{"id":5390,"date":"2014-04-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/2014\/04\/16\/tales-of-the-strange-unusual-sea-silk\/"},"modified":"2014-04-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T00:00:00","slug":"tales-of-the-strange-unusual-sea-silk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/?p=5390","title":{"rendered":"Tales of the strange &#038; unusual: sea silk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--single.php--><\/p>\n<p><!--loop-->\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t        <!--navigation--><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<!--post title--><\/p>\n<div class=\"postspace2\">\n\t<\/div>\n<p><!--content with more link--><\/p>\n<p>Reading for the Textile culture-class, I came across something I\u00b4ve never heard of before: sea silk.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sea silk<\/b>&amp;nbsp;is an extremely fine, rare, and valuable&amp;nbsp;fabric&amp;nbsp;that is made from the long silky filaments orbyssus&amp;nbsp;secreted by a gland in the foot of pen shells (in particular&amp;nbsp;<i>Pinna nobilis<\/i>). The byssus is used by the clam to attach itself to the sea bed.<sup id=\"cite_ref-1\"><br \/>\n<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Sea silk was produced in the&amp;nbsp;Mediterranean&amp;nbsp;region from the large marine&amp;nbsp;bivalve&amp;nbsp;mollusc&amp;nbsp;<i>Pinna nobilis<\/i>until early in the 20th century. The shell, which is sometimes almost a metre long, adheres itself to rocks with a tuft of very strong thin fibres, pointed end down, in the&amp;nbsp;intertidal zone. These byssus or filaments (which can be up to 6&amp;nbsp;cm long) are spun and, when treated with&amp;nbsp;lemon&amp;nbsp;juice, turn a golden colour, which never fades<sup>[<i>citation needed<\/i>]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>The cloth produced from these filaments can be woven even finer than silk, and is extremely light and warm; however, it attracts&amp;nbsp;clothes moths, the larvae of which will eat it. It was said that a pair of women\u2019s gloves could fit into half a&amp;nbsp;walnut&amp;nbsp;shell and a pair of stockings in a&amp;nbsp;snuffbox.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17842\" alt=\"800px-Sea_silk_glove_lo-res\" src=\"http:\/\/www.spindelmaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/800px-Sea_silk_glove_lo-res.gif\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\"><\/p>\n<p>Thank you, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sea_silk\">wikipedia!<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17843\" alt=\"220px-Mytilus_with_byssus\" src=\"http:\/\/www.spindelmaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/220px-Mytilus_with_byssus.jpg\" width=\"220\" height=\"330\"><\/p>\n<p>                       <!--for paginate posts--><\/p>\n<div class=\"postspace\">\n\t<\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<!--all options over and out--><\/p>\n<p>\t<!--include comments template--><\/p>\n<p><!-- You can start editing here. --><\/p>\n<p>        <!--do not delete--><\/p>\n<p><!--single.php end--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading for the Textile culture-class, I came across something I\u00b4ve never heard of before: sea silk. Sea silk&amp;nbsp;is an extremely fine, rare,<\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a class=\"myButt \" href=\"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/?p=5390\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diverse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spindelmaker.bluesystems.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}