Fuller's earth
clay material
Fuller's earth refers to various types of clay used as an absorbent, filter, or bleaching agent. Products labeled Fuller's Earth typically consist of palygorskite (also known as attapulgite) or bentonite. Primary modern uses include as absorbents for oil, grease, and animal waste (cat litter), and as a carrier for pesticides and fertilizers. Minor uses include filtering, clarifying, and decolorizing; as an active and inactive ingredient in beauty products; and as a filler in paint, plaster, adhesives, and pharmaceuticals. It also has a number of uses in the film and theatre industries.
Etymology
The English name reflects the historical use of the material for fulling (cleaning and shrinking) wool, by textile workers known as fullers. In past centuries, fullers kneaded fuller's earth and water into woollen cloth to absorb lanolin, oils, and other greasy impurities as part of the cloth finishing process.
The original spelling was without an apostrophe, but the apostrophe became more common in the 19th century, both before or after the s. Fuller's earth is the most common spelling today, but both fullers earth and fullers' earth remain in wide use.
Fuller's earth is also known by the following other names:
Bleaching clay, probably because fulling whitened the cloth.
“Fuller's earth” enters the record as clay material. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fuller's, earth and clay can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fuller's earth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.