Hat, the principal head-covering of the human family, distinguished from the cap or bonnet by having a brim around it. The history of the hat is of necessity intimately mixed up with that of head-coverings generally, the distinctions of bonnets, hats, and caps being arbitrary and subject to many variations with changing fashion (see illustrations in article FASHION). The hat, as a roomy brimmed head-covering, is the direct descendant of the petasus of the ancient Greeks, which was distinguished from the other Greek head-gear, the pileus, by the possession of a brim, useful for protecting its wearer from the rays of the sun. These Greek hats were made of felt, the material of which the head-gear of early times appears to have been principally fabricated. The use of felted hats became known in England about the period of the Norman conquest. The merchant in Chaucer's Prologue to the Canter- bury Tales is described as having 'on his hed a flaundrish bever hat.' About the period of Queen Elizabeth beaver felts in many shapes became common, and for three centuries thereafter fine beaver hats, mostly dyed black, formed the head-covering of the higher classes in Great Britain. But now, though felt hats are the everyday wear of the community, there is no longer such a thing as a genuine beaver hat. See BEAVER, FELT.
Hats at the present day are fashioned of an endless variety of materials, and, especially in the case of those worn by ladies, they are so diversified in form that they defy all definition. But with all their variations three principal classes of hat-manufacture may be distinguished, comprised under the felt-hat, the silk-hat, and the straw-hat trades. In the felt-hat trade, the materials now principally employed are the fur or hair of rabbits, with smaller proportions of hare, beaver, musk-rat, vicuña, and camel for the finer felts; and sheep's wool for the commoner felted hats. Felt hats of inferior quality are also made with wool mixed with cotton and other vegetable fibres—not in reality felted, but cemented by varnish which is used at once to hold together the fibres and to stiffen the hat body. In the felting of rabbit, hare, and other furs, a 'bat' is first formed, which consists of an expanded cone of equally distributed fibres in quantity sufficient to form the desired hat. To make this 'bat,' a perforated cone of sheet copper is caused to revolve slowly over a funnel under which there is a powerful blast drawing air inwards through the holes in the copper cone. Fur is fed towards and drawn over the surface of the cone in an equal manner by the suction, and is so held in position till a sufficient quantity to form the hat is uniformly distributed over it. A wet cloth is then wrapped around the mass, over which an outer cone is slipped, and the whole then dipped into an acidulated bath of hot water, and by pressure the first stage of felting—making the bat cohere—is secured. The subsequent operations are the same in making both fur and woollen felts. In the felting of wool for hats the bat is formed from carded wool wound diagonally round a double cone, which gives two bats. These are subjected to the usual operations of felting till a sufficient consistency of felt is obtained. The hats are thereafter roughly blocked on a mould to something of their ultimate form, then dyed, and when hard felts are to be made they are stiffened with a varnish of shellac. They are then shaped on a block, smoothed with sand-paper, bound, lined, and finished. The principal supply of rabbit fur for felting is obtained in France and Belgium from domestic rabbits, hundreds of millions being in these countries annually killed as articles of food and for the fur they yield.
The manufacture of silk hats as a substitute for piled beavers was first attempted about 1810, but it was not till 1830 that silk plush hats were successfully made in France. The silk hat consists of a body and rim, usually made of two or three layers of cotton cloth saturated with varnishes, to give the fabric stiffness and make it waterproof. These are moulded on wooden blocks according to the fashion of the day; and when the desired shape is produced the whole is carefully varnished over with lac and dammar varnish, and before dry the fine silk plush is applied with great nicety, so as to prevent the seams being perceived. It is then trimmed with silk braid on the edge of the brim, and a silken band round the junction of the body with the brim; and the lining of leather and thin silk being put in, it is complete. Opera-hats or crush-hats consist of a covering of merino stretched over a spiral steel frame, which by pressure flattens down, so that they can be easily carried.
The manufacture of straw hats, which forms an entirely distinct branch of the hat trade, will be dealt with under Straw-plait (q.v.). In the United Kingdom the felt-hat trade is principally centred at Denton and other villages in the neighbourhood of Manchester. In the year 1888 there were exported from the United Kingdom 1,331,627 dozen hats of all kinds, valued at £1,252,017.