Featured Antique sterling woven textile with Czech stones and a Cray Surprise!

I don't even know where to start with this... My Croatian neighbor has been been collecting and picking in San Pedro for at least 50 years - she's close to 90. Croatians have lived here since San Pedro's settlement in the late 1700s, believe it or not!

She's amassed an incredible load of authentic hand made laces, textiles, shoes, shawls and jewelry for the authentic costumes she made for an Eastern European a Capella group called Zhena she belongs to.

Anyway - I was first just going to ask people how they would describe this item - a form of woven sterling thread, Czech crystals and fake pearls. It's 88 inches long total, double paneled, sewn together with HUMAN HAIR??? Honestly. I pulled a hair out of it as I was moving it, but when I came to inspect the seam I found it was woven with hair and some other fiber, not sure what - those bordering channels are stuffed with it. Some of the other fiber has been spun into crude thread.

That's a LOT of hair - it's quite heavy, as well. The back of the stones are painted gold and affixed to discs or squares. I just found them in a shoe box in the garage.

Really - has anyone seen anything like this? I wonder if they were attached to the bottom of a dress? She has two of them - I just found them in a shoe box in the garage and thought they were wonderful, but this was a big surprise.

 

Horsehair from a tail or mane, I think.

 

I agree, horsehair is more likely. And not sterling. Possibly silver, but a lower fineness.

 

At 88 inches long I cant help but think it might have been curtain trim or the like. What a neat thing.

 

I was surprised to find out that horse hair is similar to human hair - the only horsehair I've come across is the horsehair in furniture, which is more coarse.

It's not clear to me why they used that as well as the other fiber - maybe as a sort of hair net(?) to keep its shape. That's still a lot of horsehair!

Any comments on age, use, manufacture/technique or country of origin - My words aren't kicking in for this.

AFA being silver - it is tarnished and smells like

Maybe, @johnnycb09 , but I can't explain why it's stitched together so it doesn't hang or lay flat.

 

Pima horse hair basket...they can get crazy small....

 

Horsehair used for making violin bows, usually taken from the tail.

 

Hi,
Most old stuffing made with horse hair also includes cow hair and others. It is more curled to provide resilience. The mane and tail hair is longer and more straight.
greg