Beneluxury

[steur]

It's been a while since anything was posted in this thread, but here's one. Pascal&Cie bowler hat. Size 56 with the brim at 5,5cm and the crown at 12cm. Runs somewhat small for its size, but a well made hat.
Pascal&Cie was located in the Rue du moulin in Bruxelles and that's all I can find about the maker. The inside of the sweatband has a "marque deposée" stamped on it with the letters Th. C.C.V.
It was sold by Edw. Jorgensen in Odense, Denmark. Steve @Steve1857, who found this hat, couldn't find more information about the retailer either, so it is a bit of a mystery.

 

[steur]

Aeroleger bowler hat. Belgian made most likely, so it gets a place here. No labels under the sweat. I bought it because of the really cool looking sweatband. Size 57 with the brim at 5cm and crown 12cm. Likely made of woolfelt and at 160 grams not as lightweight as the name suggests, but maybe Belgium has some heavier air. Very nice bowler all in all, but too bad the postal services decided to use their gorilla to test the veracity of the story that you can stand on a bowler. You can, but the hat won't hold. I dented it out, but a few battle scars remain. A bit wide for me. An oldie, probably 1930's.

Couldn't find anything on the hatter, but they were probably located in this building.

 

[Wangenheim]

Maybe I post this in the wrong thread, because I think this hat was only sold in Belgium. However: This is a boater that I didn't buy, but fortunately received as a gift. It has a rounded brim edge (not a saw edge). The crown measures 9,5cm. The brim is between 5,5(sides) and 6cm (front and back) wide. Hat band is frayed and 6, the sweat band 4 cm. Size 7 1/2 (british) or 58 or 5 1/2.

Inside there's some "very smart" logo with antique axes and feathers illustrated - does anybody know what this is or means? Well, I'm sure the guy who has it on his head is very smart ; )

The silk on the inside has some pattern imprinted, including three circles and verious stripes.

"Maurice" seems to me is a store (or hatmaker?) in La Louvière? I couldn't gather any information about it. But the "Extra Quality London" above makes me think it was produced in England.

The font (especially "FABRIQUÉ SPÉCIALEMENT POUR") and the illustartions seem to me as this could be a pre WW1 hat. On the other hand, this Belle Époque style was popular even in the late 20s for some products. So what do you think?

Oh, the white chalk stripe is not original ; )

 

[steur]

Valensy Light Superior fedora in a nice deep brown. Size 56 with the bound brim at 6,5cm and the crown at 10cm at the front. It is light, but not that light at 110 grams. The felt is very thin though and has a great hand. I don't see Valensy hats that often, so it was worth a try. Looking for the label under the sweatband though I heard the heartsinking sound of stitches popping. Dang! Still perfectly wearable, but a rescue mission is scheduled nonetheless. Maybe I can make out the colour name once I get the sweatband out.
On the first page of this thread some more information can be found on Valensy. The travelling soap booklet I found with the brand name on it mentions the Valensy Light as a quality, so we knew there had to be one. Very satisfying to actually find one.

 

[deadlyhandsome]

Valensy Light Superior fedora in a nice deep brown. Size 56 with the bound brim at 6,5cm and the crown at 10cm at the front. It is light, but not that light at 110 grams. The felt is very thin though and has a great hand. I don't see Valensy hats that often, so it was worth a try. Looking for the label under the sweatband though I heard the heartsinking sound of stitches popping. Dang! Still perfectly wearable, but a rescue mission is scheduled nonetheless. Maybe I can make out the colour name once I get the sweatband out.
On the first page of this thread some more information can be found on Valensy. The travelling soap booklet I found with the brand name on it mentions the Valensy Light as a quality, so we knew there had to be one. Very satisfying to actually find one.

Love this hat, Stefan. The color is great, and the delicate contrast of the ribbon and binding sets it off without looking garish. A nicely balanced hat.

 

[steur]

Love this hat, Stefan. The color is great, and the delicate contrast of the ribbon and binding sets it off without looking garish. A nicely balanced hat.

Well put. Thank you, Brent.

 

[GHT]

Well put. Thank you, Brent.

He certainly has a way with words, but he's right, it is a most attractive hue. Tina woke me up this morning, she was most distressed following a disturbing dream. She's settled now and I am wide awake, so what to do? The morning newspaper, being Sunday, is full of celebrity tittle-tattle, I could never face TV first thing in the morning but come to The Lounge and this excellent thread has re-emerged. Love it. In fact I have enjoyed re-reading through it.

How amazing is it that Ascot Races are known in every part of the world? It's reading snippets like that, even though I'm not familiar with the language, that makes for such an interesting thread.

Hats aside, Stefan, I'm old enough to remember when there were only six countries in what was originally known as, The Common Market. How I travelled extensively through the Benelux countries, they didn't put up barriers, like the remaining big three.

Keep the thread running, you have a captive audience.

 

[steur]

He certainly has a way with words, but he's right, it is a most attractive hue. Tina woke me up this morning, she was most distressed following a disturbing dream. She's settled now and I am wide awake, so what to do? The morning newspaper, being Sunday, is full of celebrity tittle-tattle, I could never face TV first thing in the morning but come to The Lounge and this excellent thread has re-emerged. Love it. In fact I have enjoyed re-reading through it.

How amazing is it that Ascot Races are known in every part of the world? It's reading snippets like that, even though I'm not familiar with the language, that makes for such an interesting thread.

Hats aside, Stefan, I'm old enough to remember when there were only six countries in what was originally known as, The Common Market. How I travelled extensively through the Benelux countries, they didn't put up barriers, like the remaining big three.

Keep the thread running, you have a captive audience.

Thank you, Robert. I'll do my best. I'm sure there are more hats either inside or outside my collection

 

[steur]

Brummel's Corso in steel grey. Size 56 with the bound brim at 5cm and the crown at 10cm at the center dent. This one teeters on the verge of being a "little hat" due to its proprotions. The hand of the felt is wonderful and the colour is great, but it is one of their later hats. The earlier ones are overall of even higher quality. If a Brummel's end up near the bottom it should tell you something about what is coming.

 

[steur]

P&C Top hat. That's not Habig, but the Dutch (originally from Germany) retailer Peek&Cloppenburg. Still located on Dam square in Amsterdam to this day. This one was made by Spoorenberg, who produced toppers under different brand names, mainly Burton and Ambassador. I bought this one because it's a size 60 and these things are rare in larger sizes. Brim at 6cm and 14cm high. Excellent condition except for some waviness on the sweatband. PM me if you're interested.

 

[steur]

And now for something completely different (well, somewhat different anyway). We wonder and discuss our hats for quality and age and finishing and express opinions about beaver versus nutria versus hare versus rabbit and everything in between. Today we’re heading off to Lokeren, Belgium, where for many a (today) vintage hat the journey began. You’d be forgiven not knowing where the place is. It’s just below the Dutch border between Antwerp and Gent and it specialized in fur.

What I’ve learned from the Borsalino book by Guido Barberis is that the fur acquired was not just essential, it was paramount for the quality Borsalino went for. When they tried to diversify vertically (for various reasons) and start their own “couperie” they found out they couldn’t produce the same quality they needed for their hats.

Lokeren was the centre for the fur trade and in its heyday had dozens of cooperies, while today there are only two left. It deserves a closer look at what that work was actually like. For that we turn our eye to the story of Norbertine de Cock (1954-) who worked in the industry at the trailing end of it. This is a picture of her below.

Norbertine was brought up from a very young age to work in and for a hair cutting company. Her father Emiel worked as a hair cutter in one of the many Lokerian factories. Mother Leontine takes care of the household and at home processes the tails and legs of hares and rabbits. Early on, Norbertine and her siblings help out. The family rents a house from father Emiel's boss in the Heirbrug district, not far from the factory. Mrs. Anna Cogen (1891-1962) runs the Epouse Jacobs-Cogen hair cutting company with a strict and firm hand and a tongue so sharp she could have cut the skins herself from 20 yards away. Apparently she was such a formidable woman that even after the factory was long closed the workers there were only prepared to give interviews about the work there under the condition of anonymity.

Mrs. Anna Cogen second from left

Father and mother De Cock realize that their daughter Norbertine works well and they map out her future. She will work in the haircutting shop when she reaches the required age: fourteen.

When Norbertine is born, Lokeren is still known as a hair-cutting region. The city has been concentrating on this part of the the hatmaking industry since the industrialisation and other national and international developments made the hatters that it was known for between 1750 and 1850 disappear from the town. In the 1820s Lokeren produced about forty thousand hats on average annually, a vast number for those days. The most famous milliner is a certain Petrus Jacobus Franciscus Vrancken (1757-1833) who was one of the become the most prosperous citizens of the city. Today he, together with his wife, is immortalized in the two Lokerse city giants.

After the 1850's the city concentrates on “couperie”. This dirty and hard work slowly grows into an independent industry. In 1913 there are already four larger factories. At its peak (during the interwar period) more than three thousand men and women worked in the hair cutting industry out of a population of approximately twenty thousand Lokeraars. At its height the city counts 44 “couperies”.

Skins of domesticated rabbits (from France and Belgium) and wild rabbits or “garennes” (from Great Britain and Australia) and wild hares (from Eastern Europe and Latin America) arrive in a haircutting shop. They are sorted according to their type, quality and origin. In Lokeren, people mainly work with wild rabbit skins.

The production process to separate hair and skin and to keep as much quality hair as possible has many steps and some shops even specialize in one or a few of them. After degreasing the skins they go to the carders. The carders are always men working two by two aside a carding box. Their job is to cut open the skin and remove the excess: the legs, ears, beak and tail. They do this with a sharp knife, usually homemade. The carders are pieceworkers. The more skins they cut open per day, the more they earn. But much of what they earn they spend in the nearest café. Many carders are known for their drunkenness and their rough and harsh language.

Carders at work

More in part II

 

[steur]

Part II

After the carding the skins go to be treated. The carrotting and drying of the skins is repeated frequently. Each company has its own secretion or carrotting material, with which a worker processes skins. Secretions are bound to secrecy (because its formula was a closely guarded trade secret), but mercury nitrate can always be found in the solutions. The years of exposure to mercury causes many health problems and pollution of the environment it was used in.

Carrotting or “secretage” (No other protection than just gloves)


On the outside of a skin there are long so called wind hairs that are not suitable for felt production. These hairs are 'pulled' out of the skin by so-called “trekassen” (pulling-shafts), a typical Lokers dialect word that refers to female workers who work in the section that remove the long wind hairs from the skin with their pulling machine. These wind hairs are not thrown away, but go to the mattress factories where they serve as filling for mattresses and pillows.

One of the last steps in the entire process is cutting hairs from skins. This is a task that women often take on. The cutter collects the hair on a work surface or mirror. She gives this hair on a metal plate to the piece extractor who removes the last impurities. Next to her is a “belly jack” who removes the belly hair. Finally, the fleece maker makes balls of the hair. These balls of hair or membranes are put in paper bags for export to hatfactories. The remaining strips of hide or “vermicelli” are used for making hide glue. A good portion of the process can be seen in the old Stetson factory movie “birth of a hat”, here:

In the early 20th century, workers processed an average of 1,000 skins per week in a workweek of about 60 hours. In addition to work in factories, there is a lot of home work. Women and children cut hair from tails and legs. After all, the irregular shapes of these parts are unsuitable for the machines in companies. The "tailcutters" install themselves in a living room or outside. They don't need more than a table and scissors to perform their tasks.

I don’t know the numbers on the division of labour for a couperie, but if we assume about a third of the workers were cutters and each cutter produced a 1000 skins each per week then Lokeren would have processed about 50 million skins a year in its heyday. According to a paper about the lasting effects on mercury poisoning in Lokeren the actual number was closer to about 60 million.

Photographer Antony Neuckens (1875-1948) was commissioned in 1909 to document home industries in Belgium. This picture documents what were called “steirtjessnnijdsters” (tailcutters).


Child labor in the home industry will persist for a long time. This is evident from Norbertine's story. From the age of seven she helps at home to supplement the family income and to finance the studies of older brothers and sisters. When she takes communion at the age of twelve, she drops out of school and helps her mother with the housework full-time. Long after the enactment of the Compulsory Education Act in 1914, Norbertine stays away from school to work from home.

Her start at Epouse Jacobs takes some getting used to for a 14-year-old. In an interview that can be found on youtube here:

)

she mentions the incredible stench and the dust as working conditions. The video quality is poor, she speaks in her Flanders’ dialect and there are no English subtitles (so good luck!).

The stench is likely to come from both the skins themselves and the naphtalene with which the skins are treated by the traders to protect them from rot and vermin.
She gets a place with the cutters. Initially she works 45 hours a week (1968). Not long after her start in the factory, she experienced the transition to the 40-hour working week. The work was piecemeal so a bookkeeper accurately records how many skins each employee processes per month and get paid accordingly. Norbertine gives her pay slip and the money earned to her mother.
Norbertine will continue to work there until the very last day of the company's operation. In September 1980, Epouse Jacobs closes down the books for good.

Due to years of exposure to the mercury mixture and not taking hygiene standards too closely, Norbertine also experiences health problems. In Belgium the use of Mercury Nitrate solution for carrotting was used much longer than in the US, where it was banned during the war years (mainly because they needed the mercury for the war industry). In Lokeren the mercury solution gradually was replaced by another chemical preparation after the establishment of the municipal Chemistry Center in 1952. Originally that facility was intended to provide the same carrotting solution for all cooperies, because the different formulas and chemicals the factories used caused too many problems throughout the city. The fact that a factory like Borsalino had to regularly do inspections for mercury poisoning of their workers until 1979 points towards a very gradual replacement of the practice of using mercury nitrate. Borsalino had been under pressure from the American authorities to stop using mercury treated skins from the early fifties onwards. The pretext was that the Unions demanded that for their fellow workers overseas, but the true reason is more likely that the manufacturers felt it gave Borsalino an unfair advantage.

The main locations in Lokeren lied derelict for many years after the factories closed down (the site was popular among urban explorers and urbex photographers), due to the mercury pollution in the soil. After demolishing the remaining buildings of the three larger factories Hoedhaar, Passavant and Epouse Jacobs, and sanitation in 2011 the locations get a new function as city park and housing plot.

The Hoedhaar haarsnijderij

The story of Norbertine de Cock is a small illustration of just a part, albeit an essential part however in making the hats we seek, of the hatmaking process and the awful conditions in which the work was done and the long-lasting effect it had on the workers and their surroundings.

 

[mayserwegener]

JHS main factory had fur cutting and processing onsite. There was exposure to nitrate of mercury but I know from JHS documentation that was a major concern going back to late 1800s along with improving work conditions. Some factories moved fur cutting / processing away from their factories so poor working conditions (also the continued use of nitrate of mercury) could be hidden. I know that Mayser Ulm had their own fur cutting / processing in Ulm but it was moved to Portugal in the mid 1960s (I can't remember what is called now). Same with their felt production in the late 1980s early 1990s (now FEPSA). Tonak still has fur cutting / processing onsite. Other than sorting much of it has been mechanized. I believe they moved from Nitrate mercury prior to WWII.

 

[steur]

Interesting that JHS stopped using nitrate of mercury before WWII as there seems to be general reluctance among the manufacturers using the method, even knowing the health issues involved. Borsalino took measures (mainly better ventilation) to mitigate the effects, but they didn't push very hard it seems to have the use of it stopped by their suppliers. Here's an abstract from a study done in 2001 in Lokeren:

Abstract
In the Lokeren felt industry, mercury was used in the production proces until the seventies.
Because no one realised the toxicity of mercury in the beginning, workers used mercury
without any protection, so they were exposed to high concentrations. A strong contamination
was possible by inhalation and absorption through the skin, sometimes leading to severe
symptoms of poisoning. The intention of this research was to investigate if now, 30 years
after the use of mercury became forbidden, the workers still have elevated mercury
concentrations in their body.
From 65 people that worked for the felt industry in Lokeren a sample of scalp hair was
analysed to measure the total mercury concentration. The mercury concentrations did not
differ significantly from those of 10 controle people living randomly in Lokeren (p=0,612).
Both former workers as people who still do the work have no more mercury in their scalp
hair than the rest of the Lokeren population, proving that the past severe mercury
contamination has almost disappeared. This result was more or less expected because of the
half life time of mercury in the human body, which is estimated to be only 70 days. The
results show that the actual mercury concentrations in the hair are mainly determined by the
pattern of fish consumption (y = 0,2148x + 0.0817; R² = 0,81). But a more detailled analysis,
after standardisation of the mercury values for fish consumption, reveals that there are subtle
effects of the former mercury use. People who did the most dangerous jobs, like the
preparation of the mercury solution, clearly have higher mercury values than the others
(p=0,016). This also explains the difference between men and women (M : 0,415 μg Hg/g
hair > F : 0,267 μg Hg/g hair; p=0,004), as the working with pure mercury products was
done exclusively by men. Also the fact that the group aged older than 70 shows higher
mercury concentrations (p=0,032) is a consequence of the work for the industry, because
these people were mainly active in the period before 1970.
Besides determining the mercury concentration a number of questions were posed about the
health of the workers, in relation to the specific jobs they did. A remarkable number of
people complained about abnormal tooth loss, lung diseases and discolouring of the scalp
hair. However, it was not possible to find a relationship between the hair mercury
concentrations and these problems. Perhaps the frequent use of concentrated acids, like nitric
acid and hydrochloric acid played a role in these.

 

[Wangenheim]

Part II

After the carding the skins go to be treated. The carrotting and drying of the skins is repeated frequently. Each company has its own secretion or carrotting material, with which a worker processes skins. Secretions are bound to secrecy (because its formula was a closely guarded trade secret), but mercury nitrate can always be found in the solutions. The years of exposure to mercury causes many health problems and pollution of the environment it was used in.
View attachment 500215
Carrotting or “secretage” (No other protection than just gloves)


On the outside of a skin there are long so called wind hairs that are not suitable for felt production. These hairs are 'pulled' out of the skin by so-called “trekassen” (pulling-shafts), a typical Lokers dialect word that refers to female workers who work in the section that remove the long wind hairs from the skin with their pulling machine. These wind hairs are not thrown away, but go to the mattress factories where they serve as filling for mattresses and pillows.

View attachment 500216

One of the last steps in the entire process is cutting hairs from skins. This is a task that women often take on. The cutter collects the hair on a work surface or mirror. She gives this hair on a metal plate to the piece extractor who removes the last impurities. Next to her is a “belly jack” who removes the belly hair. Finally, the fleece maker makes balls of the hair. These balls of hair or membranes are put in paper bags for export to hatfactories. The remaining strips of hide or “vermicelli” are used for making hide glue. A good portion of the process can be seen in the old Stetson factory movie “birth of a hat”, here:

In the early 20th century, workers processed an average of 1,000 skins per week in a workweek of about 60 hours. In addition to work in factories, there is a lot of home work. Women and children cut hair from tails and legs. After all, the irregular shapes of these parts are unsuitable for the machines in companies. The "tailcutters" install themselves in a living room or outside. They don't need more than a table and scissors to perform their tasks.

I don’t know the numbers on the division of labour for a couperie, but if we assume about a third of the workers were cutters and each cutter produced a 1000 skins each per week then Lokeren would have processed about 50 million skins a year in its heyday. According to a paper about the lasting effects on mercury poisoning in Lokeren the actual number was closer to about 60 million.

View attachment 500217
Photographer Antony Neuckens (1875-1948) was commissioned in 1909 to document home industries in Belgium. This picture documents what were called “steirtjessnnijdsters” (tailcutters).


Child labor in the home industry will persist for a long time. This is evident from Norbertine's story. From the age of seven she helps at home to supplement the family income and to finance the studies of older brothers and sisters. When she takes communion at the age of twelve, she drops out of school and helps her mother with the housework full-time. Long after the enactment of the Compulsory Education Act in 1914, Norbertine stays away from school to work from home.

Her start at Epouse Jacobs takes some getting used to for a 14-year-old. In an interview that can be found on youtube here:

)

she mentions the incredible stench and the dust as working conditions. The video quality is poor, she speaks in her Flanders’ dialect and there are no English subtitles (so good luck!).

The stench is likely to come from both the skins themselves and the naphtalene with which the skins are treated by the traders to protect them from rot and vermin.
She gets a place with the cutters. Initially she works 45 hours a week (1968). Not long after her start in the factory, she experienced the transition to the 40-hour working week. The work was piecemeal so a bookkeeper accurately records how many skins each employee processes per month and get paid accordingly. Norbertine gives her pay slip and the money earned to her mother.
Norbertine will continue to work there until the very last day of the company's operation. In September 1980, Epouse Jacobs closes down the books for good.

View attachment 500218

Due to years of exposure to the mercury mixture and not taking hygiene standards too closely, Norbertine also experiences health problems. In Belgium the use of Mercury Nitrate solution for carrotting was used much longer than in the US, where it was banned during the war years (mainly because they needed the mercury for the war industry). In Lokeren the mercury solution gradually was replaced by another chemical preparation after the establishment of the municipal Chemistry Center in 1952. Originally that facility was intended to provide the same carrotting solution for all cooperies, because the different formulas and chemicals the factories used caused too many problems throughout the city. The fact that a factory like Borsalino had to regularly do inspections for mercury poisoning of their workers until 1979 points towards a very gradual replacement of the practice of using mercury nitrate. Borsalino had been under pressure from the American authorities to stop using mercury treated skins from the early fifties onwards. The pretext was that the Unions demanded that for their fellow workers overseas, but the true reason is more likely that the manufacturers felt it gave Borsalino an unfair advantage.

The main locations in Lokeren lied derelict for many years after the factories closed down (the site was popular among urban explorers and urbex photographers), due to the mercury pollution in the soil. After demolishing the remaining buildings of the three larger factories Hoedhaar, Passavant and Epouse Jacobs, and sanitation in 2011 the locations get a new function as city park and housing plot.

View attachment 500223
The Hoedhaar haarsnijderij

The story of Norbertine de Cock is a small illustration of just a part, albeit an essential part however in making the hats we seek, of the hatmaking process and the awful conditions in which the work was done and the long-lasting effect it had on the workers and their surroundings.

40 Minuten allein für das Verfilzen. Wahnsinn!

 

[mayserwegener]

Interesting that JHS stopped using nitrate of mercury before WWII as there seems to be general reluctance among the manufacturers using the method, even knowing the health issues involved. Borsalino took measures (mainly better ventilation) to mitigate the effects, but they didn't push very hard it seems to have the use of it stopped by their suppliers. Here's an abstract from a study done in 2001 in Lokeren:

Abstract
In the Lokeren felt industry, mercury was used in the production proces until the seventies.
Because no one realised the toxicity of mercury in the beginning, workers used mercury
without any protection, so they were exposed to high concentrations. A strong contamination
was possible by inhalation and absorption through the skin, sometimes leading to severe
symptoms of poisoning. The intention of this research was to investigate if now, 30 years
after the use of mercury became forbidden, the workers still have elevated mercury
concentrations in their body.
From 65 people that worked for the felt industry in Lokeren a sample of scalp hair was
analysed to measure the total mercury concentration. The mercury concentrations did not
differ significantly from those of 10 controle people living randomly in Lokeren (p=0,612).
Both former workers as people who still do the work have no more mercury in their scalp
hair than the rest of the Lokeren population, proving that the past severe mercury
contamination has almost disappeared. This result was more or less expected because of the
half life time of mercury in the human body, which is estimated to be only 70 days. The
results show that the actual mercury concentrations in the hair are mainly determined by the
pattern of fish consumption (y = 0,2148x + 0.0817; R² = 0,81). But a more detailled analysis,
after standardisation of the mercury values for fish consumption, reveals that there are subtle
effects of the former mercury use. People who did the most dangerous jobs, like the
preparation of the mercury solution, clearly have higher mercury values than the others
(p=0,016). This also explains the difference between men and women (M : 0,415 μg Hg/g
hair > F : 0,267 μg Hg/g hair; p=0,004), as the working with pure mercury products was
done exclusively by men. Also the fact that the group aged older than 70 shows higher
mercury concentrations (p=0,032) is a consequence of the work for the industry, because
these people were mainly active in the period before 1970.
Besides determining the mercury concentration a number of questions were posed about the
health of the workers, in relation to the specific jobs they did. A remarkable number of
people complained about abnormal tooth loss, lung diseases and discolouring of the scalp
hair. However, it was not possible to find a relationship between the hair mercury
concentrations and these problems. Perhaps the frequent use of concentrated acids, like nitric
acid and hydrochloric acid played a role in these.

I asked Gustav Menschel about the use of nitrate of mercury and he said some of their sources were still using it in the 1960s. He also said that Ebreichsdorf S. J. Fraenkel dropped fur cutting / processing post WWII which put them at a disadvantage because they had to buy processed fur from outside sources.

I know nitrate of mercury was still being used in Italy because I came across law suits from the 1970s when searching the topic. From what I can remember the suits mention that the hat companies didn't want to be associated with fur processing so it was done elsewhere (similar to Lokeren ). I can't recall if the hat companies were mentioned.

I have digital documents from JHS on the topic. I will have to go back and see what I can find. I don't think I have any information on Mayser but my guess is they were probably on the cautious side regarding the use of nitrate of Mercury. I looked into this a while ago.

 

[steur]

I asked Gustav Menschel about the use of nitrate of mercury and he said some of their sources were still using it in the 1960s. He also said that Ebreichsdorf S. J. Fraenkel dropped fur cutting / processing post WWII which put them at a disadvantage because they had to buy processed fur form outside sources.

I know nitrate of mercury was still being used in Italy because I came across law suits from the 1970s when searching the topic. From what I can remember the suits mention that the hat companies didn't want to be associated with fur processing so it was done elsewhere (similar to Lokeren ). I can't recall if the hat companies were mentioned.

I have digital documents from JHS on the topic. I will have to go back and see what I can find. I don't think I have any information on Mayser but my guess is they were probably on the cautious side regarding the use of nitrate of Mercury. I looked into this a while ago.

Certainly an interesting topic. From what I gathered from both the Menschel book and the Barberis book on Borsalino is that the quality of the fur was everything to the manufacturers. A bit disheartening though it took so long for actually legislative measures to be taken, even though the devastating effects on health were already known for a long time.

 

[mayserwegener]

Certainly an interesting topic. From what I gathered from both the Menschel book and the Barberis book on Borsalino is that the quality of the fur was everything to the manufacturers. A bit disheartening though it took so long for actually legislative measures to be taken, even though the devastating effects on health were already known for a long time.

Here is a post I made back in 2014 that mentions that ŠEŠIR (Slovenia) had to move their fur cutting outside of Slovenia to Belgium. This is not related to nitrate of mercury but it shows that fur processing was still a problem in 2007. ŠEŠIR unfortunately went out of business shortly after I made this post.

Eastern European Hats and Makers

OK, so we have German & Austrian Hutmachers and French Hats and Makers, so I thought it’s now time to have a Thread for the Eastern European equivalents. I was in Ljubljana this week, and rebooked my early morning return flight yesterday to one at a more civilised time, which also gave me the...

www.thefedoralounge.com

Here is a more recent article on ŠEŠIR (Slovenia) that includes some interesting production photos. You will need to run it through a translator.

http://www.delo.si/druzba/panorama/za-gosposkim-pokrivalom-je-veliko-garanja.html

This is an article from 2007 when they privatized. It's interesting that they had to move their fur cutting operation to Belgium due Slovenian regulations.


"How many employees do you have?

When we were 80 employees, while I would like to emphasize that in Šeširju, including the loss of the entire Yugoslav market, the loss of Iranian and Russian market we have never fired anyone and also the country never asked for help. Even when we were due to incomprehensible rules eliminate a plant for the production of hair (now smooth installation work in Belgium with our technology, our machines, even for us) and it was superfluous to 30 people, we were able to redistribute this. "

http://www.gorenjskiglas.si/article/20070206/C/302069939/1082/1035/September

 

[mayserwegener]

As far as I know this is the only film (not very good condition) of the processes that Stefan mentioned above. I just made this clip.

See sections (in sepia tone) from a 1942 by Janyska & Cie. (Czechoslovakia) and it shows skin preparation, hand cutting of fur and manual felt making. This clip is taken from a video about Panizza so the commentary is Italian hat industry related so fur skin sourcing would have been different for Janyska & Cie.

 

[steur]

This was a nice find. I mentioned before I don't need any black homburg hats, but this was an early Brummel's, so what needs must. Turned out it's not a homburg at all, but a lords hat. Nice surprise there.
So. Brummel's Elite lords hat in black. Size 56 with the raw edge brim at 6cm and the crown at 10cm at the center dent. The brim curl is really nicely done, one of the finest I've seen, and this give the hat a nice sleek and elegant look. Some of the stitches already gave way, so I don't want to look under the sweatband anymore. It is an early one though, late forties, early fifties likely.