Probably the first machine-made braid (soon adopted and classified as “straw”) was that known as “crinoline.” This has as its basis horsehair, and is made both of hair alone and of hair mixed with many other fibres. The plain braid can be composed of odd numbers of strands of horsehair from five upwards, in series of numbers divisible by four, plus one; thus 17 ends, 21 ends, 25 ends, and so on; the finest used in the trade is 17 ends, which is about 1⁄8 of an inch in width, but 21 and 25 ends are the most in request for making the Crinoline hat so well known in the most fashionable quarters. Bonnets were extensively made about fifty or sixty years ago of “Crinoline Fancy” plaits that were a mixture of the hair with silk, or straw, or Tuscan, or any similar fibres. They were also adorned with glass beads or bugles, and with silken knots and small tassels. This trade is now nearly extinct owing to the scarcity of hair, but its place is fully filled with imitations made of various kinds of artificial silk, cellulose, viscose, and the like.
A cheaper competitor to crinoline was brought out about 1870, when imitations in cotton fibre braids were put on the market, but these missed entirely the delicate open work of the real article. Similar effects were subsequently made in hemp. But about 1890 the Germans began to make cotton braids in an open, or as it was termed ajour, manner, imitating very closely the true effect of crinoline. This had a tremendous success, for the cost was very small. This was followed by the silk imitations mentioned above, and they have now reached such a stage of perfection of make and colour as to entirely outvie their progenitor. About 1892 the Swiss people put on the market the first “Tégal” braids, to be quickly followed by an Italian copy. This rapidly spread to Japan, and the product of that far eastern country soon took the premier place, which at the time of writing it still holds.
Another product, largely used in the trade, although strictly speaking neither a plait nor a woven hat, is “Sparterie.” This is wattle woven of fine willow-chip splints into various sized sheets for the different requirements of the trade; it is mainly used as a foundation for making hats to be covered with some delicate plait that will not stand any method of wet stiffening. It is extremely light in weight, and can be moulded to almost any shape, it will stand stiffening, and may be made as firm as stiff buckram. This emanated first from Italy, but now for some years the Japanese have been competing for the trade.
CHAPTER VI
DYEING
The dyeing and bleaching of the various plaits are the next important processes towards making a straw hat.
The dyeing of straw plait in England, done individually for some time on a small scale, commenced as a separate industry about 1845, when a Mr. Randall opened some dyeing works at Sundon, a village about four miles from Luton. Black, and a very poor brown and dark blue, were the only colours then dyed. Shortly after Mr. Thomas Lye, who came from Kirkby Malzeard, near Ripon, Yorks, which was a plait making centre, started business as a dyer in Luton. His gamut of shades numbered only four or five, and the standard of colour then demanded was very low. Mr. Lye’s first signal success was a “grey,” which at that time no other competitor had attempted. In 1857 his business was transferred to its present site. Other colours quickly followed, and the invention of aniline dyes revolutionized the old “vegetable dye” processes, of which the ingredients were madder, indigo, logwood and fustic. These wood dyes required a long and costly process, and involved the use of mordants to prepare the straw for the different colours, and their somewhat cumbersome methods rendered them at all times rather uncertain in their results. With the advent of the more easily handled synthetic dyestuffs the operations of wood dyeing became less frequent, and although to-day black is still produced from logwood chips, practically all colours are dyed with one or the other extracts of coal tar, etc. The main considerations of dyeing are brilliance of shade with perfect evenness of colour, and penetration of the dye right through the straw. Unlike some textile fabrics, fastness either to light or even to water is not insisted on; but absolute penetration is a necessity, for should any part of the straw when plaitted become abraded, if the colour were only on the surface, the worn part would show a lighter tint; and also if when the “button” or centre of the hat was made, the turning of which being in such tiny circles, the straws are disturbed to their utmost, and the light coloured spaces which would result would impair the regularity of colour. And the dyeing penetration of straws or straw plait, composed as it is of such diversity of elements, the hard flint like exterior and the soft pappy inside, is a matter of considerable difficulty, even if dyers had not to contend, first, with the extreme hardness of water which is common in the South Bedfordshire district, and second, the constant cleansing necessary on changes in fashionable colours necessitating the use of coppers, the chemical effects of which in some instances need counter action to achieve a good result.
The question of penetration of the straw is one that has keenly exercised the minds of straw dyers from the inception of the industry. Many are the opinions as to the best medium for rapid and regular penetration. And many are the formulae given as being most suitable agents. It is probable that straws, grown on different geological formations and thus having different varieties of silicate exteriors, require different baths of softening chemicals, and that one bath, excellent for the straw plaits of China, would be inefficient for the straw plaits of Italy. Generally speaking, however, these baths are formed of water with some neutral salt, such as sodium acetate; or of an alkaline solution of sodium carbonate with ammonia. But the less that is done in the way of such softening before dyeing the better; because the longer straw plait is boiled the more it is impoverished. And as these preliminary processes involve boiling in every case, impoverishment must take place, and where alkaline solutions are used the results are especially poor. Another objection to the use of softeners is that they tend to loosen the straws of the plait, and as each process involves manipulation, the handling of the loosened plait tends to break it considerably.
Yet another objection is that certain shades of colour are most adversely affected by the previous use of such agents, in fact some tones cannot be produced at all on plaits thus treated. While in a few cases it is perhaps necessary and advisable to employ a softener, in by far the greater number the best results are those obtained from that formula which involves the fewest processes and the shortest time of boiling, and this can best be obtained where dyestuffs are used that do not require any previous preparation of the plait.
The dyeing of straw is almost invariably done at the boil. The dyeing matter, with any necessary addition, is put into the vat or copper and well mixed with the requisite amount of water. The plait is then introduced and laid carefully and regularly so that when pressed down the solution may cover it.