A single piece of incredibly rare woven spider silk sourced from a black lab, looped, thermally taped and acid hand dyed.
 
ĀTOR is a genetically engineered, acid-dyed, spider silk skarf, for the veiled.
 
Constructed from an incredibly rare extruded filament, sourced from a now-defunct wet lab in the strained technological heart of an aging United Kingdom, the piece is entirely made by heat and hand.
 
This gossamer fine bio-punk skarf is woven from a single piece of the past’s different future, looped, thermally taped, and acid-treated to the charred coal of a widowed center of despair.
 
One color option is available, an anthracite that catches the light like diamond rain on Uranus.
 
This atemporal and ghostly object is a singular fabrication edition.
No two skarves are the same.
 
ĀTOR, translating to poison, is a 220cm x 30cm Möbius strip, finished by the touch of a human, and engraved with the power of a sun focused down to a fine beam of light, amplified by a stimulating emission of radiation.
 
This is an imperfect piece, it is a delicate, dramatic, and secretive object, with an intrinsic value known only to those on whose neck it drapes.
 
For this outcome of visionaries and dreamers of artisan science
is the relentless pursuit of the underdog,
and the dislocated promise of a synthetic biology.
There is no more of this material.
At least not in this genetic expression. 
It is an extinction-level event. 
 
Dimensions of ĀTOR - 220 cm x 30 cm Möbius strip
This edition is numbered to 40 scarves
 
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The warm handle of silk, the spectral presence of the tape, and shimmer of the silk tug at your attention – it is said of the spider’s torn web, there is no beginning and no end in the infinite melancholy of lost potential.
 
Our knit originates from the silk gland DNA of a spider, carefully placed in the milk ducts of a goat. A single filament is reeled out of the goat millimetres at a time to produce the most unobtainable fibre in the world.
 
It took 7 years to smuggle the skeins from the darkest corners of the lab it was grown in, a place where no light touches. Hastily wrapped in plastic and taped to protect it from the sea, it arrived in Iceland as 3 loose skeins ready to be unwoven by hand and spooled by length.
 
It takes several weeks to hand-loom the filament into this fabric quality, a further week gently coaxing the textile into the knotted web of this ghostly veil... And then another 3 days convincing by spoken word it to become an emperor’s new clothing.
 
Weight for weight, silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar.
 
But for none does the spider weave than its prey.
 
This next generation is woven, its proteins color treated with hot acid, then cured. After cutting it is twisted into a Möbius strip, and a flat felled seam is backstitched by hand with lengths of the same yarn, a holistic approach just short of felting, closing the loop.
 
The edges are folded and pressed with agonizing slowness, before being bound with a Japanese thermally activated tape, a frosted, almost invisible finish.
 
ĀTOR is made from one of the rarest multi-hyphenated materials in the world – genetically engineered spider-goat silk filament, hand-loomed, hand-dyed, hand-stitched, and hand-bound.
 
It is the 8-hands technique, as the legs of a spider.
Arachnid style.