Sparterie
A fabric made of wood chips or bast fibers is called Sparterie (French) or Sparterieware . Sparterie is mainly used in hat production. The term includes the manufacture of products from other hard fibers, in particular coconut , sisal ( agave ), jute and blackberry . The technology itself goes back at least to the Neolithic Age .
In 1880 it was said of sparter weaving: “It requires great skill and attention on the part of the man who does it; he must carefully observe the position of the wood fiber and follow it with his part; This is one of the reasons why this industry must always be carried out by hand, and can never become a machine industry. ”In 1955, the chipboard panels used to make women's hats were still made on a hand loom.
History, manufacture
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A center of the European spare parts production was around 1880 the place Alt Ehrenberg, today Staré Křečany , in northern Bohemia . Ehrenberg, divided into Ober-, Nieder-, Alt- and Neu-Ehrenberg, had a total of over six thousand inhabitants. The origins of this trade there went back over a hundred years. The craft had not developed any further in Ehrenberg, until then “nothing but a simple fabric made of wood, the so-called» wooden floors «” was made.
“These floors are woven from fine threads, no thicker than letter paper and one to five millimeters wide, depending on requirements. In order to produce such fine threads with a length of one meter to one meter and thirty centimeters, a piece of wood is required which combines softness with toughness, which only the wood of the aspen has. This tree, which was formerly also native to Bohemia, has almost completely disappeared there; at least there are no longer any stocks of the same which could even to some extent meet the demand, which is why the latter today has to be met from Russian Poland. The procurement of the raw material for the division, the aspen wood, is therefore as laborious as it is costly. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, the timber merchants travel to Poland to get the supplies they need; These seasons of the year must be used for felling, since only wood from trees can immediately be used which the sap has not yet entered or from which it has already emerged; Wood felled in summer must lie in the water for a year before it can be processed, otherwise it will be red and therefore useless. Also, only wood that is completely free of defects is suitable for the division; the slightest mistake, a deviation in growth that is hardly noticeable to the inexperienced, renders the threads obtained from such wood useless for weaving. However, this means that logging is associated with heavy deforestation; only six to eight fathoms of wood are extracted from a hundred trunks . In many ways this was linked to the fear that in time there would be a complete lack of raw material; Experts, however, do not share this fear, partly because of the gigantic stands that still exist in Poland and partly because the aspen grows back very quickly and the deforested stands will soon be reforested. And it is precisely this rapid growth of the aspen that makes it usable for the branch, for through it the fibers are straighter than is the case with other tree species.
The wood is now processed in such a way that the pieces split according to the fiber of, as already mentioned, 1 meter to 1 meter 30 centimeters in length are planed into quarters 6 centimeters wide; if the surface is completely smooth, the so-called divider is applied. The divider is a kind of plane, but instead of the smooth plane iron, it has a number of fine knife blades, 20 to 30, depending on whether the thread is to be 1 or 5 millimeters wide. The handling requires great skill and attention on the part of the man who does it; he must carefully observe the position of the wood fiber and follow it with his part; this is one of the reasons why this industry must always be carried out by hand, and can never become machine industry. The longitudinal cuts made in the wood by the Theiler are about 5 millimeters deep. When the man is done with it, he puts the parter to one side and takes the plane with which he planes fine strips from the wooden surface, which are caught and swiveled by a female person standing at the foot of the workbench in order to separate out damaged threads ; the waste of threads, despite all the care taken in selecting the wood and in its manufacture, is nevertheless quite considerable.
The threads that are now finished are, before they can be woven, tied in twos at one end; it is child labor, and in Ehrenberg the little ones are employed with it from the age of four. The child receives sheets for knotting the material in shock - 300 to 400 threads are required for each sheet - 60 kreuzers, earns 20 kreuzers per day. The threads can now be woven immediately, which is usually done by female people on a loom, which differs significantly from the otherwise usual looms. For the sake of brevity, it cannot be erected, but is stretched onto a frame; longer threads form the warp, shorter threads 70 to 80 centimeters long form the weft . The insertion of the bullet is done with the help of a stick which is provided with an ear at one end; With this rod, the weaver pulls the thread through the warp , while the rest of the manipulation corresponds to that used in ordinary weaving; only possible patterns are produced by small wire pins that are in the ark; the shift creates the pattern.
Thus, what was used by Ehrenberg's spare parts production until a few years ago, the so-called wooden floor, is finished; However, caps and hats were made from these wooden floors before, but these were as simple as possible, in the form without any taste; Their execution was nothing less than clean, and since they were glued, their wearer had to deal with very unpleasant consequences in rainy weather or when he was sweating, and this meant that the hats and caps, which were 75 per dozen Cruisers, each costing 1 gulden 20 cruisers, only found buyers among the lowest classes. "
One of the main reasons for sticking to outdated technologies was the restrictive behavior of the retail trade, which used a variety of measures and restrictions to keep the earnings of the spartowners at the lowest level. Attempts to introduce the trade in other places therefore had to fail. Production in Ehrenberg was unrivaled cheap due to self-exploitation and child labor.
Further processing
By 1955, chipboard was also available with a gauze cover. They always had to be kept slightly moist for hat processing. Sparterie can be processed in different ways, i.e. according to a pattern or by using the bevel. Bead, hollow, roll or narrower double brims are made from the diagonally cut fabric. By stretching and adhering to it, it can then be brought into a wide variety of forms. Chipboard can be used as a base material for fabric, silk or velvet hats.
literature
- Otto Purfürst: The production of specialty goods . In: The Gazebo . Volume 9, 1880, pp. 148 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Division . In: Duden Volume 1. 25th edition. Dudenverlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-411-04015-5 , p. 1002.
- ↑ Anne Lehoërff: Préhistoires d'Europe - De Néandertal à Vercingétorix . Paris, éditions Belin, coll. “Mondes anciens”, 2016, p. 608 (“Vivre dans les Alpes en 3000 avant notre ère”). ISBN 978-2-7011-5983-6 .
- ↑ a b c Otto Purfürst: The spare parts goods production . In: The Gazebo . Volume 9, 1880, pp. 148 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
- ^ A b Anna-Louise Faber: Suggestions for studio work - Something about the production of sub-forms from Sparterie . In: Putz und Pelz , No. 4, 1955, Verlag Die Wirtschaft , Berlin.