BA2 BUSINESS STUDIES CLASS READING - GLOBAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL - ETHICAL
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ANIMAL SOURCES OF TEXTILES
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Humans have been brought close to animals by learning to work with the materials they provide. We have used the fibbers that keep us warm - we take wool and hair from sheep and goats, alpaca, buffalo, muskox, and dogs, turning in into other types of warmth-giving coverings. We sometimes use the relatively stiff hairs of a horse's tail as a fabric (sofas upholstered with horsehair were particularly common in the Victorian era), or even our own human hair as a kind of thread. We work with fur from creatures such as rabbits and beaver, shearing it and pressing it into a felt-like fabric, or using it whole, as skins. We appropriate the interior parts of animals as well, including the tendon finer (sinew) that can stitch skins together. In the far north, the Inuit even used the intestine from walrus and similar animals, sewing it into fine-looking waterproof clothing. 

Warm and waterproof clothing is a matter of life and death in the Arctic, and it was traditionally made from the skins of the local animals. Inuit seamstresses who prepared the clothing developed an extremely intimate relationship with those animals - to the point that they literally took parts of them in their mouths. For example, they moistened the caribou sinew that they used for thread in their lips, and chewed skins in order to soften them. They even prepared eider duck skins (each one made a warm slipper) by sucking the fat out. The woman came to understand the properties of the skins of every material and how it functioned in different conditions ...

Native peoples of the Pacific and North America used other animal parts for textile ornamentation, including boar bristles, moose hair, bone and, most unlikely of all, porcupine quills. The latter were flattened, dyed bright colours, and applied to leather garments and personal accessories ...

Fish skins were also stitched together by Native Americans and Siberians, and fish scales were used as decorative embroidery elements. ... Fish-scale embroidery was also recommended in Victorian ladies magazines as a form of elegant fancywork.

Birds were integrated into particularly stunning textiles. Small bird skins were occasionally stitched together as garments (thirty-eight eider skins were needed for one Ungava Inuit woman's parka), but plucked feathers were more commonly used for both decorative purposes and for insulation ...

Pre-Columbian Andean peoples worked the brilliant feathers of Amazonian birds onto their tunics, helping their important people look as magnificent as the beings who flew through the air. Feathered cloth was so highly esteemed in the Inka state that it was routinely used in ritual sacrifice ... Brilliant feather cloaks were also worn by royalty in Hawaii and other  parts of the Pacific.

Molluscs and insects were surprisingly integral to textile traditions too. The brilliant carapaces of tropical insects have been used for millennia as adornments on cloth; in Southeast Asia, for example, green beetle bodies are sewn onto shawls and other special garments. Shells were also extensively sewn on as ornaments. More important in the history of humankind was the Chinese discovery of how to uses the strong fiber produced by caterpillars ...  

To make our textiles even more beautiful, we also use animal products in the dye process. We have used animal dung and urine as fixative agents, for example, and crushed the bodies of insects and creatures from the sea to extract even small drops of colour. (Gordon, 2013, pp.66-7).
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REFERENCE

Gordon, B. (2013 [2011] ) Textiles. The whole story - uses, meaning, significance. London: Thames and Hudson.