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Hare and Rabbit Skin Storage, Skin Pickling / Carroting, Skin Cutting, and Fur Sorting. Four Photographs from a German Hair Cutting Shop (1913)
This excerpt is from "25 Berlin - Gubener Hutfabrik (Hat Factory), Actiengesellschaft (Public or Private Company) vorm. A. Cohn, Guben, 1913". It covers Hare and Rabbit Skin Storage, Skin Pickling / Carroting, Skin Cutting, and Fur Sorting. There are four rare photographs from a German Hair Cutting shop. The third photo "German PICKLING /CARROTING SHOP" is especially rare. It shows the application of Nitrate of Mercury by Hand Brushing. I also posted this in the German - Austrian thread.. You might need to click on the photos to make them larger.
The production of hair hats is carried out in a completely separate establishment from the wool hat production. If we also pay a brief visit to this department, we first enter the raw materials store, where many types of hair are stacked up, mostly neatly packed in paper packages. The packets are labeled on the outer wrapping with the name of the quality they contain. We find different types of hare hair, rabbit hair, beaver and nutria.
The most important haircutting factories are located in Germany, France, England and Belgium. Here, skins from all over the world come together, are prepared, trimmed and sorted. In its original state, as it is cut from the hide, the hair is not suitable for the manufacture of hats because it lacks felting and fulling properties. Rather, it must first undergo the manipulation of mordanting before it acquires this property, but then to a greater extent than wool.
For this purpose, the hair on the skins is carefully brushed up to the root with a solution of mercury and nitric acid using hand brushes or machines with cylindrical brushes. The skins are then dried in heating chambers specially constructed for this purpose, then remoistened and carefully smoothed to smooth out any folds in the skin. - The skins prepared in this way then pass through a machine in which the fur is cut into narrow strips between cylinders equipped with sharp knives, without tearing the loosely connected hair fur. The pieces of fur fall down and the blanket of hair, cut to the root, emerges at the end of the machine and lies on a thin metal plate. From here it is removed by trained workers and cut into individual parts of the fur, because the back has the finest hair, while the sides and belly have smaller hairs, which vary considerably in price. For example, the back of the hare fetches five times the price of the hair from the belly. With the enormous boom in hair that has occurred in the last year, which has caused unprecedented prices, the backs are getting bigger and bigger and the smaller parts are getting smaller and smaller. This huge price increase is partly due to the fashion for velour-like hats for men and women, but also to the widespread use of animal skins as trimming material for clothing in recent years.
Below are 4 photographs from a German Hair Cutting shop.
THE SKINS ARE CUT OPEN AND CLEANED
STORAGE OF SKINS PREPARED FOR STAINING
LOOK INTO THE PICKLING /CARROTING SHOP (Application of Nitrate of Mercury by Hand Brushing)
THE HAIR IS CUT FROM THE SKINS
This excerpt is from "25 Berlin - Gubener Hutfabrik (Hat Factory), Actiengesellschaft (Public or Private Company) vorm. A. Cohn, Guben, 1913". It covers Hare and Rabbit Skin Storage, Skin Pickling / Carroting, Skin Cutting, and Fur Sorting. There are four rare photographs from a German Hair Cutting shop. The third photo "German PICKLING /CARROTING SHOP" is especially rare. It shows the application of Nitrate of Mercury by Hand Brushing. I also posted this in the German - Austrian thread.. You might need to click on the photos to make them larger.
The production of hair hats is carried out in a completely separate establishment from the wool hat production. If we also pay a brief visit to this department, we first enter the raw materials store, where many types of hair are stacked up, mostly neatly packed in paper packages. The packets are labeled on the outer wrapping with the name of the quality they contain. We find different types of hare hair, rabbit hair, beaver and nutria.
The most important haircutting factories are located in Germany, France, England and Belgium. Here, skins from all over the world come together, are prepared, trimmed and sorted. In its original state, as it is cut from the hide, the hair is not suitable for the manufacture of hats because it lacks felting and fulling properties. Rather, it must first undergo the manipulation of mordanting before it acquires this property, but then to a greater extent than wool.
For this purpose, the hair on the skins is carefully brushed up to the root with a solution of mercury and nitric acid using hand brushes or machines with cylindrical brushes. The skins are then dried in heating chambers specially constructed for this purpose, then remoistened and carefully smoothed to smooth out any folds in the skin. - The skins prepared in this way then pass through a machine in which the fur is cut into narrow strips between cylinders equipped with sharp knives, without tearing the loosely connected hair fur. The pieces of fur fall down and the blanket of hair, cut to the root, emerges at the end of the machine and lies on a thin metal plate. From here it is removed by trained workers and cut into individual parts of the fur, because the back has the finest hair, while the sides and belly have smaller hairs, which vary considerably in price. For example, the back of the hare fetches five times the price of the hair from the belly. With the enormous boom in hair that has occurred in the last year, which has caused unprecedented prices, the backs are getting bigger and bigger and the smaller parts are getting smaller and smaller. This huge price increase is partly due to the fashion for velour-like hats for men and women, but also to the widespread use of animal skins as trimming material for clothing in recent years.
Below are 4 photographs from a German Hair Cutting shop.
THE SKINS ARE CUT OPEN AND CLEANED
STORAGE OF SKINS PREPARED FOR STAINING
LOOK INTO THE PICKLING /CARROTING SHOP (Application of Nitrate of Mercury by Hand Brushing)
THE HAIR IS CUT FROM THE SKINS
