The long road of producing the finest mohair.
Mohair is a natural fibre made from the fur of the angora goat, likely originating in Anatolia or in the Himalayas, but now mainly native to South Africa.
Their long, pure white, and first and foremost crimped wool (the reason why it is usually called “hair”) has some extraordinary characteristics: While extremely light, soft, and water-repellent, it also has some climate-regulating properties. This is a fibre as only nature can create it. Early users called this wool “divine” …
The properties are produced by a special physical structure: The scales around each fibre are far less pronounced in mohair than they are in wool, hardly protruding from the shaft and resulting in the typical warm sheen and pleasantly smooth feel while at the same time ensuring that mohair furniture upholstery, for example, barely felts even at intensive use.
The refined mohair fibre provides a particularly climate-friendly fabric today: Its origin could not be any more natural, the production of mohair does not harm animals, and it has moisture-regulating (and other) properties for which synthetic fibres would otherwise have to be used after processing.
This is the highly fascinating fabric that we refine: Special processes and equipment are used to add further “capabilities” that make it unique worldwide. Many of these methods are only available from us.
Alpaca – the best from the other side of the world.
Alpacas, whose fur we refer to here, belong to the genus of “humpless sheep-camels”. They are kept semi-wild and often only come into contact with people for shearing (which is absolutely harmless for them). After shearing, the approximately 5 cm long fine hairs are sorted manually and processed adjusted to their nature.
Alpacas are living mainly in the high altitudes of the Andes, a harsh world full of climatic extremes. As a result, alpaca fur is fine and fluffy, with long fibres, and dense, offering a cooling effect in the heat and insulating against the cold at the same time. This makes it one of the most exquisite textile raw materials. Similar to mohair, many old legends and stories have twined around the origin of this extraordinary wool ever since it has been used.
Improving this near-perfect material even more in refinement or strengthening its positive properties is a very special task. We have perfected this process for finishing alpaca.
… Hemp & linen:
Hemp grows quickly and without using up a lot of water or pesticides. It does not leach the soil either. Its cultivation is significantly more productive than that of cotton, for example, to boot. However, since hemp can only be made into a hard fabric, it is usually used in blends, in particular with linen, which also makes rather brittle fabrics on its own. Innumerable test series had to be run on our various pile-raising machines before we were able to find a solution – with a specially developed pile-raising set – that brought about a soft, extremely pleasant surface.
… Bamboo viscose:
Bamboo fibres are too short to be processed in their natural state. This issue can be remedied in multi-stage processing that leads to processable fibres and a very soft, smooth, and shiny yarn. While the fibres in the hemp-linen blend are too hard to finish conventionally, bamboo is too soft and fragile. Another in-house development led to the breakthrough.
… Soy bamboo viscose:
What does not seem to belong together at first glance comes together here. Yarn obtained from these fibres is exceptionally smooth, posing high demands on processing, and has a bit of a yellowish basic colouring … but a wonderful silken sheen!
… Paper plush:
Yes, that’s right … This is more or less a new edition of a classic since we used to experiment with this (at the time for reasons of war) all the way back in 1919 already. However, in light of new knowledge and developments acquired in the course of the last century, we have picked up this thread again to create a perfectly sustainable, fully recyclable plush that is already seeing some use.