This particular piece is a sample given out at a 1937 Berlin trade exhibition, touting the fine qualities of German workmanship in Rayon. It is indeed made from all Rayon.
What exactly is Rayon? It starts with chips from pine or spruce trees, which are treated with alkali solutions to separate the cellulose from lignin. The resulting pulp is pressed into sheets of raw cellulose, which are soaked in caustic soda, then dried and broken up into cellulose crumbs. These are aged for a few days under strictly controlled temperatures and humidities. Then, liquid carbon disulfide is added to the crumbs, and then mixed with more caustic soda to make a viscous solution the color and consistency of honey. This mixture is called “Viscose”. The viscose is aged, filtered, boiled, then pumped through spinnerets into a bath of sulphuric acid, which coagulates the Viscose into filaments of 100% cellulose, which can be spun into thread and yarn.
Of course the stuff is then washed and purified to remove any caustic chemicals.
Easy, right?
You can see how this sort of “synthetic” fabric might appeal to a country in need of “ersatz” materials to replace scarce natural resources.
Rayon is soft and comfortable, and was initially known as “artificial silk”, but it draws up like crazy when wet, and loses a great deal of its strength. Never wet your Rayon cloth collectibles. Also, at the molecular level, Rayon looks and acts like “glass rods”; that is, given enough twisting and bending, then fabric will “break”. Rayon, being cellulose-based, is more absorbent than cotton (which is nature’s best run at 100% cellulose), but burns more easily.
The embroidery work in this piece is exceptional. The stitchery is the tightest I’ve ever seen, and I have dealt with 100’s of embroiderers over the years.
Note on the reverse how each color is one, long thread. As the embroidery needle jumps from area to area, it leaves a flyer of string. See how the craftsman manipulated the design so the red thread neatly “ties down” the loose black loops, and so on. Modern embroiderers usually don’t do this; they just snip the threads, which adds a time-consuming, labor-intensive step to the process. Whoever did this work was a master at “maschinenstickeri”, as you would expect from a company putting forth their best work at a trade show.
Many of us own cloth collectibles made of German Rayon, and if you ever doubted that they were capable of manufacturing it just before and during WW2, here is proof that they not only were, but with a high degree of sophistication, as this piece shows.
What exactly is Rayon? It starts with chips from pine or spruce trees, which are treated with alkali solutions to separate the cellulose from lignin. The resulting pulp is pressed into sheets of raw cellulose, which are soaked in caustic soda, then dried and broken up into cellulose crumbs. These are aged for a few days under strictly controlled temperatures and humidities. Then, liquid carbon disulfide is added to the crumbs, and then mixed with more caustic soda to make a viscous solution the color and consistency of honey. This mixture is called “Viscose”. The viscose is aged, filtered, boiled, then pumped through spinnerets into a bath of sulphuric acid, which coagulates the Viscose into filaments of 100% cellulose, which can be spun into thread and yarn.
Of course the stuff is then washed and purified to remove any caustic chemicals.
Easy, right?
You can see how this sort of “synthetic” fabric might appeal to a country in need of “ersatz” materials to replace scarce natural resources.
Rayon is soft and comfortable, and was initially known as “artificial silk”, but it draws up like crazy when wet, and loses a great deal of its strength. Never wet your Rayon cloth collectibles. Also, at the molecular level, Rayon looks and acts like “glass rods”; that is, given enough twisting and bending, then fabric will “break”. Rayon, being cellulose-based, is more absorbent than cotton (which is nature’s best run at 100% cellulose), but burns more easily.
The embroidery work in this piece is exceptional. The stitchery is the tightest I’ve ever seen, and I have dealt with 100’s of embroiderers over the years.
Note on the reverse how each color is one, long thread. As the embroidery needle jumps from area to area, it leaves a flyer of string. See how the craftsman manipulated the design so the red thread neatly “ties down” the loose black loops, and so on. Modern embroiderers usually don’t do this; they just snip the threads, which adds a time-consuming, labor-intensive step to the process. Whoever did this work was a master at “maschinenstickeri”, as you would expect from a company putting forth their best work at a trade show.
Many of us own cloth collectibles made of German Rayon, and if you ever doubted that they were capable of manufacturing it just before and during WW2, here is proof that they not only were, but with a high degree of sophistication, as this piece shows.
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