The Spanish made considerable use of sisal, manufacturing ship cables and grain sacks. The inventor of the reaper, Cyrus McCormick, originally employed thin wire to secure hay bales. The wire would occasionally work its way into cow fodder, causing serious injury to cattle. Sisal came into its own as an industrial fiber when McCormick found it to be superior to wire. The Mexicans mixed sisal with silk to create artisela, a popular fabric for clothing.
Sisal is employed thousands of ways in modern industry.
Blended with synthetics, the enduring but lightweight material is used in boats, planes and toys. Sisal appears on a wonderful set from Venda, shown in Figure 1. They were issued Feb. 26, 1982. This stamp issued by the Bahamas in 1948 shows the loading of sisal on a dock. Venda, one of the so-called homelands of South Africa, had its own stamps from 1979 through 1994.