Decorative feathers were used extensively in millinery throughout the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Bird of Paradise was one of the most fashionable and sought-after specimens, with the trade reaching its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century. As noted in Birds of Paradise: Plumes & Feathers in Fashion, ‘80,000 skins per annum were exported from New Guinea to Europe’, with one London-based feather dealer ‘receiving a consignment of 6,000 birds of paradise feathers’ in 1892.