SEQUINS FROM SKELETONS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 190, 8 December 1941, Page 2

SEQUINS FROM SKELETONS

UNIQUE BRITISH FACTORY

Sequins, the coloured spangles used for dress decoration, are being made in Wales from tlie bones ol dead animals by a family of refugees from Czechoslovakia. Their lashion creations in sequins are exported to countries which used to get them from Czechoslovakia in peace time.

In lovely shades of royal blue, emerald, scarlet, mauve, gold and silver, the sequins are got, from the gelatine in the hones which is pressed into thicknesses sometimes as fine as one thirty-second of an inch and dyed. The Czechoslovak family who run the factory, the only one of its kind in Britain to-day, came from Gablonz, in the Sndctenland. where they had been making sequins for over 30 years. Thev brought nothing with them but their experience and their Knowledge of what the Tjnited States, South Africa. India and Australia required, but in the three short years since they opened at the Treforest Trading Estate in South Wales they have evolved their own intricate machines for cutting and threading the sequins, trained a complete staff, and attained the high standard of workmanship for which their Gabion/, factory was famous. They !iave even developed new lines like collars, boleros and other accessories decorated with sequins.