Lace (fur)
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Lace , also known as silver , is a method of fur finishing . White or light-tipped guard hairs are introduced into otherwise dark-haired pelts. This was done initially by sewing in, later exclusively by gluing in. As a rule, a less valuable type of fur is intended to approximate the appearance of the more expensive silver fox fur or that of the cross fox . In the first half of the 20th century, when silver fox breeding was just beginning and the rare and precious fur was favored by fashion, the pointed technique found considerable use and was a sizable part of the fur finishing industry.
The use of the pointed skins corresponded to that of the silver fox skins, but only for smaller items of clothing or accessories such as trimmings, collars, cuffs, fur necklaces , sleeves and the like.
history
At the beginning of the 20th century, pure black silver fox skins fetched the highest prices at the London auctions at between 5,000 and 7,000 marks. An English furrier wrote in 1913 that in some years only two or three skins were sold, while silvery skins initially only cost a few pounds sterling. At the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, people then preferred all-silver, i.e. very light, silver fox skins. The first breeding attempts with silver foxes began around 1870 to 1880 in Canada, and only in the 1920s in Europe. Until the 1940s, the silver fox fur was at the forefront of the fur types used for fur clothing.
Because of this extraordinary appreciation, the tobacco processors began to manufacture silver fox imitations with cheaper types of fur. Due to the very differentiated color distribution not only in the fur, but also within the individual guard hair, this was only possible with very unsatisfactory coloring. Inserting individual hairs or tufts of hair was extremely laborious, but gave a much more natural-looking result. The very high price over many years also justified the effort. A skilled American worker could raise the price of a poorly tarnished silver fox skin by $ 7.50 to $ 15. The work was probably carried out exclusively by women everywhere. The main time of fur shaving was before and after the First World War , i.e. before 1914 and after 1918. At that time, black-colored red foxes were sharpened in large quantities. At the time, several companies in the vicinity of the World Fur Center in Leipziger Brühl offered corresponding services.
Although silver fox skins were mainly imitated by lace, this manipulation was also carried out in order to achieve the then “famous silver otter effect” with simple, unsilvered otter skins .
In 1936 the London specialist CL Motz stated in front of furriers “that the tip of foxes is indispensable for the fur industry today. The sharpener can do a lot to increase the fur value. The attempts to make this industry contemptible and to destroy the public's trust in pointed fur parts are very regrettable ”. At the end of the 1940s, however, the silver fox price had fallen to a low price within a few years due to a change in fashion and topping had become uneconomical.
The specialist address book of the fur industry, the "Winckelmann", listed another pointed company for the Federal Republic under "Special Companies" in 1953, the company Karl Tangemann in Frankfurt am Main.
Types of fur used
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"Belisar"
stole, highly modern. Stole, collar-like, 240 cm long.
Alaskan fox, quality A, tipped M. 325, -
Alaskan fox, quality B, tipped M. 230, -
Alaskan fox, quality B, uni M. 210, -
Blue fox M. 500, -
Muff "Catania".
Large, modern muff with drawn silk hand frills.
Alaskan fox, quality A, tipped M. 205, -
Alaskan fox, quality A, uni M. 185, -
Alaskan fox, quality B, tipped M. 170, -
Blue fox M. 550, -
Suitable types of fur as pointed material
The silvering of the silver fox is caused by white band rings on the individual hairs. You are in front of the tip of the guard hair. The actual tip is black. Of course, the best pointed material results in silver fox hair. They were obtained from skins that were so damaged that they could not be used for anything else, the so-called shot (scrap).
The hair of the European badger, which is otherwise rarely used for fur purposes, and that of the American silver badger (not the Southwestern quality because the top hair tips are too short) are also very suitable , but not all parts of the fur have the long awns suitable for tipping. Damaged silver badger skins that are unsuitable for full-skin processing are still relatively expensive, however, as they are very well suited for making attractive trimmings. They were therefore mainly used to tip noble fox varieties. Badger hair was always taken from untreated skins, as the dressing (fur tanning) affected the ends of the hair. The slight hair damage was of no importance for normal fur processing, but this was noticeable on the black-colored fur surface.
Another material used for lace was goat hair as well as the strong hair of the middle pieces of the arctic wolf skins that sometimes slouched off during processing . One company offered “with polecat tips ” as their specialty . Even pig bristles and horsehair were used.
Types of fur suitable for lace
Most types of fur were colored black or black-brown before they were tipped, in order to make them similar to the silver fox in terms of their basic color.
More or less all types of long-haired fur, especially all types of fox, were used in the main time of silver fox carving. The fine Kamchatka red fox skins were best for this. In particular, the black-colored red fox, then known as the "Alaska fox", was refined with hair from the European badger.
From the American Opossum were full and long-haired, especially suitable for skunks or black colored varieties for tips. The longer-haired varieties of rabbit and white hares , which, due to their abundance of natural abundance, give off a very inexpensive fur system, were also essential . Among other also were wolverine furs , bearskins (= raccoon fur ?), So-called Flying Dog skins , the skins of domestic dogs and the aforementioned otter skins tipped.
In addition to sharpening as an imitation or to liven up single-colored types of fur, the technique was also used to give high-quality furs, on which the guard hair had been rubbed off, a better appearance again. Occasionally, faintly silvered, silver fox skins, rubbed on the back coat and the neck, were sharpened to enhance the silvery expression.
Work technique
Advertisement in a specialist newspaper of the E. Schönfeld company, formerly Michel Segal (Leipzig 1938).
At first the white hair was also sewn in. The sewing was done with a very thin needle that was first pushed into the leather, then the hair was threaded and pulled to the right length and sewn into the leather two or three times. Natural-colored silver foxes, which often have awnless areas in the area of the cross, could be faithfully repaired by pulling in the awns of natural-colored wolves, as their awns are long enough to be pulled in with the needle.
For the gluing, the fur was kept pinched with one hand and with the other the awns were glued as deep as possible into the hair base while blowing in at the same time, a laborious and still very labor-intensive activity. Smaller machines were soon devised for which the skin was stretched and the hair was held apart with clips. This freed up one hand and the sewing or gluing in was significantly faster and also more regular. "Good" rubber dissolved in alcohol was used for gluing. An American textbook also mentions the use of fine tweezers and working with a pattern head. According to an expert, the artistic tip of foxes “could not be learned in a few weeks, but requires years of hard work to become a master. Each coat has to be treated individually ”.
The badger's hair was pulled out when dry. Hair from the neck and cheekbones is silky and of greater length, and the light-colored tips are longer than the hair from the torso and the flatter back area. Inserting the hair required careful consideration of the natural, individual coat structure as well as the type of hair to be inserted. For example, if the worker placed neck hair in the torso area, it had an unnatural, even ridiculous effect. The hard badger hair, for example, must not be used in a silky fox fur.
The tips to be glued were cut to the required length. One by one or two or three together they were dipped into the rubber solution and glued into the under hair while twisting. The more rational "triple point" was the cheapest to manufacture. The use of several hairs corresponds to the natural hair growth of the silver fox, in which the guard hairs are arranged in tufts. After the alcohol had evaporated, the additional awns stuck so tightly that even easy combing was possible. In order to put the hair even better in the natural direction of the hair, the skins were then coated with a damp cloth. The glued-in hair held so well “ that the end user needn't have to worry about a part treated in this way. “Apparently the product was so durable that it even withstood the classic fur cleaning in the lautering process (with wood flour) and the furrier tapping with a hazelnut stick , at least the specialist literature of the time does not report any problems that occurred. However, careless cleaning with solvents would have led to a disastrous loss of the glued hair.
Another technique to achieve light hair ends is peeling, which bleaches the top hair. However, the effect is not comparable to the tip, since all the hair tips are lightened and not just individual awns distributed in the fur. In 1968, however, Effi Horn said in a book addressed to the fur wearer: " Today, fine white tips can be achieved less laboriously through little coloring tricks ".
In fur dyeing, the opposite work process is occasionally mentioned as tips, instead of lightening the hair tips being darkened.
Auxiliary device for sharpening
In 1929, the Segal fur-cutting company (see ad on the left) presented a device for lacing fur skins, patented in Leipzig:
“With the new device, a rotatable drum is mounted below the table top, which protrudes through a slot above the table top and serves to move the fur skins, which are refined by inserting skins of different colors. The height of the drum is adjustable, so that types of fur with different hair lengths can be processed on it.
The fur skins are stretched or tipped onto the drum with small nails, with the hair side up. After the skin has been attached to the drum, a partial knife is inserted into a guide attached to the table next to the drum in its longitudinal direction, and the hair of the skin is divided by inserting the partial knife down to the leather. After the partial knife has been pulled out of the guide, the hair is pulled off by turning the partial knife from this to the side of the worker. Badger hairs, which are glued into the leather with tweezers, are used to insert the differently colored hair. As soon as the whole width of the fur is provided with glued badger hair, the dividing knife is removed and the drum rotated by one division, whereupon the process is repeated until the whole skin is provided with glued hair. [...] "
Web links
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supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d e f g Max Bachrach: Fur. A Practical Treatise. Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York 1936. pp. 275, 431–432 ("pointing")
- ↑ a b Dr. Fritz Schmidt: The book of the fur animals and pelts . FC Mayer Verlag, Munich 1970, pp. 190-199.
- ↑ George R. Cripps: About Furs . Daily Post Printers, Liverpool 1913, p. 60 ( table of contents ).
- ↑ a b c David G. Kaplan: The Fur Book . Copyright The Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation, New York 1950, pp. 170–171
- ↑ a b c d e Paul Schöps among others: The refinement of the hair. In: Das Pelzgewerbe Vol. XIV / New Series, 1963 No. 2 and 3, Hermelin-Verlag Dr. Paul Schöps, pp. 87-88.
- ↑ a b c d e f "Le.": CL Motz on the lace of fur skins . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 7, Leipzig, February 14, 1936, p. 5.
- ↑ a b Alexander Tuma: Pelz-Lexikon. Fur and rough goods. XVIII. Tape. Verlag Alexander Tuma, Vienna 1949. Keyword "Fellspitzen"
- ^ A b Emil Brass : From the realm of fur . 1st edition, published by the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1911, pp. 460, 525
- ↑ Paul Cubaeus, Alexander Tuma: The whole of Skinning . 2nd revised edition, A. Hartleben's Verlag, Vienna, Leipzig 1911. p. 414
- ^ A b c Paul Larisch, Josef Schmid: The furrier craft . Part II, self-published, Paris without year (first edition Part I 1902) p. 31; III. Part p. 51, 53 ("Silver").
- ↑ Imit. Ermine and fox tails . Advertisement in Kürschner-Zeitung No. 25 of December 5, 1915 , Verlag Alexander Duncker, Leipzig, p. 784.
- ↑ Paul Larisch , Josef Schmid: The furrier craft . III. Part, self-published in Paris, 1910, p. 48.
- ^ Cyril J. Rosenberg: Furs & Furriery . Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London 1927, p. 331 (Eng.)
- ↑ Alexander Tuma: Pelz-Lexikon. Fur and rough goods. XVII. Tape. Verlag Alexander Tuma, Vienna 1949. Keyword "Peeling off the paint"
- ↑ Effi Horn: Furs . Verlag Mensch und Arbeit, Munich 1968, p. 127
- ↑ Dyeing Chemist HZ: The dressing and dyeing of tobacco products. In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 101, Leipzig 1924, p. 4.
- ↑ Tips of fur skins . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 148, Leipzig, December 12, 1929, p. 5.