Toppers Unite

[Trouser Bark]

I doubt very much that your teacher's story is true. However, it's a great story to make history come alive.

I also think that the height of rudeness was the lady sitting on Lincoln's hat, or anyone's hat for that matter

Interesting comment. He was not a "teacher" but rather a university history professor. In the US such types are disinclined to invent history as it would impact their tenure and reputation immediately. I think there may be a language issue here as well as it is not rude for the lady to have made an error. Being inattentive, distracted, or having poor situational awareness is not rude behavior as defined in the US. Suggesting that she may have assumed an 8" diameter pipe might fit in her tail however, would meet the definition of rude nicely.

 

[Steve1857]

Interesting comment. He was not a "teacher" but rather a university history professor. In the US such types are disinclined to invent history as it would impact their tenure and reputation immediately. I think there may be a language issue here as well as it is not rude for the lady to have made an error. Being inattentive, distracted, or having poor situational awareness is not rude behavior as defined in the US. Suggesting that she may have assumed an 8" diameter pipe might fit in her tail however, would meet the definition of rude nicely.

I was making a joke about the lady's "rudeness" sitting on Lincoln's hat as a counter point to Lincoln's supposed rudeness of pointing it out.

I understand that the gentleman was a history professor. However, professors and university lecturers are, nevertheless, teachers who teach their students.

I believe your initial point was, he tried to bring history alive in order to make it interesting for his students. As a teacher myself, I'm all in favour of that approach.

However, again, I doubt the veracity of the story. Where is the source? Who is the source, if any? And what was the point of the anecdote he mentioned?

Enough of this though. Let's get back to hats

 

[Hurricane Jack]

This is the Silk Top Hat Lincoln wore the night of assignation. As you can see it is not collapsible and has a flatter brim.

Smithsonian dusts off Lincoln artifacts for film | Arkansas Democrat Gazette

WASHINGTON -- The curators wore lavender surgical gloves as they arranged Abraham Lincoln's stovepipe hat under the camera lights at the National Museum of American History in Washington.

www.arkansasonline.com

I saw it some yrs ago in one of the traveling Smithsonian exhibits.

 

[Steve1857]

Steve, It's very thin so I tend to think it's probably Silk Plush. I didn't look into this in detail so I don't know how they verified this was Lincoln's Silk Top Hat.

Steve, as you know, hard to verify a hat if you don't have it in hand, but I'm inclined to agree.

I have a circa late 1800s Top Hat that feels like silk plush and has a little of that worn golden brown look that the Lincoln hat has, though not near so much.

 

[Trouser Bark]

I was making a joke about the lady's "rudeness" sitting on Lincoln's hat as a counter point to Lincoln's supposed rudeness of pointing it out.

I understand that the gentleman was a history professor. However, professors and university lecturers are, nevertheless, teachers who teach their students.

I believe your initial point was, he tried to bring history alive in order to make it interesting for his students. As a teacher myself, I'm all in favour of that approach.

However, again, I doubt the veracity of the story. Where is the source? Who is the source, if any? And what was the point of the anecdote he mentioned?

Enough of this though. Let's get back to hats

Haha... I bet you get invited to all the parties!

 

[Steve1857]

Haha... I bet you get invited to all the parties!

I avoid parties. I'm too afraid someone will sit on my Topper

 

[CraigEster]

Steve, as you know, hard to verify a hat if you don't have it in hand, but I'm inclined to agree.

I have a circa late 1800s Top Hat that feels like silk plush and has a little of that worn golden brown look that the Lincoln hat has, though not near so much.

I also agree that Lincoln's hat was originally silk plush. By the 1840s, plush was the most common topper material I'd say. The transition from fur to plush only took about 20 years, maybe 30. It's hard to say without a proper analysis of dated hats and going through period sources more.

What I can safely say is that nearly all stovepipe hats are silk plush. Also, I'd like to add some clarification to make sure we're all using the same terms.

- Historically, a "silk hat" was a hat covered in silk plush. Collapsible hats and other silk fabric covered hats don't count. The term originated as a way to differentiate from beaver veneered hats - most "beaver hats" weren't even solid beaver felt.

- A collapsible hat was originally called an "opera hat" and the term "Gibus" seems to have been irregularly used, most probably in mail order catalogues. There's two types of opera hat, those covered in silk, or later rayon, satin and those covered in a ribbed silk cloth, either faille or grosgrain. You'd be hard-pressed to find actual silk grosgrain cloth of the right rib size. I forgot how many samples of silk I got before I found the right weave, and now I can't recall the maker. They were an English weaver, a family operation if I recall correctly. It was around $75 USD per meter pre-COVID, no idea what it costs now.

- The flat brims on earlier hats were the original standard brim shape for toppers. Some would have a slight upward curl at the sides and others would have the plain arched brim like Mr. Lincoln's hat. Lincoln's hats tended to be, and this is a personal aesthetic opinion, plain and ugly - even by the standards of the time. I recall it being a bit intentional but this is going off something I read in passing some years ago. It was purportedly common in US politics to not dress well so that one could appeal to the people. Supposedly, a politician wearing perfectly tailored clothing in the newest style with a shining new silk hat of a more refined design would make one appear as an outsider to the common folk that elected the likes of Mr. Lincoln. The last thing Mr. log cabin would have wanted would be to look like an industrialist in the papers. He wore a very wide mourning band on his hats after his son died, which is why some of the hats claimed to be his have a different texture halfway down - it's faded wool cloth or it's preserved silk that was under wool cloth for a longer time.

- The brim profiles we're familiar with on more modern toppers is the d'Orsay curl, which dips at the front and back and upturned at the sides with an arched profile; the edge is curled over and inward with a pronounced overhang at the sides smoothly transitioning to a tight curl at the fore and aft edges of the brim. Both d'Orsay and earlier brims were bound in a similar manner actually, but the binding technique is most prominently shown on d'Orsay brims as it covers the edge curl; these brims also use a wider brim binding ribbon.


Lincoln's hat would have been made from French hatter's plush, as it was made nowhere else. The "rusty brown" color is from the cotton ground weave of the hatter's plush. Plush is a silk pile long-nap velvet with a cotton core weave that holds the silk together. Very fine cotton is used because it absorbs whatever was used to hold it to the hat better. This cotton was dyed differently from the silk and has a tendency to become discolored as it ages and becomes dehydrated. I don't know if it'd work on an 1860s hat, but on later hats you can wash the material with water and it'll return some blackness to it as it re-hydrates the cellulose.

Interestingly, this cotton was imported from the American south and was made on slave plantations. The Union blockade of the south actually damaged French plush production as suppliers had to shift to other ground weave material. This means that it's a certainty that Lincoln's hats were made with slave-produced cotton. After the US Civil War, some suppliers went back to American cotton but many used the higher-quality cotton from Egypt and India. US cotton has a shorter filament length (I don't know the proper term, it's short staple cotton vs the other stuff that's long staple cotton, my understanding is that production is mixed everywhere now but it wasn't in the 1860s) and doesn't make for a particularly strong yarn.

The silk pile breaks off the cotton ground if it dries out and is mishandled. I've been researching why some hats have perfectly intact plush but signs of wear whereas others, with the same indications of wear, have almost no plush. I believe it's in the hat polish used, as some polishes would protect the silk from the environment, preventing brittleness. Whale oil was used in the late 19th century and has protective properties on silk, as it both traps moisture and lubricates the silk filaments without going hard like a tallow polish. Hard wax polishes are the next best thing as far as preserving the hat, although a natural rendered fat polish, which is traditional, isn't ideal as the fat will go rancid and spur oxidation.

Lincoln's hats were all left in storage and weren't maintained. It's likely that they were never polished with whale oil or another material (probably too early for this type of polishing as I've only seen French and English sources mention polishing at this time) and thus were exposed fully to the atmosphere for all this time. Dried-out and oxidized silk is incredibly fragile.