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Cowboy hat

Design

Stetson hat

Modern cowboy hats are made of fur-based felt, straw or, less often, leather. They are sold with a tall, rounded crown and a wide flat brim. They have a simple sweat band on the inside to stabilize the fit of the head, and usually a small decorative hat band on the outside of the crown. Hats are customized by creasing the crown and rolling the brim. Often a more decorative hatband is added. In some places, "stampede strings" or "wind strings" are also attached. Hats can be manufactured in virtually any color, but are most often seen in shades of beige, brown and black. Beginning in the 1940s, pastel colors were introduced, seen often on hats worn by movie cowboys and rodeo riders. "Today's cowboy hat has remained basically unchanged in construction and design since the first one was created in 1865 by J.B. Stetson."

History

Modern working cowboys wearing cowboy hats

The concept of a broad-brimmed hat with a high crown worn by a rider on horseback can be seen as far back as the Mongolian horsemen of the 13th century. A tall crown provided insulation, the wide brim, shade. In hot, sunny climates, hats evolved to have wide brims, such as the sombrero of Mexico.

"Cowboy hats go back to almost the inception of the cowboy himself.7] However, It is not clear when the cowboy's hat began to be named as such. Westerners originally had no standard head wear. People moving west wore many styles of hat, including top hats, derbies, remains of Civil War headgear, sailor hats and everything else. The working cowboy wore wide-brimmed, high-crowned hats long before the invention of the modern design. However, credit for "invention" of the cowboy hat as it is known today is generally given to John Batterson Stetson.

The original "Boss of the plains," manufactured by Stetson in 1865, was flat-brimmed, had a straight sided crown, with rounded corners. These light-weight, waterproof hats, were natural in color, with four inch crowns and brims. A plain hatband was fitted to adjust head size. The sweatband bore Stetson name. While only making one style of hat, they came in different qualities ranging from one-grade material at five dollars apiece to pure beaver felt hats for thirty dollars each. J.B. Stetson was the first to market the "Boss of the plains," to Cowboys, where it has remained the universal image of the American West. The charisma of the West was carried back East when adventurers returned in the expensive oss of the plains, style hat.

President Ronald Reagan demonstrated the popularity of the cowboy hat as a movie star, as a resident of the American west, and as a horseback rider.

Modern designs

Ornamentation, such as bows or buckles, was attached on the left side. Historically this had a practical purpose. Because the majority of people are generally right-handed, in the absence of a wide brim, bows or feathers on the right side of headwear could interfere with the use of weapons.

Inside the cowboy hat is a memorial bow to past hatters, who developed brain damage from treating felt with toxic mercury (which gave rise to the expression "Mad as a Hatter"). The bow on the inside hatband at the rear of the hat resembles a Skull and crossbones. "Early hatters used mercury in the making of their felt. Their bodies absorbed mercury, and after several years of making hats, the hatters developed violent and uncontrollable muscle twitching. The ignorance of the times caused people to attribute these strange gyrations to madness, not mercury.6]

The modern cowboy hat has remained basically unchanged in construction and underlying design since the Stetson creation. The cowboy hat quickly developed the capability, even in the early years, to identify its wearer as someone associated with the West. "Within a decade the name John B. Stetson became synonymous with the word "hat," in every corner and culture west of the Mississippi." The shape of the hat's crown and brim were often modified by the wearer for fashion and to protect against weather by being softened in hot steam, shaped, and allowed to dry and cool. Felt tends to stay in the shape that it dries. Because of the ease of personalization, it was often possible for people to tell where a cowboy hat was from, right down to which ranch, simply by looking at the crease in the crown.

Silent film actor William S. Hart

Later as the mystique of the "Wild West" was popularized by entertainers such as Buffalo Bill Cody and western movies starring actors such as Tom Mix, the Cowboy hat came to symbolize the American West. John Wayne christened them "the hat that won the West." The Boss of the plains design influenced various wide-brimmed hats worn by farmers and stockmen all over the United States. Later designs were customized for law enforcement, military and motion pictures.

The first American law-enforcement agency to adopt Stetson western hat as part of their uniform was the Texas Rangers. A Stetson-based design is also part of the ceremonial uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B Johnson wore cowboy hats manufactured by Stetson.

Creases in cowboy hats are used to give hats individual character and to help users identify with a particular subculture. A very popular crease used on modern cowboy hats is the Cattlemen. It is creased right down the center of the crown with a dent on each side. Returning in popularity is the Carlsbad crease, now sometimes called a "Gus crease" after a character in Lonesome Dove. It maintains a high crown at the back with the crease sloping steeply toward the front. The rodeo crease, the bullrider's crease (Formerly called the RCA crease, for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), the quarter horse crease, and the ycoon," with a pinched front, are also seen today.

"Ten gallon" hat

Some cowboy hats have been called "ten gallon" hats. The term came into use about 1925. There are multiple theories for how the concept arose.

One possibility is that the tight weave of most Stetsons hats made them sufficiently waterproof to be used as a bucket. Early print advertising by Stetson showed a cowboy giving his horse a drink of water from a hat. The Stetson company notes that a "ten gallon" hat only holds 3 quarts (about 3 L instead of 40 L). However, though a very high quality felt hat made from animal fur may hold water, even a cowboy hat with a large crown holds less than a gallon of water, and over time, any cloth container will leak.

The durability and water-resistance of the original Stetson obtained additional publicity in 1912, when they raised the battleship USS Maine, which had been sunk in Havana harbor in 1898. They found a Stetson hat which had been submerged in seawater for 14 years; it had been exposed to ooze, mud, and sea-growths of the water of the harbor. However, the hat was renovated and to all appearances was as good as ever.

Modern hats are usually not made to be as durable as the original designs. When most modern felt hats get wet, the hat is apt to lose much of its ability to hold its shape, thus using it as a water container will destroy most modern hats, other than a few at the very highest quality range.[citation needed]

Another theory is that the term "ten gallon" is possibly a corruption of the Spanish term "galn", or galloon, a type of narrow braided trimming around the crown, possibly a style adapted by the vaqueros. "The term ten-gallon did not originally refer to the holding capacity of the hat, but to the width of a Mexican sombrero hatband, and is more closely related to this unit of measurement by the Spanish than to the water-holding capacity of a Stetson.29] Thus, the term "ten-gallon" did not originally refer to the holding capacity of the hat, but to the width of a sombrero hatband. When Texas cowboys misunderstood the word "galn" for "gallon", the popular, though incorrect, legend may have been born.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cowboy hats

Stetson

John B. Stetson Company

Boss of the plains

Equestrian helmet

Western wear

Chupalla

Cowboy

Ranch

Vaquero

Charro

Huaso

Footnotes

^ a b c Reynolds and Rand, p. 8.

^ Foster-Harris, p. 106.

^ a b Snyder, p. 5.

^ Christian, needs page #

^ Snyder, p. 27.

^ a b c Bender, p.#

^ "Cowboy Hat History." Web page.

^ a b Carlson, p.#

^ Cowboyhathistory.org. Web page.

^ Bender, p. 11.

^ Sobey, Edwin J.C. Young Inventors at Work! Learning Science by Doing Science (1999) p. 95. ISBN 067357735X.

^ Snyder, p. 73.

^ Snyder, p. 51.

^ Bender, p. 54.

^ Snyder, p. #

^ a b Reynolds & Rand, p. 17.

^ Snyder, p. 49.

^ Snyder, p. 32.

^ Reynolds & Rand, p. 10.

^ Bender, p. 12.

^ The Fedora Lounge. Web site..

^ Reynolds & Rand, p. 15.

^ a b Snyder, p. 10.

^ "History" at Hitching post.net. Web site.

^ Blevins, p. 371.

^ Bender, p. 31.

^ Snyder, p. 11.

^ Frequently asked questions, Stetson Hat Company. Web site.

^ a b c Reynolds & Rand, p. 11.

^ John B. Stetson Company (1927) Stetson Hats the World Over. The Story of 50 Years of Stetson Foreign Business. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John B. Stetson Company .

References

Bender, Texan Bix. (1994) Hats & the cowboys who wear them. ISBN 1-58685-191-8

Blevins, Winfred. Dictionary of the American West: over 5,000 terms and expressions from Aarigaa! to Zopilote (2001) ISBN 1570613044

Carlson, Laurie. (1998) Boss of the plains, the hat that won the West. ISBN 0-7894-2479-7

Christian, Mary Blount. (1992) Hats off to John Stetson 1992 ISBN 0-02-718465-X

Foster-Harris, William (2007) The Look of the Old West: A Fully Illustrated Guide ISBN 160239024X

Reynolds, William and Rich Rand (1995) The Cowboy Hat book. ISBN 0-87905-656-8

Snyder, Jeffrey B. (1997) Stetson Hats and the John B. Stetson Company 1865-1970. ISBN 0-7643-0211-6

Categories: Hats | Rider apparel | Western wearHidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from March 2009
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President who?

Three Texas surgeons were playing golf and discussing surgeries they had
performed. One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon in Texas. A concert
pianist lost 7 fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months
later, he performed a private concert for the Queen of England."

One of the others said, "That's nothing. A young man lost both arms and legs
in an accident, I reattached them, and two years later, he won a gold medal
in field events in the Olympics."

The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago, a cowboy
who was high on cocaine and alcohol rode a horse head-on into a train
traveling 80 miles per hour. All I had left to work with was the horse's ass
and a cowboy hat. Now he's president of the United States!!

Not funny.