Willard M. Smith

“ We think of gloves first, no doubt, as a daily necessity. But we also value the finer qualities as a mark of elegance. Beautiful gloves impart the coup de grace to the formal costume of either man or woman. At the same time, clinging to this luxury, like a perfume of old, we are dimly conscious of an aura of half-forgotten associations, linking the glove with royalty, chivalry and romance; with famous affairs of honor, with the pomp and ceremonial of the Church, with countless dramatic episodes in history and literature. ”

“ The glove which encases your hand—no matter how much a part of yourself through daily familiarity it may seem—never can be anything but a stranger to you and unappreciated, until you know gloves. Even the sense of politeness and prestige which you enjoy is not enough; the glove legend also should be yours. Not without good reason are we inspired to live up to our gloves. ”

“ If the seventeenth century must be considered little short of marvellous as regards glove-making in Grenoble—and it may be compared, indeed, to the first five years of a child’s life, in which he makes, proportionately, his most astonishing progress—the achievements of the industry in the nineteenth century, if possible, have been even greater. Apart from the facts of the vicissitudes the trade had had to face, the battles it had waged—and won—all the vast accoutrements of modern machinery and scientific appliances now come into play. ”

“ France continued a Catholic country, and Grenoble, sequestered in a southern province, scarcely felt the disquieting breath of the great religious revolution which was sweeping mid-Europe. Its ideas and its civilization changed little, even while fresh consciousness of its natural powers and material resources was impregnating the city with new industries. The spirit of craftsmanship—that joyous love of perfection, not only in the fine but also in the useful arts, which characterized the Renaissance—was still the ruling temper of its citizens ”

“ In the west the spectacle changes. Beyond the vast plain of the Drac appears a long, white cliff, little carved out—a rigid line of limestone falling sheer to the valley where lies Grenoble. This is the compact mass of Vercors, almost impassable. Yet, suddenly, the cliff makes way; the vale of Furon leaps through the chasm in the mountain wall. An ancient road, winding ribbonwise to westward, puts into communication the valley of the Isère with the wooded brows, the vast grassy hollows, of the Vercors countryside. ”

“ A visit to this particular mill is doubly affording to the student of glove-making because here they weave and dye their own silk fabric. We are able to follow the process from a skein of raw silk to the finished glove in all its accuracy and beauty. Every step in its evolution is attended with admirable carefulness and despatch—the glove emerging almost miraculously from the crude material as it is passed swiftly from one operator to another, each worker contributing one factor more to its final perfection. ”

“ But while the silk glove of recent years has become a truly progressive industry, let it not be imagined that the kid glove to-day is resting upon its laurels—great as its historical prestige certainly is! The methods of kid glove manufacture are being tirelessly improved upon; the product itself is of finer grade than ever before, it presents greater variety, it is all the time more cleverly adapted to modern uses. But only the designer of new styles in this important phase of apparel can fully appreciate the possibilities of the glove art as they open before him at the present hour. ”

“ An artist who designs kid gloves, first of all has the feeling for gloves as gloves. His object is to originate something beautiful in glove form. Next, he knows the technique of glove-making from A to Z, just as the painter knows his pigments, the laws of color and of drawing. The glove designer realizes the physical limitations of his art, and equally he divines the developments of which that art is susceptible. He is thoroughly familiar with the materials at his disposal, with the machines and the skilled workers he must employ to execute his ideas. ”

“ On the rough, uneven stones of the floor they kneel, imploring in their hearts the good saint who protects and prospers all devout glovers, that the craft may wax stronger with every year in the city of Grenoble. ”

“ The doors of the glovers’ guild-hall, converted into a flower-adorned banqueting room, stand wide open. The glovers’ shops and houses overflow with hospitality. As at a great fair, popular arts and pastimes occupy the squares and spaces before the public buildings; several such distractions begin at once and continue simultaneously. Mountebanks and musicians, 39folk dances, Columbines and Pierrots, flower-girls, venders of bon-bons and petits joujoux of every description, all commingle in a laughing, jabbering, singing, whirling, shimmering, merry-making throng. ”

“ Follow the progress of the glove, and you trace the growth in enlightenment and refinement of the nations. One of the true forerunners of democracy—as democracy means the elevating, not the levelling, of mankind—the glove takes its place among the civilizing forces of the world.
No small part of the importance which attaches to the subject of these investigations lies in the relation gloves bear to the history of modern industry. We shall find that the position of the glove-makers among the mediæval craftsmen was unique, and of the utmost consequence to the industrial evolution of Europe. ”

“ Gloves have deeply affected the lives of human beings from the very earliest periods. They have descended 5to us from a remote antiquity, and are in very fact our inherited title to nobility, for they were bequeathed to us by the princely prelates, the kings and over-lords of the past, whose chief insignia and most treasured badge of honor was the glove. To comprehend all that they have brought with them down through the centuries we must retrace a vast deal of history, and let our imaginations play over scenes and customs far removed from our own day. ”

“ In Italy and Spain the glove was cherished with the most romantic feeling ever accorded it throughout all its long and impressive history. No king of olden days exercised more despotic rule over his feudal dependents than the Spanish and Italian ladies over their “cavaliers,” to whom even to be allowed to touch the fair one’s glove was a favor which sent the aspiring lover into ecstacies. ”

“ Grenoble, on recovering from the shock of the Revolution, the long, dark days of the Terror, found, to her chagrin, that she had a formidable rival in Paris. Naturally, the capital city, the centre of the court, was the first place to feel the effects of the renaissance of glove-making. Paris swarmed with workers, and could get more sewers at lower wages than Grenoble contained within its gates. In 1810, however, the southern city began to reach out into the surrounding country for apprentices; and quickly the peasant people responded by the hundreds and thousands. ”

“ The designer of French kid gloves, it goes without saying, is an artist. He may not be a Frenchman, however. It is a mistake to 115suppose that all the originality and all the inspiration to create a beautiful article of dress, acceptable to the fastidious of every land, must be of French origin. French influence, to be sure, plays an invaluable part in the education of such artists; but an American, with long training in the glove business, may have both the taste and the talent to invent glove masterpieces which will be eagerly adopted, not only in New York, but also in Paris. ”

“ House after house they pass and shop after shop, each bearing above the portal a shield emblazened with the selfsame coat-of-arms—the heraldic device of the guild of the glovers. Their occupants, gayest of the gay, fast swell the throng, with masters and their families and apprentices—the young boys in the retinues stealing shy glances at the pretty daughters of their masters, the maidens covertly returning their admirers’ bashful looks. ”

“ At Annonay, the skin-dressing industry—like that of glove-making at Grenoble—has been established for so many centuries, that long family lines have devoted themselves for successive generations to that single calling. Fathers, sons and grandchildren have passed their lives and spent their efforts in furthering and perfecting the art of preparing glove skins which should be without a rival. ”

“ Every large glove company has its own classical models—that is, there are certain standard styles of kid gloves of the best manufacture which virtually do not change from season to season. These have names, which are as well known in the glove trade as the names of real laces, of old, established design, to exporters and importers of that delightful commodity. For instance, in a famous glove shop on Fifth Avenue, New York, we are introduced to three classical styles—the Florine, the Seville and the Isère. These are all fine French gloves, of a cut and finish familiar to many of us. ”

“ Skins with perfect grain usually are finished on the grain surface side and are called glacé. But many with imperfect grain are finished on the flesh side of the skin, by the sueding process. Suede, then, is exactly the reverse of mocha, in that what was the inside of the skin becomes the outside of the glove. Suede leather, obviously, is inferior in strength, if not in appearance, to the same types of skins dressed on the grain side. It has by no means the durability of mocha—though a high-grade suede strikingly resembles mocha. ”

“ No power known to man can turn that gelatine back into leather. Shred it. No machine can reweave the fibres into their former wonderful fabric. Take all the chemicals which go to make up a piece of leather, and mix them in all the ways that can be imagined, and man cannot make a single inch of leather. Synthetic leather seems farther away than the synthetic diamond.”
The person who enters a glove shop of reputation—or the glove department of any high class store—to buy gloves, probably has a very limited notion of the variety of fabrics and workmanship represented by the goods before him. ”

“ In the glove trade men talk of “cape,” “suede,” “doeskin,” “lambskin,” “kid”—nor is the meaning of each of these nearly so obvious, nor so simple, as would casually appear. If, in every case, the name were properly applied to skins which came from a distinct type of animal, grown in one particular district, whose hide was tanned into leather by its own peculiar process, then the quality and character of each kind of leather would be practically uniform. ”

“ To the cutter each skin he takes up becomes a new problem. As no two faces are alike, so also no two skins are alike—not even those of the same class.
The cutter first stretches the skin carefully to ascertain or measure its elasticity. Then he applies his pattern to see how he can get the best results quantitatively. In other words, a cutter must exercise the utmost ingenuity to get as many gloves as possible out of the skins he is working on, and not let any of the leather go to waste. In many glove factories, the foreman “taxes” the skins as they are given out to the cutters ”

“ Against foreign competition and the paralysis which she suffered under the Jouvin 78patent, she had only the superiority of her product to offer—the suppleness of her skins, the elegance of their cut, the beauty of the tints artificially applied, the finish and durability of her sewing. But these were enough to keep her art alive. They still prevail—and in even higher degree—in the gloves of Grenoble makers to-day.
In the evolution from artist to artisan, there is little room for regret. Already the glove-workers of France have readjusted very largely to changed conditions within the industry ”

“ With the march of civilization westward in the United States, and the disappearance of the antelope from the western plains of North America some thirty-five years ago, a skin was sought by glove manufacturers in this country to take the place of the antelope, which was used in making a glove in those days known as doeskin. After patient search, and much experimenting with various species of skins and different tanning processes, a tannage was perfected for the skin of the Arabian hair sheep which produced the strong, but soft, velvety finished mocha. ”