Title   Hoedenmaaker (Search for the image)
Translated title hatter
Intro Text by dr D. Barnes, accompanying Bramer’s drawing of a hatter (`hoedenmaker’)

Code of occupational group 79310
Description Two hatters stand in a workshop. One wearing a soft cap rolls out a small bolt of fabric, which he will shape onto one of the blocks or forms resting on the floor behind him. The fabric was no doubt soaked and heated in the vat to make it pliable. The second hatter, bareheaded, stands facing him; he bends at the waist to lean over his work. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows and his hands are on either side of the hat's crown to which a brim is attached. His pudgy cheeks suggest that he might be an apprentice, taking directions from his master. Behind the hatters, four hats hang on nails in the wall; four hats hang on a wooden hatrack against the wall; two hats rest on a rear table; and two hats sit on the floor underneath the table.

Felt fabric for men's hats was cut and steamed to fit onto the hat blocks which gave them their distinctive shapes. Many crowns and brims were stiffened with a glue sizing to keep their shapes. Brims were sewn onto the crowns. Then hats could be trimmed with braid, ribbons, feathers, leather straps, buckles, and other ornaments. Caps of the sort worn by many craftsmen were simply steamed onto beehive-shaped blocks, but left soft, brimless and without trimming. Sometimes women also wore felt hats, depending on fashion. However, the caps and kerchiefs most often worn by women were not made by hatters, but by seamstresses.

Jan van Vliet also provided an etching of the hatter in his book of trades. However, there is no visual evidence that Bramer incorporated any of Van Vliet's imagery in this drawing. Van Vliet provided a glimpse into a hatter's shop where two seated men work to attach braid to a hat. One sews the braid, while the second holds the braid stretched between his fingers. Hats are stacked on the floor, but there are also shears, hat boxes, a feather-trimmed hat, scarves, and a try-on mirror in Van Vliet's etching. Bramer has captured the initial stages of hat-making; and Van Vliet the female ones prior to sale. In Amman's Ständebuch one hatter forms fabric on a hat block; a second trims a brim; and a third holds a hat.

Source Donna R. Barnes, Ed D, Street scenes, Leonard Bramer's drawings of seventeenth-century daily life (Hofstra Museum exhibition 1991). Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.

Click here for the introductory essay on Bramer's drawings.



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