A Feather In Your Cap
Feathers have long been a feature of millinery design and for a big, bold, dramatic effect there was nothing better than to stick an ostrich feather or two in your titfer. As well as decorating hats, dyed ostrich feathers were used in boas, dress trimmings, in quilts and for lining parkas, and in funerary art. The hearse of Abraham Lincoln was topped with eight enormous sprays of black ostrich plumes and wealthy Victorians marked the loss of a loved one by displaying a wreath made of black ostrich feathers on their front doors.
Live ostriches began appearing in Britain as curiosities in the eighteenth century. In April 1745 the Derby Mercury encouraged its readers to view two, a cock and hen, which had recently arrived from “Santa Cruz in Barbary”. Of particular note, it stated, were the feathers which have an agreeable Mixture of Black and White, and are of great Value; the feathers on their Wings and Tails are of a beautiful White, and the richest plumes are made thereof.”
By the late 19th century feathers were dyed to whatever colour the milliner or wearer fancied, Alexander Paul’s The Practical Ostrich Feather Dyer (1888) providing forty-eight examples on twelve plates of four of clusters of dyed ostrich feathers with explicit instructions on how to reproduce each colour exactly, with notes for adjustments to help the dyer to brighten or dull the hue. However, it was black that proved the most stable and important of all colours”, which “improves with age; and, instead of fading, the black will grow more intense.”
One of the most lamented consignments of goods on board the Titanic when it sank in 1912 was a consignment of ostrich feathers valued at the time at £20,000. The loss of a feather was a major blow, an event that prompted one distraught resident of Fredericktown to post a notice in the Maryland Chronical in 1768 offering a reward of one dollar for the return of a large black ostrich feather, “lost between John McGill’s and this town”.
The predilection for decorating hats with feathers did not come without a cost. Ostriches, egrets, herons, great auks, and many other species were hunted, often to the verge of extinction for their plumes. It is estimated that from the mid-19th century around 300 million birds of various species had been killed to feed the fashion industry, a rate of around five million a year. Evidence of the insatiable demand is provided by one London dealer who submitted an order for 6,000 bird of paradise feathers, 40,000 humming bird feathers, and 360,000 feathers from other species.
With demand outstripping supply, by 1915 plumes were selling at $32 an ounce, on par with gold. Stocks of raw feathers of all varieties was one of the most prized commodities in the international trading market but the practice of killing to secure the supply of feathers had become both unsustainable and unacceptable, at least in some quarters, as we shall see next time.
