to make the cloth, more than a million female golden orb spiders were collected in Madagascar, "milked" for silk, and released back into the wild. The golden spider silk was woven by Malagasy artisans into lamba Akotifahana, a type of brocade that is traditionally reserved for the aristocracy; the entire process took 4 years. [more inside]
posted by Quietgal on Oct 5, 2009 - 88 comments

Pronounced "chin" ("stringed instrument") or "goo chin" ("old stringed instrument"), the qin / guqin throughout its long history has been the musical instrument most prized by China's literati. They categorized it as one of their "four arts", collected it as an art object, praised its beautiful music, and built around it a complex ideology (compare its image in popular culture). No other instrument was described and illustrated in such detail, so often depicted in paintings, or so regularly mentioned in poetry. And its tablature documents the world's oldest detailed written instrumental music tradition, allowing both historically informed performance (requiring silk strings) of the many early melodies, and practical exploration of the relationship between Chinese music theory and music practice. The guqin silk string zither work of John Thompson. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Dec 14, 2008 - 7 comments

Underground Wonderland The RISD Museum is hosting a retrospective of Providence's DIY marketing approach to underground shows. The exhibit, with every wall plastered from floor to ceiling, feels like a time-capsule. Fort Thunder and its associated bands has been mentioned here on the blue before, but the sense of community that comes through, and which still runs through Providence's subcultures thanks to individuals like Ryan Lesser and his "Lots of Noise" site deserves yet another post. Be sure to check out the Lots of Noise image and photo gallery for more fun stuff. (No direct links, sorry!)
posted by stagewhisper on Oct 9, 2006 - 7 comments

Parts of Sweden are overrun by caterpillars. Interesting photos of a caterpillar swarm, with pictures of trees, buildings and bicycles completely cocooned-over with visually stunning (if icky) results. Swarms aren't that unusual, but the term is more habitually used with flying insects like bees and locusts. Soon enough humans might be joining in the fun too, albeit via surrogates.
posted by clevershark on Aug 4, 2006 - 45 comments

wormspit.com -- all about hand-raising silkworms and processing their spit.
posted by casarkos on Apr 9, 2006 - 14 comments

When American expat, Thai silk king, and former OSS (now CIA) agent James H.W. Thompson disappeared without a trace in the highlands of Malaysia on Easter 1967, he left behind a remarkable house in Bangkok, a major silk exporting company, and a lot of questions. There are many theories about his disappearance, but there's little evidence to support any of them.
posted by goatdog on Feb 2, 2006 - 14 comments