15c. Hats

[Randall]

Hi all,

What type of headwear(not helmet) would be appropriate for a mid-15c. man at arms? English or Italian? I have been looking at Historic Enterprises site and they have a few different options, would any hat be better than the other? Any suggestions? Thanks,

Randall

[Tailoress]

Randall, I have heard that the paper on this site is useful, though I haven't read it myself:

http://www.nachtanz.org/archive.html

Italian male headress could be *very* fun.

-Tasha

[Winterfell]

The most common is the acorn hat. Worn by both upper and lower classes:
[img]http://home.armourarchive.org/members/flonzy/images/MTT2004/Chuckfull/IMGP0737.jpg[/img]

[Black Swan Designs]

For any English or western continental (Lowlands, France, Burgundy) portrayal the "acorn" style of hat is a good place to start. They can be worn alone or in conjunction with another hat such as a chaperone. The chaperone is either worn over the acorn (the donor in Petrus Christus' "St Eligius" is wearing this style) or over the shoulder, suspended by the tail (Rene's Book of the Tournament illustrates this style) while the acorn is left on the head. French illos also show the acorn on the head and tall crowned hats with a pointed brim suspended by a black sash: the sash passes through an ornate "hatband", and the hat is suspended over the shoulder by the looped sash.

In Germany, the acorn hat appears worn with some sort of overhat that generally has what looks like "fringe". We've been able to duplicate the style pretty closely by using an acorn worn under a fringed hood worn upside down. Roll the face edge of the fringed hood and put it on so the fringe either hangs over the shoulder, or far enough so the fringe sticks out of the top like a fountain. A string around the base of the fringe helps with this look, much like a non-knitted ski hat. You can see this style being worn by both men and women in the Mittelauterliches Hausbuch (recently reprinted as "Venus and Mars- the World of the Medieval Housebook")

Italian hats have a look which is distinct from the rest of Europe- the hair is worn the longest of anywhere in Europe, and hats tend to a brimless "pillbox" shape. If the hat has a brim, it tends to turn up at the back and not have a brim at all in the front. Another popular style is what looks like a lot like a chapel de fer, a big open bowl shape, much like a bowler hat with the brim flattened out.

It's pretty easy to reblock and trim the "medieval felt hats" we offer into the tall French or low Italian pillbox styles. They're made of wool felt and shape easily. Just wet the hat and stretch it over a form, allow to dry and trim. A plastic soda bottle turned upside down into a can makes a good form for tall narrow styles. A large juice can, mixing bowl or 2# coffee can makes a good form for the wider pillbox style. The chapel de fer style is the easiest, as the crown is very shallow and it's easy to pull the brim out flat.

Work the felt on the form to "raise" it (shrink it) down over the form. If you're trying to shrink it down a lot you may need to add a bit of detergent to make it felt up and contract more. If you want a brim, leave enough material at the bottom to turn back and trim. Be sure to wear gloves, as many of the colours will run while wet, especially black. If you've used soap, gently rinse the hat in cool water and return to the form to drip dry. There are commercial hat stiffeners available which can be used to make the felt stiffer if needed.

Hope that helps!

Gwen

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

This is my favorite sort of hat to wear on a hot day. By Pisanello, before 1450.

[Dougal Forester]

How about the Foresters cap...the Robin Hood hat. Is that appropriate for this time period? Dougal

[Wolf]

ya i've seen it. its not the super robinhood hat, but something like it anyways. sometimes its worn backwards

[Randall]

Thanks everyone. This helped a great deal.

Randall

[earnest carruthers]

And of course a common hat is the floppy tube hat, not the chaperon but a simple tube rolled with the rest a flop, Italians and Flems, very easy to make, very cheap and oh so floppy, even Durer has one of a sort in a very early 16th century self-portrait.

Some seem to be open ended some stitched up.

There were literally hundreds and hundreds of variants to choose from. English import lists from 1480 mention gross upon gross of children's hats comingr from Germany and The Low Countries, do we assume a mixture of trends or that somehow German and Flemish hat makers made English style hats - over to you Gwen.

But please don't wear a coif for 1450 onwards it is so re-enactment myth, UK has loads of 15ht century players who wear coifs, mainly due to an error years ago and it seems the myth has stuck.

Coifs are really rare in mid to late 15th century imagery, I had trouble fiding one but managed to get an Italian, and that was after much searching thorugh Northern European stuff.

Hats are cool. (and warm)

[Hew]

And of course a common hat is the floppy tube hat, not the chaperon but a simple tube rolled with the rest a flop, Italians and Flems, very easy to make, very cheap and oh so floppy, even Durer has one of a sort in a very early 16th century self-portrait.

Some seem to be open ended some stitched up.

Funny you should mention that. Last night my son (22 yrs old) was wearing a section of pant leg that was cut from a pair of khaki pants he turned into shorts. It looked great as a hat, and it made me think of some German engravings or something.

But please don't wear a coif for 1450 onwards it is so re-enactment myth, UK has loads of 15ht century players who wear coifs, mainly due to an error years ago and it seems the myth has stuck.

Coifs are really rare in mid to late 15th century imagery, I had trouble fiding one but managed to get an Italian, and that was after much searching thorugh Northern European stuff.

It seemed pretty common for doges to wear coifs under phrygian caps: "Titian. Portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti. c.1545" http://www.abcgallery.com/T/titian/titian50.html
But yeah, not many with just coifs. You'll see portraits of Dante wearing a coif under his hat from that period, but Dante himself lived between 1265 and 1321.

[Karen Larsdatter]

There's some details from period illustrations of men's headwear from about the first half of the 15th century at http://www.maisonstclaire.org/resources/skin_out/skin_out.html; some additional potentially-helpful links at http://moas.atlantia.sca.org/wsnlinks/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=277.

[Magmaforge]

check out the fechtbuchs of Talhoffer and Vadi for later 15th c. hats.

[Tailoress]

When I mentioned Italian men's hats, I was thinking of Niccolo da Tolentino as portrayed in The Rout of San Romano.

You can see what I mean here:

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/u/uccello/4battle/

-Tasha

[earnest carruthers]

Hew

"It seemed pretty common for doges to wear coifs under phrygian caps: "Titian. Portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti. c.1545" http://www.abcgallery.com/T/titian/titian50.html "

yes kind of my point, there are only so many Doges and pontiffs ;-)

But coifs seem to have come in and out of fashion, lots in 14th century, few in 15th and then back again in the 16th.

But floppy hats are the bomb!!!

[Black Swan Designs]

grimmy, I know you're a big fan of floppy hats, so I'm directing this one to you. Floppy hats of every description seem to have been quite the rage in the early years of the century but I can't seem to find any evidence for them past about 1430 or so. Do you have evidence of them later? I was thinking of adding them as an option for 1450-70 wear but just can't find any.

Thanks-

Gwen

[earnest carruthers]

One post 1460s springs to mind, it is a miniature with a bunch of people in shop fronts, the same character is featured buying shoes amongst other things, he has a floppy hat, and off top of head mayhap another in the pic does too.

email me at home to remind me to scan it in, and I will have another look for more, flemish pics come to mind.

[earnest carruthers]

1430 is too clean a cut off, the floppiness extend much further, eg:

MS egerton, approximately 1450

And of course the very famous Burgundian scene of the traders outside the city gate, the one with the booth, you mean you missed the trader next to the woman in the famous booth?? The image is grisaille and very well known and certainly post 1460 if not later. <edit> Etienne tavernier 1458-60, in fact in the gateway there is a man with another floppy hat, the sealed end type, seen a lot in the Decameron of 1440 thereabouts.

Image of a horseman, actually Louis XI entering Paris on a white horse, his hat looks definitely floppy albeit blue. Two similar eras and two distinct classes of wearer. <edit> This is about 20 years after Etienne Tavernier.

Other variants on a theme occur including slightly less floppy but bagged, or wrapped cloth/flopy as in the market trader.

The big tapestry of the feats and deeds of Alexander, circa 1450-60 feature three men in the middle ground, with three variants of floppy hats, and one more man to the right of them has taken a floppy hat off. They are not orientals like some of the other men featured.

<edit> I sleep with a clear conscience. So remove the :-( emoticon and smile

<edit> Also a man with floppy hat in Bertholdus's Horologium Devotionis Zeitglöcklein des lebens und Leidens Christi 1489.

<edit> And by chance another variant, Histoire de Charles Martel, 1467-1472 but no earlier than 1463 - I wasn't even looking for that one.

xxx

[Egfroth]

But please don't wear a coif for 1450 onwards it is so re-enactment myth, UK has loads of 15ht century players who wear coifs, mainly due to an error years ago and it seems the myth has stuck.

Coifs are really rare in mid to late 15th century imagery, I had trouble fiding one but managed to get an Italian, and that was after much searching thorugh Northern European stuff.

Hats are cool. (and warm)

Actually, though in general I do agree with you, there is a picture by Breughel (16th century) called The Blind Leading The Blind in which at least one of the characters is wearing a coif.

[earnest carruthers]

Egfroth, which is why I specified fifteenth century, the coif makes a re-appearance in the 16th.

There is a strange habit amongst UK Wars of the Roses groups to wear coifs, which is out of kilter IMHO.

If they were doing Low Countries circa 1530 I wouldn't have a problem.