Vintage Woven Palm Straw Western Hat, Leather Bound Brim, c. 1965–1990

The Piece

A western hat woven from split palm straw, with a creased crown, a wide shaped brim, and a suede band at the crown base matched by a suede binding worked round the whole edge of the brim.

The weave is a broad plaited twill in flat splints, laid in bands that shift between pale straw and a warm toasted brown, so the surface reads as a pattern rather than as a plain field. It has been blocked rather than sewn from a strip, and the crown holds a soft cattleman crease with the side dents still standing.

The brim is turned up at the sides and pulled down front and back in the way a working hat is shaped by being worn, and it has kept that shape rather than relaxing flat.

Both the band and the brim binding are a soft napped leather in a mid tobacco brown, stitched down with a fine machine line. The binding is what lifts the hat. A plain palm hat is finished with a rolled straw edge, and a bound edge in leather is a step above that.

Inside the crown, written across the weave in a broad dark stroke, is an owner's name.

History & Provenance

The inscription inside the crown reads PATERSON. It runs across the curve of the weave and the final letters sit where the straw turns away from the light, so the reading is given as the best one the writing supports rather than as certain.

That inscription is also the only dating evidence the hat carries, and it is more useful than it looks. The stroke is broad, of even width along its whole length, dense black, and it has bled slightly into the straw splints at the ends of the letters. That is the behaviour of a felt tip marker rather than of a pen or a pencil, neither of which will lay down an even wide line on a surface this uneven. Felt tip markers reached ordinary household use from the early 1960s, which sets a floor.

Nothing sets a corresponding ceiling. There is no maker's label, no size stamp and no sweatband tag, and an absence of those gives an outer limit rather than a starting point. Palm straw western hats of exactly this construction were made continuously in Mexico and the American southwest across the whole of the last century, so the weave, the block and the binding will not narrow the range on their own. The bracket below is therefore left wide on purpose.

What can be said without hedging is that it was worn, and worn properly. The crease is set, the brim holds its shape, the band is darkened at the front where a hand takes a hat off, and somebody cared enough about it to put a name in it.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

A worn straw hat is one of the most reliable props in decorating, because it carries a person with it. Hung on a peg, a bedpost, a hat rack or a pair of antlers, it reads immediately as somebody's rather than as merchandise, and the name inside is the proof.

The colouring does a lot of quiet work. Toasted straw against tobacco suede sits naturally with old leather, oiled wood, denim, canvas and raw plaster, which makes it easy in a ranch house, a mudroom, a cabin or a shop window.

For a retailer it is a fixture as much as a piece of stock. Put it on a hook above a table of belts, boots, blankets or tools and it does the styling for the whole display, and it will still sell.