The case of the fraudulent fur

There is a long history of cheaper furs being altered by a variety of techniques during processing to replicate more expensive and rare furs, but this was particularly prevalent in the 1920s. The popularity of fur in this period, coupled with a shortage of rarer and more valuable furs, meant that quality furs were in short supply. An effective means of relieving this shortage was the dyeing of cheaper skins to replicate scarcer furs. Obviously in doing this the financial reward was also huge. This activity is described neatly in a 1922 quote by William E. Austin, consulting chemist to the American fur industry:

There are many animals among the more common and more easily obtainable ones, whose skins are admirably suited as the basis of imitations of the more costly furs. Some of the furs which are adapted for purposes of dyeing imitations are … red fox, rabbit, hare, muskrat … and imitations made of mink, sable, marten, skunk … And indeed there are very few valuable furs which have not been dyed on cheaper pelts.¹‘Overview’, Furskin Identification, http://www.furskin.cz/overview.htm, accessed 10 January 2014.

To determine the structure of the muff, it was studied by the NGV Textile Conservation department using visual observation and radiography. The micro-morphology of the fur fibres was then analysed using an optical microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Finally, because of the complexities of identifying furs, an expert in fur identification confirmed the findings.

On examination, the fur on the muff is thick, shiny and fine, and the pelt is an even black colour from skin to tip, apart from the fur on the head and legs, which is black with a red undertone. This uniformity of colour raises the possibility that the fur has been heavily dyed, as animals that have black pelts tend towards a brownish shade of black with subtle variations in colour nearer the skin. ²William E., Austin, Principles and Practice of Fur Dressing and Fur Dyeing, D. Van Nostrand, New York, 1922, p. 3.

X-radiography of the object revealed that the ‘mink’ on the muff is actually made from several different animal pelts, with the main body of the muff constructed from three sections, stitched together with two invisible joins along the length of the object. The head and two paws are attached separately. The X-ray image taken of the muff clearly showed the seams between all pieces. In addition, it revealed that the head contains a dome, giving it form and structure, and that the glass eyes are held together inside the head with a material whose radio opacity suggests it is wire. The paws are tubes of seamed pelts, unfinished at the ends, and the nose and ears are stitched in place.

A few individual hairs were removed from the muff and examined using an optical microscope, with three distinct types of fur discovered: fine, intermediate and coarse. The intermediate fibres have a distinct ladder-like appearance in the medulla (the central portion of the fibre). This appears as dark, evenly spaced patches arranged as a single series. The medulla of the guard hair, in contrast, has a very fine granular texture.

Although these observations narrowed down the possible fur suspects, a number of animals, including cat, mink and opossum, possess similar identifiers. Scale casts were therefore made to further differentiate between these fibres. The process revealed a distinctive, overlapping diamond petal scale pattern on the mid-length of the intermediate fibre and base of the coarse fibre, with waved mosaic patterns at both tips. This information gave a match for fox but not for mink, which, though similar at the tip, has lanceolate and pectinate (teeth-like) patterns at base.³H. M., Appleyard, Guide to Identification of Animal Fibres, 2nd edn, WIRA, London, p. 19.

Textile conservators were very fortunate to access the SEM held at the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility at the RMIT, Melbourne. To prepare the fibres for SEM, they were embedded in resin and sputter-coated in gold (to provide a conductive surface), allowing cross-sections of the fibres to be studied. These showed the fibres are oval with angular contours in the fine fibres and oval medullas – again a match for fox.⁴ibid., p. 10. (Mink has a more flattened oval with no angular contours.⁵ibid., p. 19.) The dimensions of the fur gained from the SEM analysis also correlated with the dimensional diameter range expected for fox fur.⁶Austin, p. 93.

With analysis complete and a possible identification of the fur as being from the Vulpes vulpes (fox) species, our findings were confirmed with a specialist in the field. Some hairs were sent to biologist Barbara Triggs, a recognised expert in the identification of mammal species. Triggs used microscopic techniques and confirmed with 90 per cent certainty that the fur is fox. She also confirmed that the fur had been heavily dyed, which interfered with her ability to see the medulla and thus identify the fibres with 100 per cent certainty.

This investigation is a reminder that fur garments are not always what they seem, and that it is sometimes justified to study them with suspicion. In the case of the muff, it is likely that the pelts that comprise it belonged to a common red fox. These furs were dyed, shaped and joined to have the appearance of mink, a far rarer and more expensive fur. Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy were valuable tools in determining the fur’s true identity.

Thank you: John Payne, Senior Conservator, Paintings (x-radiography); Barbara Triggs, Biologist (fur analysis). The author acknowledge the facilities, and the scientific and technical assistance, of the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility at the RMIT Microscopy and Microanalysis facility at RMIT University, Melbourne.

Kate Douglas is Conservator of Textiles at NGV.

Notes