HAIR PENCILS 



781 



draw onwards or push backwards the pincers and the stuff at pleasure. The warp of 

 the web is made of black linen yarn. The weft is of hair, and it is thrown with a 

 long hooked shuttle, or a long rod, having a catch hook at its end. The length of this 

 shuttle is about three feet ; its breadth half an inch, and its thickness one sixth. It 

 is made of boxwood. The reed is of polished steel ; the thread warps are conducted 

 through it in the usual way. The workman passes this shuttle between the hairs of 

 the warp with one hand, when the shed or shuttle way is opened by the treddles ; a 

 child placed on one side of the loom presents a hair to the weaver near the selvage, 

 who catches it with the hook of his shuttle, and by drawing it out passes it through 

 the warp. The hairs are placed in a bundle on the side where the child stands, in a 

 chest filled with water to keep them moist, for otherwise they would not have the 

 suppleness requisite to form a web. Each time that a hair is thrown across, the 

 batten is driven home twice. The warp is dressed with paste in the usual way. The 

 hair-cloth, after it is woven, is hot calendered to give it lustre. In the Great Exhibi- 

 tion of 1851, J. Bardoffsky (Russia) exhibited a collection of bowls, dishes, plates, 

 &c., formed of the hair of the rabbit, hare, and other animals, which were felted and 

 afterwards varnished. They had the appearance of papier-mache, and were very 

 light. 



The chief kinds of hair used in the arts are horse-hair, used for stuffing seats and 

 for hair-seating ; cow-hair, for making felt and for mixing with mortar ; ooats'-hair, 

 mohair, &c., for weaving into textile fabrics ; camels-hair, mohair, &c., for artists' 

 pencils ; hog-hair and other coarse kinds for common brushes ; and human hair for 

 wigs, chignons, and other articles of head-dress. 



Hair imported in the years 1871 and 1872 : 



HAIR BRUSHES. The hair brushes are manufactured with coarse hair, as that 

 of the swine, the wild boar, the clog, &c., and these are usually attached, by binding 

 with cord or by securing them with a piece of tin plate, to a wooden handle. The 

 manufacture of hair brushes, clothes brushes, tooth and nail brushes, is necessarily 

 very large, and of considerable importance. The technical details of this manufacture 

 would occupy space to the exclusion of more important matter. 



HAXR PEWCIIiS, for artists. Hair pencils are composed of very fine hairs, as 

 those of the sable, the miniver, the marten, the badger, and the polecat. These are 

 usually mounted in a quill, but sometimes they are secured as in the former case with 

 tinned iron. 



The most essential quality of a good pencil is to form a fine point, so that all the 

 hairs without exception may be united when they are moistened by laying them upon 

 the tongue, or drawing them through the lips. When hairs present the form of an 

 elongated cone in a pencil, their point only can be used. The whole difficulty consists, 

 after the hairs are cleansed, in arranging them together so that all their points may 

 lie in the same horizontal plane. We must wash the tails of the animals whose hairs 

 are to be used, by scouring them in a solution of alum till they be quite free from 

 grease, and then steeping them for twenty-four hours in lukewarm water. We next 

 squeeze out the water by pressing them strongly from the root to the tip, in order to 

 lay the hairs as smooth as possible. They are to be combed in the longitudinal direc- 

 tion, with a very fine-toothed comb, and finally wrapped up in fine linen, and dried. 

 When perfectly dry, the hairs are seized with pincers, cut across close to the skin, and 

 arranged in separate heaps, according to their respective lengths. 



Each of these little heaps is placed separately, one after the other, in small tin pans 

 with flat bottoms, with the tips of the hair upwards. On striking the bottom of the 

 pan slightly upon a table, the hairs get arranged parallel to each other, and their deli- 

 cate points rise more or less according to their lengths. The longer ones are to be 

 picked out and made into so many separate parcels, whereby each parcel may be com- 



