Silk

2012 - present

Sometime ago, I read an article about spider silk and how it was now being used to make bullet proof vests. At the time, I was working with delicate silk textiles that my father had purchased for his mother, my grandmother, in Benares, India. The silk, a thin georgette, had been washed and line-dried and ironed by the most skilled ironwalla in the neighborhood who neither burned the fine material with his charcoal-powered iron nor let any soot fall on the saris while working on a dusty street in the middle of Chennai. But time had not been kind, and the heat and the rain and the moths had taken their toll. The elaborate embroidery, which, when the saris were bought in the 1960s, was still done with pure silver-coated thread, survived, but the fabric was compromised by holes and time and touch.

My aunt gave me the whole musty lot saying, “make something!”

Antique silk cut into shapes is the first step in the lost wax casting process that Maya Kini uses to transfer the patterns and textures of silk to her unique jewelry.

Wide silk silver ring with rosecut diamond

Rings from the moth series, silver, diamonds

Silk portrait ring in 22k gold and silver

Silk portrait ring in 22k yellow gold and silver

The silk for saris comes from silk moths. The moth is at once the creator and, (although a different species,) the destroyer of the fabric. On the same trip when I was given this inheritance of holes, we visited a government-run silkfactory in the town of Mysore. Room upon cavernous room were filled with the stages of silk textile production, a sort of lifecycle of silk that mirrored that of the silk moths’: vats of white cocoons, simmering dye baths, spinning wheels, an airplane hangar of clicking machine looms, and, finally, the hand looms where gold thread was woven into the red wedding saris. The factory manager gave me a freshly-loomed pile of silk to hold and I remember how heavy it felt in my arms. I think ounces of gold were woven into the silk and I imagined the bride covered in the weight of all her gold jewelry and silk, her own inheritance.

Fabric unravels and silk, while strong and capable, was never something I had considered to be life preserving. Would these silk bullet proof vests belong to the fashion world or to the police? Could the toil of a spider save a life?

Read the 2013 Interview in Art Jewelry Forum here.