What is the future of silk, this material that humans have coveted for many thousands of years? What is its past?
Silk is a fiber made by spiders, some moths, and even certain mollusks. Archeological evidence suggests that silk fiber has fascinated humans at least since somewhere around 5,000 years ago, when Neolithic farmers in China seem to have succeeded in domesticating wild silkworms. (They may have begun their efforts about 2,500 years earlier.) In three parts, molecular geneticist Aarathi Prasad’s Silk: A World History (William Morrow/HarperCollins) relates sometimes riveting stories of how silk became a world-wide object of wonder and exploitation.
Caterpillars of the family Bombycidae spin silk into cocoons from which they will one day emerge as adult moths. Unwound and then woven, those cocoons can become parachutes and parasails or the garments of people either glamorous or ordinary. Part I of Silk features the stories of a diverse cast of men and women who, over the course of centuries, farmed, studied, bred, and exploited Bombycidae. Bombyx mandarina (the wild silk moth) eventually became Bombyx mori (with a caterpillar about ten times heavier than that of B. mandarina and capable of creating strands of silk that are about a kilometer long). The beauty and utility of fabric woven from such threads piqued the curiosity of a host of scientists and opportunists. Some were staid. Some were downright strange. Dr. Prasad mines all of the humans’ biographies for whatever bits of wonder she can find. Along the way, she carefully examines scientific evidence about silkworms and silk.
The second part of the book is about sea silk and the Pinna nobilis mollusks who extrude the threads from which it is made. Also known as the noble pen shell or the fan mussel, they live in Mediterranean coastal waters. P. nobilis are enormous — about a meter long — and hermaphroditic. Like coral, they don’t go courting when they want to mate. Adults are immobile, having anchored themselves permanently to rocks with their silk threads. They are hermaphroditic When the sea is at its warmest, they release either male or female reproductive cells as they see fit. Fragments of P. nobilis shells along with ancient spools and weaving equipment have been discovered in archeological digs up and down the Mediterranean coast. Even so, as Dr. Prasad noted in a phone interview, the shells may be remnants of mollusks harvested as food, not as a source of silk. How much sea silk was made in ancient times may forever be unknown. Only one piece of fabric seems to have survived from the early cultures of the Mediterranean. It spent century upon century buried with a mummified woman in a sealed tomb. Last photographed in 1935 and transferred to a museum, it disappeared amid the chaos of World War II. Since the 1980s, populations of P. nobilis have plummeted. Once plentiful, the species is now critically endangered. Weavers today who want to create sea silk must work with lower-quality threads from other mollusk species.
The book’s second part also describes spider silks and the host of manufacturing, automotive, and aeronautics purposes to which it has been put. For example, for well over a century, it’s been used in bullet-proof vests. In Silk, Dr. Prassad passes on the story that Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand may have had among his wardrobe items a silk vest to protect himself from assassination attempts. If he had one, he didn’t wear it on June 28, 1914, and World War I ensued.
In Part III of her book, Dr. Prasad offers a peak into the future of silk and its potential uses — for example, in vaccines, artificial body organs, and even implantable or ingestible brain sensors.
In less skillful hands, the grand story of silk could have been — well, just the story of threads and fabric. Thank goodness, Dr. Prasad has a good eye for drama. She uses it every chance she gets to reveal world history and its characters both major and minor. Intellectually gorgeous, Silk brilliantly illuminates a tapestry of once lost tales from around the world.
HarperCollins/William Morrow
293 pages
ISBN: 978-0063160255
April, 2024
Hardcover $32.50
