By the way, you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Bob Ryan
Hill Farrer & Burrill
Los Angeles
http://historywired.si.edu/object.cfm?ID=535
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A Silk Purse From a Sow's Ear
1921
Taking up Swift's challenge
Massachusetts industrialist Arthur D. Little liked a challenge. In 1921,
after hearing someone quote Jonathan Swift's adage, "You can't make a
silk purse of a sow's ear," Little decided to try to do just that. From
a meat-packer he obtained a form of glue made from the skin and gristle
of sows' ears. Taking an amount roughly equivalent to one sow's ear, he
had it filtered and forced through a spinneret into a mixture of
formaldehyde and acetone. The glue emerged as 16 fine, colorless streams
that hardened and then combined to form a single composite fiber. Little
soaked the fiber in dyed glycerin. Then he wove the resulting thread
into cloth on a handloom-and fashioned the cloth into the elegant purse
shown here, the kind of item carried by ladies of the Middle Ages.
Notes
10" long
Glue mixture, glycerin, metal
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