JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 642 Blog Bookstore
How
could one pass up the chance to browse through such a compelling and revolting
title such as Standardized Fur Tags, Their Use and Purpose, (published in NYC
by the Fur Research Institute in 1938)?
Titles like this cry out in equal parts of pity, shame and pride,
calling to their readers like fur-lined Sirens beckoning to fur-encrusted
sailors floundering in a fury sea, hell-bent to crash upon fur-slathered
rocks. In a world of covering things in
fur that once belonged to another living thing, the thinking’s all over but for
the process, pricing and standardization, so that the furriers were less
inclined to cheat one another and focus on the fleecing of the buying
public.
Opening
this oversized pamphlet reveals the explanation of the fur identified by the
tags that would appear on the interior-neck of the garment. There are 125 descriptions and standardization
of furs, though I must say that what caught my attention first was the fur of
the “natural” house cat (followed by the “dyed” house cat)—they say that this
was not an agoraphobic cat’s pelt used to make the apparel, but from cats “wild
and semi wild”. Like barn cats, I guess.
(We are told that the fur “breaks off”, and is not a very good choice for
outerwear, though it did seem to work for the cat.)
Then
there’s the “dyed Chinese dog” and the “dyed Mongolian dog”—I’m not sure who
would need pelts made of dog (or cat, or anything else for that matter), but I
guess that they were popular enough to be included in these furrier guidelines.
And so the list goes on and on: dyed skunk, pieced skunk, natural skunk,
dyed squirrel, dyed weasel, natural wolf, dyed opossum, etc.
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