Series editors' preface - Wood Tools

118 Conservation of Furniture
chopped into smaller pieces or curled to give
them more resilience. Feathers from live birds
are preferred but most now come from dead
birds reared for meat production. Eider duck
down is especially valued because of its high
resilience and high warmth to weight ratio.
The Drapers Dictionary of 1882 mentions
that ‘shoddy’ (recycled shredded wool cloth)
was used as a stuffing for saddles or furniture.
An example of wool used as a secondary filling
is cited in Housecraft of 1926: ‘The filling
is preferably of hair, covered “topped out” with
raw wool thick enough to cover the wooden
edges well.’
Vegetable materials
These can be categorized as: seed fibres (cotton,
vegetable downs); stem or stalk fibres (e.g.
straw), Bast Fibres (e.g. flax, hemp, jute); leaf
fibres (pine wool, tampico, esparto grass, raffia,
corn shucks); fruit fibres (coir); other vegetable
materials (wood, sea wrack, latex). They
can also be categorized according to their suitability
for first fillings, second fillings, skimmer
layers and roll edges.
Coir, the fibre, obtained from the outer husk
of the coconut (Cocus nucifera), was introduced
to Britain around 1845. It forms a solid,
densely packed filling and is a less expensive
but less resilient substitute for curled hair. To
obtain coir, the husk is split, retted and then
beaten to loosen the fibres which are dried for
use. Retting involves leaving stems to rot in
water to separate the fibrous from the non
fibrous parts of the plant.
Spanish moss (Tilandia usneoides) is an epiphyte,
a member of the Bromiliaceae family,
from the southern United States of America and
from Central America. It is available in several
grades though not much used today, perhaps
because of environmental threats to its survival.
The black variety, which is retted longer
and ginned more thoroughly, is of better quality
than the grey (Bast, 1946). Spanish moss is
inferior to top grade hair, but superior to short
hair.
Tow is a byproduct of the manufacture of
bast fibres, during scutching or hackling, a
process of beating to separate fibres from plant
waste (Bast, 1946). It is a dense filling but has
poor resilience.
Algerian fibre is obtained from the leaves of
palm grass (Chamareops humilus) which
grows in Northern Africa and Southern Spain.
The leaves are shredded and curled in a manner
similar to hair. It is imported as rope and
unwound at a fibre processing plant. The
green fibre may be dyed black to achieve sterilization
(probably because of the increase in
temperature during dyeing). It is coarser than
hair and best suited as a first filling. It has good
resilience over a long period.
Ulva marina is a type of seaweed processed
by washing and drying. It is a coarse filling
with very poor resistance and durability.
Webster’s Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy
of 1845 says of seaweed: ‘Well spoken of as a
stuffing for mattresses; does not harbour vermin
... is tolerably light and soft ... If not sufficiently
washed is said to attract moisture,
owing to a little salt remaining in it.’
The following loose fillings are softer and
less resilient than the filling materials described
hitherto. Therefore, in better quality work they
are only used for second fillings or cushion
stuffing, though they may occur elsewhere in
poor quality upholstery.
Kapok, a seed fibre of the Ceiba tree
(Bombacaceae – Ceiba pentandra) is the most
important but not the only source of this material.
It is processed by ginning. The Drapers
Dictionary of 1882 comments that ‘kapok is
employed to a limited degree in upholstery ...
used for stuffing chairs and pillows’.
Cotton fillings are a byproduct of the manufacturing
process of separating cotton seeds
from cotton fibre. The short cotton linters, still
attached to the seeds, are removed and formed
into cotton felt. The earliest date for cotton
wadding observed in upholstered furniture is
around 1850.
Straw and dried grasses pack down hard and
are most suited as a linear filling for roll edges,
see Howlett (1990).
The identification of vegetable fillings is discussed
by Catling and Grayson (1982).
Elastomers, synthetic materials and latex
Elastomers include materials such as natural or
synthetic rubber that are able to resume their
original length after stretching. Rubber was the
first such material used in furniture production
but has been much replaced by synthetic materials.
Synthetic loose fillings include spaghetti
and chip cut foams, foam crumb, cut and curled
nylon monofilament and polystyrene beads.