Spiders, Weavers, and Webs

Abstract

No wonder that Robert Hooke was so fascinated by silk and not by wool, cotton, linen, hemp or other natural textile fibers known to him. Silk was precious and expensive; it formed the clothes of the privileged. A gentleman’s dress of dyed silk cost between 20 and 45 Florentine gold florins (guilders) in the middle of the sixteenth century, equivalent to the cost of 5 to 9 cows. Silk was beautiful to dye and was soft on the skin. Plebs had to wear garments of coarse linen from flax or of itching wool from sheep. No wonder that natural scientist Hooke (1635–1703) wanted to see an artificial silk.

“And I haven often thought that there might be a way found out, to make an artificial glutinous composition, much resembling, if not full as good, nay better, than that Excrement, or whatever other substance it be out of which, the Silk-worm wire-draws his clew. If such a composition were found it were certainly an easie matter to find very quick ways of drawing it out into small wires for use”.

Robert Hooke, “Micrographia, or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon”, Royal Society, London 1665