You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘sea silk’
tag. Luxury fiber is a strange thing. Linen comes from flax
(which has some legitimate claims to being the first
domesticated plant). Silk is derived from the cocoons of
lepidoterans. Qiviut comes from the undercoats of musk-oxen. One
of the rarest of all luxury fibers comes from an even more
peculiar source. “Sea silk” is produced by collecting and
spinning the long micro filaments or “byssus” secreted by
several kinds of bivalve mollusks–expecially Pinna nobilis (a
large saltwater clam once widespread in the Mediterranean
ocean). Pinna nobilis can grow up to a meter (3 feet) in size
and anchors itself to the ocean floor with an extremely fine
fiber it excretes from a land in its foot. The fiber was
mentioned in various Greek, Egyptian, and Roman sources (and an
analog seems to have existed in ancient China) but
differentiating sea silk made from mollusk fibers from similar
luxury fibers like cocoon silk, or fine linen seems to be more a
matter of