For me, each day begins and ends with wanting to learn a little more about the secrets of spider silk.
The next time you see a spider web, please, pause and look a little closer. You'll be seeing one of the most high-performance materials known to man.
The creatives, they want to connect with people. These artists, the clothing designers, they want to connect with people the same way that music gets to connect with people. But the cost of silk is too expensive. And they won't lower their quality levels. So I can spend $2 million on a record and give it out in a democratic way. They could spend all their time making the greatest dress in the world, and it's just impossible to hand-make that many.
It's like the spiders are sharing an ancient secret with me, and that's why I'm going to spend the rest of my life studying spider silk.
You don't work with spiders very long before you start noticing how important silk is to their life and just how special that is for spiders.
Look at spiders. They use about eight different properties of silk for different functions. The spider is like a multimaterial 3D printer.
For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money.
In my own creations, the earliest influence came from the ancient civilisations of Egypt, China, Africa and Persia. In fact, one of my earlier creations was a range of tunics, made from silk procured from the islands of Madagascar.
If any person examines by the microscope that part towards the extremity of the spider's body from whence its thread proceeds, he will observe the spot to be, as it were, surrounded by five several protuberances or risings, each ending in a point and altogether forming a kind of enclosure.
