This ornament is made from Goose Nagorie feathers. They are similar to Couqille but longer. I have other articles using Couqille on this site like 18th C Feather Covered Bergére, Feather Covered Muff, Feather Brisé Fan, Curled Goose Feathers Pad, and a couple more but only one other with Nagorie 1860s Goose and Chenille Headdress. Below is the vintage/antique example.
It was made from Goose Nagorie feathers. It has 16 feathers with longer ones at the top ~5″ long and gradually getting down to 3-4″ long. Most Goose Nagorie are 5 to 6′ long so I used both Nagorie and Coquille feathers in my copy.
I picked out 16 feathers in 4 different lengths. Some of them needed to be wash and fluffed so I did that.
I cut 16, 9″ long pieces of dark galvanized wire 28 gauge. It is a fine but stiff wire and looked like what they used on the vintage one;.
I bent about 3/4″ of one end down to 90°.
Then wrapped the long end around this and the last inch of the feather’s stem.
I repeated that on all 16 feathers.
I then used dark florist tape to cover the wire twist to about 1″ down the wire.
To start the branch I took the longest feather and two others, bundled them like this and wrapped them together with about 1″ of florist tape.
I then added two more on either side of the main stem with the florist tape.
This is with 7 feathers from the front.
This is what it looked like from the back with 7 feathers.
This is with 15 just the one more to add. I added it and used it’s wire to bundle all the other wires. I did not cover that with tape because the vintage one had bare wire.
This is my finished ornament. I used the wire to shape it like a faux wing. I figured that was perfect for an Edwardian hat because, they started in the US at least, using more farm based bird feathers and less wild killed birds. I think it would be nice to match the tape color to the feathers or use color matched silk embroidery ribbon.