spider cloth

1907, Dry Goods Guide, New York: Black Publishing Company, p. 19, Several new fabrics of cotton and silk are marvels of beauty in design and color. Spider cloth, which comes under this list, is very sheer and has a silk sheen. It is printed in floral patterns or in narrow stripes alternating with floral designs in spray or detached blossoms, the colors in all the delicate tones of pink, green and gray or in blue and white.

1921, D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, New York: T. Seltzer, Chapter 8, p. 312, It was a gray morning on deck, a gray sea, a gray sky, and a gray, spider-cloth, unimportant coast of Italy not far away.

1885, The Popular Science Monthly, March 1885, “Popular Miscellany,” p. 718, A few species of spiders encourage the hope that the manufacture of spider cloth may yet become something more than a dream.

1893, Henry Christopher McCook, American Spiders and Their Spinning Work, Philadelphia: the author, Academy of Natural Science, Volume 3, Chapter 4, p. 84, the Emperor Aurengzebe of Hindostan, who reproved his daughter for the indelicacy of her costume, although she wore as many as seven thicknesses of spider cloth!