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As Bright as a Feather: Ostriches, Home Dyeing, and the Global Plume Trade

In the 19th century, dyed ostrich feathers were haute couture, adorning the hats and boas of fashionistas on both sides of the Atlantic. Whitney Rakich examines the far-reaching ostrich industry through a peculiar do-it-yourself-style book: Alexander Paul’s The Practical Ostrich Feather Dyer (1888), a text interleaved with richly colored specimens.

In April 1745, for example, the Derby Mercury in Derbyshire encouraged readers to visit “Two large Beautiful Ostriches, Alive, (Cock and Hen), Lately Arriv’d from Santa Cruz, in Barbary”. During his time learning the trade in France, he experienced this control firsthand, and the French dyers “impressed me as being the most egotistical mortals”, whose reluctance to embrace new techniques and share their production process irritated him even more. Paul wrote for an empowered and can-do audience for whom, also thanks to the Industrial Revolution, plumbed running water and gas-fired boilers were increasingly common, and for whom dyeing feathers was as viable and appealing a use of time and energy as dancing or raising poultry for profit (for which there were also how-to guides).

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