RUSSIAN FURS IN LONDON

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 14255, 2 January 1947, Page 5

RUSSIAN FURS IN LONDON

THREE-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD

INDUSTRY

MOSTLY FOR AMERICA Without help from any State Department, a private firm of brokers has made a deal with the Soviet Government which moves the centre of ■the Russian fur trade from Leningrad to London.

The Russian furs, which this firm will sell by auction to buyers from all over the world for anything up to £1,000,000, are already in England. They lie in great rows of bales in an Upper Thames-street warehouse almost in the shadow of Southwark Bridge. When I saw them, writes Cyril Foster in the Daily Mail, London, the bales were being opened and the skins sorted and laid out ready for inspection before being auctioned in Beaver House, Gariick-hill, modern centre of the 300-year-old industry. There were piles of black, curly Persian lamb, small white ermine, dappled squirrel, soft to touch. There were marten, kolinsky, pony, blue and white fox, names that spell luxurious warmth because trappers need to earn a living.

Sheets of squirrel (called sacks) about four feet square were evidence of how Russians scrape the barrel, even in the fur trade. Nothing had been wasted. There were sheets made entirely of the fur covering the squirrel's head; others just the throat. Some were made of the minute fragment of fur at the base of the tail, so that a sheet was about 5000 pieces sewn together. Only in Russia and China,' where standards of living are low, is it economic to spend the time these sheets must have taken. I couldn't help wondering what they did with the wishbone. I know. Squirrels don't. . . . ) Prices? As these are the first Russian furs to be sold in London since before the war, it is difficult to say. But the Persian lambs may fetch £ 7 to £ 8 a skin, and it takes about 20 skins to make a coat. Not that many will be bought for this country. Few are likely to reach the big London stores. In Europe in the Middle Ages it was an offence for anyone not of royal blood to wear most types of fur. Modern Britain effects its discrimination with a 100 per cent, purchase tax on top of costly manufacture, putting many furs beyond the reach of the average purse.

Many of them will go to America to fetch staggering, skyscraper prices as fur coats for New Yorkers. But buyers from Canada, the Argentine, France and Czechoslovakia will also have had their say before the hammer falls and the labels are made out.

If the skins are going abroad, why bother to bring them from Leningrad to London? Because the Russians are accepting payment in sterling, whereas the buyers will pay in much-needed dollars and other scarce currencies.'