'Bisso Marino Fili d'Oro dal Fondo del Mare/Muschelseide Goldene Faeden vom Meeresgrund'. Villa Ciani, Lugano, Switzerland: 18 October 2008-1 March 2009

摘要

An elegant lakeside nineteenth-century villa, now an art gallery, in the resort town of Lugano, Switzerland, was the unexpected host for the 2008 exhibition Bisso Marino which brought together the complex ecological, social, technical and political story of a rare and little-known textile fibre - the 'golden silk of the sea' obtained from the shellfish Pinna nobilis (Fig. 1). This thoughtful and comprehensive exhibition was originated by two Swiss museums, the Basel Naturhistorisches Museum and Museum der Kulturen, and was first seen in Basel in 2004. As the beautifully produced and illustrated catalogue makes clear, scholars and scientists from many different disciplines were brought together by Felicitas Maeder, the chief instigator of the Mussel Silk project.rnRightly assuming that most visitors had little knowledge of the life of Pinna nobilis, known in English as the noble pen fish or fan mussel, the first stage of the exhibition explored the Mediterranean coastal zones where it grows. Its extraordinary size -up to 120 cm - was made vividly clear in an underwater video showing the living shell gently opening and closing, and through comparisons with other shellfish.