2.2. Feathers Market In ostrich farms, conducted mainly in South Africa, Florida and in California during the plume boom, the birds were denuded of their feathers at regular intervals. The first feathers were plucked when the bird was a year old, and then every succeeding year when the bird had grown back full mating plumes. Three hundred feathers could be ‘harvested’ from a single ostrich in its lifetime. Unusually the feathers on both the male and female were equally valuable, as they were mostly dyed before being put on the market. Similarly all of the ostrich plumes of commerce were really double plumes, made by uniting two of the natural feathers, so as to appear fuller. Birds of all kinds were used for both their feather and bodily appearance. Ostrich, heron, peacock and bird of paradise were enormously popular, but common garden fowl, such as pigeon, turkey and goose were also used.
Feathers were put through several stages of processing before they were ready to be attached to hats. In the final forms they were known to the trade as plumes, pompons, aigrettes, breasts, wings, pads, bands (that would to encircle the crown or to outline the brim), and quills. The table below (taken from the 1912 edition of Millinery by Charlotte Rankin) illustrates what kinds of feathers were made up into each of the various forms of ‘branching’ or ‘pasting’. The thirst for exotic ornament among fashionable women in the metropoles of Europe and America prompted a bustling global trade in ostrich feathers that flourished from the 1880s until the First World War. South African ostrich plumes, due to their particularly sumptuous nature, were so in demand during this period that their value per pound was almost equal to diamonds. Advert for The Parisian Hat co. in the London Saturday Review 1864.
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