Fig. 6
STRAW PLAITTERS AT WORK—A BEDFORDSHIRE VILLAGE SCENE IN 1870
Machine-made straw plaits have never been produced in quantities in England, although patents for plaitting have been taken out; but in Italy and Switzerland machinery has been in use since 1840, producing plaits of straw mixed with other fibres, such as horsehair or silk. Fiesole, a village near Florence, became a centre of machine-made plaits of Tuscan straw woven in Wattle fashion with strands of silk and cotton, and gave its name to all similarly made plaits.
The other continental centres making straw plaits were Switzerland and Belgium. By the former practically all the straws used were imported from Italy, only quite a small portion being home grown; but Belgium produced some beautiful straws, and the “Split” and “Piping” made in that country have never been surpassed. The “7 end cord,” of same detail as “Patent Dunstable,” although excellent in make and colour, missed the sharp twisted head (from whence the name “Twist”) peculiar to the British made article, the straws being of too soft a nature to retain the desired effect throughout the hat-making processes. The methods of gathering and preparing the straws in Belgium closely followed the British.
China, the first Far Eastern straw plait competitor, is able to count on almost limitless quantities of straw, and the plaits made there are, as far as appearance is concerned, second to none. But while the British plaitter inserts only one or say two straws at a time, the Chinese frequently insert what is known as the whole sett; this naturally causes a greater weakness at the junction than is found in British plait, and for that reason many Chinese patterns, although beautiful to look at, are very difficult to work, and the probability of some of these setts coming undone and the consequent raggedness of the speels (as the loose ends are called) make these plaits undesirable for the highest class work. But the Chinese, although not too adaptable, are nothing if not deft, and a few makes of plait are put on the market, which from their altered “setting” are known as “speelless.” “Speelless Maslimpo,” an imitation in very fine whole straws of Italian 7 ends pedal is one of the most beautiful fine plaits made, and although it seldom entirely justifies its adjective, in the main it is the least difficult Chinese plait to work up. The methods employed by the celestials in preparing the straws are tantamount to those employed in Britain, and the methods of splitting them are identical.
Japan occupies a unique position in the cultivation and production of straws for plaitting. The soil is extremely fertile, and the geological condition of the country is volcanic. The straws when grown attain to a great size of tube, even as much as 1⁄3 of an inch in diameter, and plaits have been made of Japanese straws, split only in one place, which when opened out form a splint an inch wide, making braids of only 4 or 5 ends, about 3 ins. in width. The volcanic nature of the country seems to have permeated the soil with some bleaching agent. Sulphur is usually a product of volcanic eruption, and although its fumes are deadly to the growth of cereals, straws grown on volcanic soil acquire a colour which is unobtainable elsewhere. And the colour of the Japanese straw is entirely unlike, and at the same time vastly better than, any other known variety. Its rapid growth also engenders a special lightness of weight, and although not tough as the Italian or British, it is sufficiently so for any plaitting purposes. In this case the preparation of straws for working is simply the drying and sorting.
Cereals only have as yet been described, but two other vegetable products can almost claim by user to be classed as straws, as the straw hat making industry has adopted them in a very whole-hearted manner. One of the first vegetable plaits, other than those of actual straw, was made of fine splints of the wood of willow. This was sufficiently seasoned in plank, a finely planed surface obtained, and a planing cutter, with scoring knives set to the requisite width, was made to take a very thin shaving. This naturally produced the shaving in very narrow strips that were the media from which 3 ends, 5 ends, 7 ends and 9 ends “Chip” were plaitted by hand. Also wider splints of willow shavings were used to make fancy patterns of plait, the number of which is legion. This branch of the industry emanated from Italy, and Saxony and the Black Forest subsequently did some business in chip plaits, but their shavings were not equal to the Italian, being more woolly and less glossy, and they enjoyed mainly a local success. About 1890 the Japanese began to make chip plaits, their wood was equal to the Italians, and their prices vastly lower, so that for some years, while the plait known as “3 ends Chip” monopolized the great bulk of the hat making requirements, Italy and Japan were keen competitors. As in the birthplace of chip plaits, so in Japan were subsequently made all kinds of fancy designs, which for some time nearly extinguished the Italian trade.
The other vegetable fibre is hemp. This was first used by the Swiss in the manufacture of a machine made braid similar in appearance to the hand plaitted 9 or 7 end chips.
The fibre from which the first braids were woven was derived from an aloe-like plant Sansaviera Zeylanica (or bow string hemp) which grew in the island of Java in a district called Tégal. This particular hemp when prepared was exceedingly lustrous and tough, and when put on the market in braids was called by the name of its native place. The name has been corrupted into several forms, Tagal, Tagel, Tagle, etc., but the proper name is Tégal, and this is still retained by the French, while in England the most popular form is Tagal. The method of weaving was to plait into braids, strands formed of one, two or three, or even more fibres of the hemp, and plaits were marketed conveying those features, such as “13/2” (which meant 13 strands of two fibres), or “13/3” (thirteen strands of 3 fibres). This shoelace like braid was soon followed by a design similar to Italian 7 end Pedal, and was at first known as “Tégal Picot,” but is now more generally called “Pedal Tagal.” When worked this plait has a very close resemblance to its model, and like all the other hemp plaits, will take a softly brilliant and regular coloured dye.