Plumes : ostrich feathers, Jews, and a lost world of global commerce / Sarah Abrevaya Stein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stein, Sarah Abrevaya.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ostrich feather industry--History.

Ostrich feather industry.

Jewish merchants--History.

Jewish merchants.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xii, 244 p.) ) ill., maps.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The thirst for exotic ornament among fashionable women in the metropoles of Europe and America prompted a bustling global trade in ostrich feathers that flourished from the 1880's until the First World War. When feathers fell out of fashion with consumers, the result was an economic catastrophe for many, a worldwide feather bust. In this remarkable book, Sarah Stein draws on rich archival materials to bring to light the prominent and varied roles of Jews in the feather trade. She discovers that Jews fostered and nurtured the trade across the global commodity chain and throughout the far-flung territories where ostriches were reared and plucked, and their feathers were sorted, exported, imported, auctioned, wholesaled, and finally manufactured for sale. From Yiddish-speaking Russian-Lithuanian feather handlers in South Africa to London manufacturers and wholesalers, from rival Sephardic families whose feathers were imported from the Sahara and traded across the Mediterranean, from New York's Lower East Side to entrepreneurial farms in the American West, Stein explores the details of a remarkably vibrant yet ephemeral culture. This is a singular story of global commerce, colonial economic practices, and the rise and fall of a glamorous luxury item.

Contents:

Introduction: The pursuit of plumes

The Cape of Southern Africa : Atlantic crossings

London : global feather hub

The trans-Saharan trade : Mediterranean connections

The American feather world

Conclusion: Global stories.

Notes:

Map on endpapers.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-227) and index.

ISBN:

9786612352393

9786612089381

9781282352391

1282352393

9780300142853

0300142854

9781282089389

1282089382

OCLC:

404723390