Hat of the Week: 19th Century Firefighters Top Hat

So, I'm a real picture hoarder, I spend a lot of time online nabbing images of all kinds of great stuff, including pictures of hats, and I've decided to start a regular feature to share them.

Here's my first Hat of the Week!

This is a 19th century silk plush top hat. It's a fairly old one, not sure of the exact date but I'd say possibly mid-19th century, because of the straight-sided stovepipe shape, which was popular in the 1850s and 1860s.

Check out these photos of similarly shaped hats from the mid-19th century:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/JD0109-001/Hulton-Archive
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/JD4038-001/Hulton-Archive

Silk plush is a kind of very flat velvet, using very fine silk threads for the pile, that was first developed during the early 19th century as a more affordable imitation of beaver felt. (A trick for telling the difference: most silk plush hats have lost a bit of their plush around the edges. If you can see cardboard through the plush or at the edges, or something that looks like skin, it's silk plush. That's the backing showing through the fabric. Felt, after all, just wears away to more felt underneath.) Plush soon became fashionable in its own right, though, and silk plush top hats were among the most commonly worn hats until the early 20th century. So, while the plush is very nice, that in itself isn't what makes this hat so special-

You'll notice that this hat has an unusual red hat band and a little metal badge. The badge is hard to read in this photo, but it's from an old volunteer fire association, so I'm guessing that this hat was part of a fireman's uniform from the time period. I've seen illustrations of top hats being worn with uniforms during the time, but had never seen a real one before.

Through the 19th century, there were no municipal fire departments. All the fire associations were 'volunteer', essentially free agents that kept their own fire houses and trucks and put out fires without government oversight or support. I'm sure that they were usually on the up and up, but in big urban centers they were notorious for looting houses as much as saving them. In New York it was common for more than one fire association to show up at a fire and then engage each other in a fistfight over who got to go into the house first to grab the best of the spoils, as the house burned away un-watered. They depicted this situation in a scene in Gangs of New York. The book that they made the movie from is really great, if you haven't read it you may want to pick it up. The author, Herbert Asbury, wrote true crime books about the 19th century underworld in a number of US cities, they're really good.

Full Steam Ahead

In anticipation of the Nova Albion Steampunk Convention coming up next March, I've made a push to list all my steampunk-inspired hat styles on my Etsy page.

So far I've worked only in felt, but I'm thinking of making some little straw boaters as well. What do you think?

Hat Making Inspiration - Sewing Patterns Part 2

Below you'll find some of my favorite images from sewing patterns for making hats. In my last post on this subject, I included several photos of hats in fashion illustrations on sewing patterns. As I mentioned, these pictures are often a fantasy of the illustrator, rather than reality-based, but sewing patterns for MAKING hats are another story. As you can see, these have more detail, they are closer-up, show seams, etc., all so you can get a better idea of the construction. Right now I'm working only with blocked felt, but I've made soft fabric hats in the past- looking through these again is fun, maybe I'll try some of these out later this year...



















And be sure to check out the Hats category in the Vintage Sewing Patterns Wiki!

TechShop is coming to SF!

Finally, we're getting one of those everything-tools shops, where you can get a membership then use every tool you can imagine but don't have room to store or money to buy for yourself.

TechShop
http://www.techshop.ws/tssf.html

Someday, I'd love to learn to make my own hat blocks, and furniture, this might be my chance.

Jill Tracy in HON at Edwardian Ball 2010

I was honored to have the incomparable Jill Tracy wear my hats at each evening of this year's Edwardian Ball. Here are some great photos, see more photos from the ball in my flickr gallery.

The photos below by nightshade
theblight.net
nightshade's Flickr page




The photos below by Dave Golden
http://dave-golden.com
Dave Golden's Flickr page

Hat Blocks Are Fun - Part 2

Something really fascinating about working with hat blocks is doing the mental gymnastics required to look at a block and anticipate how the finished hat made with it will turn out. Here are some examples.

One of my favorite hat styles of late is the mini topper I purchased from Guy Morse Brown Hat Blocks in England. Here's what the crown looks like.



You start with a felt 'hood', that looks like this.


First, you put the hood onto the crown and block it in place, which leaves a 'ring' of extra felt hanging around off the bottom of the crown when you're done. You cut the extra 'ring' of felt from the bottom edge, and block it separately onto the brim, which looks like this.


After you block the brim, you turn it upside down. When you flip the brim over, you'll see that the shape of the brim, the way it curves, corresponds to the shape of the brim on the hat.


After the two pieces are finished and sewn together, the finished hat looks like this.

Hat Blocks Are Fun - Part 1

At this point, as a milliner I'm really focusing on blocked, rather than sewn hats. Blocking a hat involves taking material (usually felt or buckram), steaming it to get it hot and wet, and stretching / molding it over a hard shape. Traditional hat blocks are made of wood, although factory made hats are often made now on metal forms. The foundation for a hat that you make by working with felt and blocks is very sculptural, rather than sewing-based. I find it especially interesting to see the difference between the shape of the block and the hat it produces. Here are photos of a few of my favorites, I'll tell more about them in a future post.





Bay Area milliner Wayne Wichern has started a new blog as a resource all about hat blocks and blocking. If you're interested in the subject, definitely check it out. He's posted three great videos that show how blocks are made and used.