Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1886 — from Chinese Nettles. [ARTICLE]

from Chinese Nettles.

Grass cloth is likely to have a more extensive market than formerly. It is a Chinese production, specimens of which come to us generally in the shape of handkerchiefs. The material is a fiber, not grass, and a species of nettles. Those nettles are carefully cultivated in China, where they grow in great quantities, as they do in India and Ceylon. In India hitherto no marked attempt of cultivation has been made. They are free from the stinging character of the ordinary nettles. In Ceylon and India, where the plants grow wild, these nettles are cut just about the time of seeding and bleached by the assistance of the heavy night dews and the hot middy suns, and the fibers gathered together and spun into ropes of thin twine, from which coarse matting is made. This primitive way of treating the nettles is not followed in China, and, indeed, the employment of the fiber silk for commercial purposes seems to be a Chinese secret. Not only is the texture of the cloth manufactured from this fiber very beautiful —it is principally remarkable for its splendid gloss and peculiar transparency—but it is extremely strong and durable. Belting for machinery has already been made with the China grass fiber, and on being tested it was found that it could bear a strain of 8,326 pounds to the square inch, whereas leather could only sustain a pressure of 4,249 pounds to the square inch. So soon as manufacturers and customers have had a sufficient time for experimenting we may expect to see grass cloth very generally used.— Manufacturers' Gazette.