Hey all! I recently inherited a relative's personal fur collection, with one snag - I'm pretty sure some of these are exotics, although I'm not sure. Can anyone help me identify them for certain? The first is a hat I initially thought was printed rabbit, but it doesn't feel like rabbit to the touch and has long guard hairs all over the fur. I think this might be some kind of cat fur? I've never actually encountered big cat fur before, so I don't know for sure, but it definitely doesn't look or feel like the dyed rabbit I initially took it for. The second is a collar, might be lippi? Not positive, but it's smoother and flatter than the hat. The label reads "Al Raben Furs, St. Louis MO" After some research I'm pretty sure the muff is some kind of monkey, since it feels (really eerily) similar to human hair, but I'm not sure what kind. It's silky, and kind of hard to get a picture of since it's so dark. I'm told it dates back to the 1940s, but that's all I know. Thank you!
Hi there, The hat is stenciled muskrat, the collar is ocelot, and if you wouldn't have said the piece in the last pic was a muff I would have thought it was a wig so I'm unable to identify it based on that photo.
Thank you for the answer on the first two! Here are a couple more photos of the muff in daylight, one close up to show the texture.
Hi, thank you for those additional photos. It is indeed monkey. Some monkey fur is legally prohibited from being sold but not all. Because of this you would need to know what type it was and get permitting to be able to do so.
Thank you so much, Caryn! For anyone interested, I did some digging and found some old notes from the family member that lists the hat as ocelot, the collar as margay, and the muff as Colobus monkey, although it seems like only the last one was (probably?) correct.
The family member may have originally purchased the hat under a fictitious or made up name which would have led them to believe it was ocelot. It is really muskrat that was stenciled or dyed to look like ocelot though. The second one could be margay which is known as the tree ocelot. It is in the same family as the ocelot that hunts it's prey on the ground and has the same markings but is smaller in size. Due to the size of the collar it would be difficult to distinguish the difference. The last was correct as we already determined. Colobus monkey does have legal restrictions. There is also more than one species of colobus monkey.
