Golden Spider Silk

The cape and 3 textiles presented here represent the culmination of centuries of tireless human endeavour and ambition to harvest one of the most beautiful but elusive materials on our planet – spider silk. They were produced by Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley over the course of two decades from the silk of golden orb-weaver spiders – Nephila Madagascariensis – native to Madagascar and famous for the colour of their webs, which shimmer with gold.

Spider Silk has for centuries been coveted for its promise of riches, particularly by those seeking to compete with the silk arriving from China which started to flood the wealthy wardrobes and bedchambers of Europe. Its extraordinary history can be told through a handful of fascinating and ambitious players determined to push human enterprise into corners of creativity otherwise overlooked, though most soon found their dreams tangled up in a quandary of complication and prohibitive cost.

That is until very recently.

Brocaded Lamba Textile

The first major weave completed in 2009, it took four years to make and used the thread of 1,063,000 spiders.

Shawl

Sheer Taffeta Weave

This shawl was the first attempt at weaving with golden spider silk for over a century and used silk collected from over 500,000 spiders.

Shawl

Satin Weave

Using a satin weave allowed the beauty of the silk and its extraordinary lustre to be showcased.

Cape

Using silk from 1,200,000 spiders this cape took two years of collecting, silking and weaving, and 6,000 hours of embroidery and appliqué work to produce.