Of spiders and silk, of silk and textiles

One of my favorite things about living in Florida is the daily parade of exotic creatures that cross my path. I live a pretty urban existence, but it's not at all an unusual thing to have a small flock of white ibises get out of my way as I walk to the car in the morning. As the white ibises feign their mute alarm (the things are unflappable I swear) the monk parrots in the date palm across the street make a racket that more than compensates the ibises' silence. I love that scene and I love the very routine-ness of these encounters. The creatures I come across less frequently are an even bigger thrill. Out of all of the curiosities I've encountered in the last (almost) 20 years, my all time favorite has to be Nephila clavipes.

Nephila clavipes is Florida's yellow silk spider, variously known as a banana spider, a calico spider, a writing spider, a giant wood spider or a golden orb spider. Whatever you call it, N. clavipes is hard to miss.

As some of their names suggest, N. clavipes spins an orb web of unusual color. It's a rich, golden yellow and it has to be the strongest spider silk I've ever come across. If you see one of these webs in the woods, you can pluck the support filaments as if they were guitar or harp strings. They don't make any noise of course, but those web filaments feel every bit as strong as the strings in an instrument.

The spiders themselves are harmless to humans, though they are a bit intimidating. Ever since I first stumbled upon one during my first summer in Florida, they have cast a spell over me I can't quite explain. There's a lot of information out there on them and this tells me I'm not the only one who's fascinated by these beauties.

There are Nephila species located all around the warmer parts of the world and the New York Times broke a story this week about some clever soul in Madagascar who took his fascination with Nephila further than anyone else ever has.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York this week unveiled the world's only brocaded textile woven from spider silk. Simon Peers is an art historian, textile expert and 20-year Madagascar resident. He joined forces with Nicholas Godley, an American fashion designer and fellow Madagascar resident, to recreate and perfect what had been tried and abandoned for as long as there have been human beings around to admire spiders. They were going to make a fabric from spider's silk. It had been tried before in Madagascar, so their idea wasn't without precedent.

100 years ago, a French priest, inventor and educator known as Father Comboué figured out a way to spin spider silk harvested directly from the business end of a Nephila inaurata into a thread. He was said to have made enough of this spider's silk fabric to outfit a bed canopy. Reports differ about how true that story is, and whatever fabric he did create no longer exists. So from the attempts of Father Comboué until Peers and Godley waded back into the spider silk business five years ago, no one had successfully made anything from spider silk.

Peers and Godley perfected earlier attempts through their persistence and tenacity as much as anything. The fabric unveiled this week required the output of a million spiders. With the help of the Malagasy people, Peers and Godley collected upwards of three thousand N. inaurata a day. They would place each spider in a harness  and then connect it to the harnesses of 23 other spiders. The 24 spiders would spin a single filament each and the filaments would be wound into a thread and then onto a spool. Each spider could produce a single filament 400 feet long before it could produce no more. Once spent, the spider would be re-released to the wild where it would regain its strength in a day or two and could be recaptured and "milked" again or go about its life.

Once they had enough thread, they could in turn spin that into a yarn and start weaving. Madagascar was once known for its intricately woven textiles. Peers and Godley wanted to revive the dying art of Malagasy textiles and to teach a new generation about the weaving traditions of their ancestors. They chose a traditional brocaded pattern once reserved for kings for their project and commenced weaving.

The men estimate that it cost a half a million dollars to produce an eleven foot long shawl, which they regard as a work of art more than an economically viable textile. Whatever it is, what they produced is the first example of a brocaded fabric hand woven from spider silk ever recorded. It's an quite an achievement. The color is the natural, yellow gold of the Nephila species and it's said to be as strong as if it were woven from Kevlar.

Needless to say, I'm captivated by this story and it has me looking at my beloved yellow silk spiders in a whole new light. I found this video yesterday that was shot at the unveiling and it features Peers and Godley describing their work.




If you're in New York, head up to the museum at 79th and Central Park West and let me know how it looks in real life. This is just cool.

SketchUp's got a new groove

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, SketchUp went out and made it better. Google SketchUp released an update yesterday and it's amazing. My expectations are kind of off the charts when it comes to SketchUp updates and this one has left me as satisfied as the updates that proceeded it. Some of its new features are really stunning in a gee-whiz-who-thinks-of-this kind of way. Watch this video:





Pretty slick, huh? Applying actual textures to the exterior of a building that you can put in context on a map. Wow.

If you design for a living, and I mean design anything, download SketchUp now. If you don't design anything but you want to see what's available to help you turn a thought in your head into a real object, download SketchUp too. It's the ultimate visualization tool and it keeps getting better.

You can download SketchUp here. There are two versions, a hugely functional free version called SketchUp Free and a Professional version you'll need to generate measured plans. Appropriately enough, it's called SketchUp Pro. So learn how to use it int he free version and when you upgrade to Pro, the first eight hours of use are free. It's amazing stuff and the gang in Boulder done good. They done good again.

Have you seen this pendant light?

This is a Panton Moon Pendant. It was designed by Verner Panton and introduced in 1960. The Panton Moon became an overnight sensation and a classic was born.

I received an e-mail from a reader yesterday. She found an original Moon Pendant at a store near her home and picked it up for the unimaginable price of $150. Original Moon Pendants typically sell for ten times that. Somebody got a bargain to end all bargains. She wrote to me and asked if I know of a source where she can buy a licensed reproduction of her Panton Moon Pendant.

The answer is that no, I don't. All of my usual sources for that sort of thing come up blank when I look for that lamp. So I'm writing a post to ask if anybody out there knows where to look for a reproduction. A licensed reproduction will match her original exactly as opposed to a knock off that won't. Her plan is to hang the original alongside a reproduction over her kitchen island. It sounds idyllic frankly, and I'd like to help her out if I can.

Verner Panton (1926 - 1998) was a Danish furniture and interior designer. He's most remembered for his wild use of color and his radical thinking about how form and function interact. Some of his edgier creations, like this environment called Phantasy (1970), preserve his time in the spotlight perfectly.

In 1970, everything was up for grabs, or so it seemed. Who says that there needs to be a clear delineation between walls, floors and ceiling? Who says that furniture can't be structural and that structures can be furniture? Who says indeed? Panton and his contemporaries blazed a trail and carried the whole of our culture with them. Despite the initial negative reaction on Main Street to Phantasy, within a few years the men on Main Street were wearing four-inch-wide paisley ties. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Not all of Panton's work has been left behind in the era when he created it. A lot of his furniture is still in production.

This is his S Chair, also from 1960. The S Chair was the world's first injection-molded, mass produced object and it's been in continuous production ever since. The S Chair proved that injection molding was possible and viable and the world has never been the same.

Panton and the designers of his generation left behind a legacy that lingers, even if his aesthetic is not longer popular. I'm excited that somebody wants to use some of his pieces in her home and the question remains: has anybody seen this light?

Notes from the field: Monogram takes Manhattan

I spent three days in early July in this cooking theater in the Monogram Experience Center at GE Appliances' US headquarters in Louisville, KY. On 7 July, 2009 I wrote a post that detailed my eye-opening experience with a GE Monogram 48" Pro Range.

GE Monogram's Experience Center, Louisville, KY

I went into that seminar with some hard-edged and what I thought were hard-set opinions about what makes a good pro range. Monogram's 48" Pro Range challenged all of that. Aside from the amazing job GE did in developing that range, they put on one amazing three-day seminar, let me tell you. Monogram's Experience Center, where they hold training for design professionals, is a beautiful facility. The interior spaces are a symphony of muted colors and interesting textures. The furnishings and finishes read like a who's who of  20th and 21st century design. Ann Sacks, Harry Bertoia, Mies van der Rohe --the gang's all here. Having seen their Experience Center with my own eyes, I can say without hesitation that GE is serious about having Monogram be a major player in the world of luxury appliances. All of this effort is not just for appearances though. After having met and spoken with the team behind the brand, it's also really clear that they are serious and they know what they're doing. I was struck by the candor and honesty of the product development and education teams at Monogram. This was not just just a marketing spiel, these people were onto something.

While I was in Louisville, I learned that Monogram had opened a design center in the Architects and Designers Building in Manhattan. It's one thing to build a top notch showcase in Louisville, but it's another thing entirely to open a showroom in the holy of holies. The A&D Building has 40 showrooms on 12 floors for a combined 200,000 square feet and it exists to make designers salivate. This is a facility geared specifically to architects and designers, though all of it's open to the public now too. The A&D Building showcases the best of what's available in the worlds of finish and furnishings. Perched high on the 10th floor is the Monogram Design Center.

Monogram opened it a year-and-a-half ago and it is stunning. I was struck immediately by how large it is --it's one of the bigger showrooms in the building. It's decked out with the latest and greatest appliances from Monogram of course, but they are arranged in a series of functioning kitchen vignettes. The kitchens on display a gorgeous and beautifully designed. Yet there's a knowing restraint to everything, and it's in that restraint that Monogram whispers "we've arrived."

Looking across the Design Center lobby toward the demo kitchen

Chef Chef Tageré Southwell holds court in the Monogram Design Center

Monogram has a resident chef who presides over this test kitchen, Chef Tageré Southwell. That primary kitchen is wired for sound and video though it's not at all obvious at first glance. The video monitors, video cameras, mics and speakers have been thoroughly designed around and hidden. As with everything else in their Design Center, somebody spent a lot of time thinking this through.

I'd made arrangements ahead of time, and I was met in the Design Center by Paula Cecere, the Design Center manager. I spent about an hour with Paula and she gave me a thorough tour. Paula had been present for the entire construction and she knew the story of every refrigerator panel and piece of tile. Through Paula, Monogram managed to capture some of the candor and hospitality I experienced in Kentucky. It's funny, I expect people in Kentucky to be friendly and welcoming. I don't expect it in Manhattan and it was refreshing to see. That hospitality makes the Monogram Design Center a surprising island of neighborly calm.

Seeing Monogram's products on display in a showroom such as this one in New York demonstrates the confidence GE has in Monogram, and it's a well-founded confidence. Monogram's most definitely a brand to watch. I don't hesitate to specify them and I owe that to Mongram's outreach efforts of the last few months entirely. Good job Monogram, you made a believer out of me.

If you're in New York and you'd like to experience the Monogram Design Center yourself, it's on East 58th Street between Lexington and 3rd Avenues. Go in there and tell Paula I sent you.

Got a toilet story?

The terrific Joyce Wadler had a short piece in last Wednesday's The New York Times about a literary contest of a sort. American Standard is giving away a toilet to the best toilet story submitted between now and October 9th, 2009 on American Standard's Facebook fan page.

Wadler kills me and she cages this story in the terms of a great literary contest and refers to Facebook as that modern Algonquin Round Table. The former English majors who read her work find this hilarious and I can vouch for that personally. Not content to invoke Dorothy Parker, Wadler goes on to pay homage to Herman Melville in her example of a literary toilet story.

And so on one damp, drizzly November of the soul, I set sail upon a noble whaling craft, the Pequod, although the bathrooms, truth be told, were strictly 16th century.

“Ahab,” I said, “have ye never heard of the control-flush mechanism that enables a user to select complete or partial flush of a toilet tank and is thus more environmentally responsible?”

“Out of my way, Ishmael,” he said. “I’m looking for a fish.”

Haughty humor aside, American Standard is looking for humorous (and true) stories about the humble commode. This is a legitimate contest and American Standard will award five new toilets to the top five entries. All you have to do is go to Facebook, become a fan of American Standard and then write on their wall. The Times piece must have been read by quite a few people because that fan page is already filling up with stories. Some of them are laugh out loud funny, so poke around and read a few.

Some of the best and most disturbing toilet stories I've ever heard have come from plumbers, especially those in bigger cities. Amid the routine plumbing repairs and installations, I can only imagine the calamity a plumber in Los Angeles might go through on a daily basis. Most plumbers live under a professional omerta but when you can get one going, hilarity ensues. Go ahead, buy a plumber a beer some time and you'll begin to understand why the services of a good plumber cost so much. I'm going to forward this to every plumber I know. I haven't heard a good black water story in ages.