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Whaddayacallit? Help needed to identify a cap style

KILO NOVEMBER

One Too Many
Messages
1,020
Location
Hurricane Coast Florida
I'm looking for a cap. The style is an old one. If I knew the name I could find a picture to illustrate, sorry, a description is the best I can do.

Imagine a cap with a barrel-shaped crown and a brim like a baseball cap. Where a baseball cap's crown is composed of triangular panels with the bases sewn at the sweatband and the points sewn together at the top, the hat I'm trying to identify has a crown with a cylindrical shape and a circular panel closing the top. It was a style seen on factory workers in the late 19th century.

Thanks for your attention.
 

Lefty

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,639
Location
O-HI-O
This doesn't quite look right, but I think I see where you're going.
grentree+cap+1.JPG


and sort of the top left, without the pom.
CW%20Men%27s%20Caps%20lg.jpg
 
Last edited:

KILO NOVEMBER

One Too Many
Messages
1,020
Location
Hurricane Coast Florida
Similar, but well-worn, caps

ThreeMenFromIngalls.png


Thanks, all. "Painter's cap" is close, but the shape I had in mind has a taller crown, but like a painter's cap, has straight sides. The two fellows in the center have well-worn caps like what I had in mind. It dawned on me that I had this picture from my grandmother's estate showing a group of men and boys, no doubt workers at the business pictured, and that there may be one or more similar caps in it. The full image shows perhaps 40 men and boys posing along the front of the building.

The 1900 census showed my grandmother's father was a blacksmith's helper. The scene pictured here looks like one in my home town. The company, Ingall's Iron Works, was still operating in the late 1960's. It is located on the same street where the census showed my grandmother living with her father, mother, and sisters in the census records of 1900.
 
Last edited:

KILO NOVEMBER

One Too Many
Messages
1,020
Location
Hurricane Coast Florida
Yes, Doug, the 19th Century baseball cap is the thing. It's hard to imagine that someone sat down one afternoon thinking, "This baseball thing is really taking off. I ought to invent a new style of cap for the players to wear!"

I wonder where it originated? It looks like an adaptation of the caps worn by Civil War soldiers, whose ancestor was the French "kepi" from the 1830's.
 

KILO NOVEMBER

One Too Many
Messages
1,020
Location
Hurricane Coast Florida
So...does it meet your expectations? ...

It's well made, of a light-weight wool. The sewing is very good, with close-spaced stitches and straight, even seams. The sweatband is 1-inch leather. The underside of the bill is dark green. While I would have liked a heavier-weight fabric, it is, after all, based on a cap worn in high summer in the mid-Atlantic states (we are famous for our hot and humid summers), and it is what I expected. At first I thought that $50 was a lot to pay for it, but I recently saw some mass-produced, off-shore, synthetic "ball caps" with team logos stitched on offered at $25. Considering that this is of natural materials and from a low-volume, domestic maker, I rethought my opinion.
 

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