Wool

This week’s ephemera post is about a piece of paper that has hidden secrets!
Who would have thought that an unpreposessing leaflet like this on the right which appears to be the equivalent of a paint chart for wool would open out into something as glorious as this below …

In fact it opens out into A3 and was too large for the scanner, so you’ve only got about half of it!  But you need to see it big to appreciate that it’s not printed. Those are actual samples of wool pasted onto the sheet – how the heck do they do that?  Surely in 1963, this must have been very labour intensive to do even though the wools are glued to a backing paper and then cut to size …

There are some great colours too – Shrimp, Lipstick Red, Firebrand, Wasp and Gay Turquoise!  Unfortunately, the scan cut off the samples of many of the fancy ranges –  ’Fuzzy Wuzzy’ (angora),  ’Rimple’ (dk with kinks), ‘Beehive Bouclet’ (knobbly cotton) and ‘Big Chief’ (thick wool for men’s jumpers).

Inside the big wool chart was this smaller sampler card.  Does anyone remember ‘Courtelle’?  It was Britain’s first acrylic fibre made by Courtaulds and introduced in the 1950s.  It was incredibly popular being used in mini dresses designed by Mary Quant for instance, and in endless jumpers by Marks & Spencer.

These wool charts are rather lovely, and I shall be filing them away to stumble across again in the future.