Who Made the First Felt Hat?
The felt hat is as old as Homer. The Greeks made them in skull-caps, conical, truncated, narrow- or broad-brimmed. The Phrygian bonnet was an elevated cap without a brim, the apex turned over in front. It is known as the “cap of liberty.” An ancient figure of Liberty in the times of Antonius Livius, A.D. 115, holds the cap in the right hand. The Persians wore soft caps; plumed hats were the headdress of the Syrian corps of Xerxes; the broad-brim was worn by the Macedonian kings. Castor means a beaver. The Armenian captive wore a plug hat. The merchants of the fourteenth century wore a Flanders beaver. Charles VII, in 1469, wore a felt hat lined with red, and plumed. The English men and women in 1510 wore close woolen or knitted caps; two centuries ago hats were worn in the house. Pepys, in his diary, wrote: “September, 1664, got a severe cold because I took off my hat at dinner”; and again, in January, 1665, he got another cold by sitting too long with his head bare, to allow his wife’s maid to comb his hair and wash his ears; and Lord Clarendon, in his essay, speaking of the decay of respect due the aged, says “that in his younger days he never kept his hat on before those older than himself, except at dinner.” In the thirteenth century Pope Innocent IV allowed the cardinals the use of the scarlet cloth hat. The hats now in use are the cloth hat, leather hat, paper hat, silk hat, opera hat, spring-brim hat, and straw hat.