Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses

In a gorgeous history book spanning continents and millennia, Aarathi Prasad will weave the story of silk, the world’s most extraordinary invention.

In the ancient world, the origin of silk was shrouded in mystery; Aristotle believed that silk worms condensed spontaneously from drops of dew. For almost 3000 years, we have used silk proteins for clothes and in medicine. Via the Silk Roads, it became the commodity associated with the earliest long distance trade and commerce. And we now know that the threads produced by the bombyx mori caterpillar are the strongest material in nature.

It isn’t only caterpillars and butterflies that produce silk, of course: spiders and certain shellfish do too. All have been the source of threads cultivated and utilised by human beings. In them, we find a microcosm of our complex and protean relationship with the natural world. But they also hold the key to the future - in laboratories around the world, it’s becoming clear that silk’s unique physical properties will see it dominate medicine and technology. In this extraordinary book, Aarathi will weave together the biology of the animals and their metamorphoses, the cultural history of silk, and the material science of the future of this most complex of materials - as well as her own personal fascination with it.