The New Ventilating Hat. Souvenir and advertising print of a hat maker, from the trades exhibition in London

This wafer-thin piece of printed cork paper is part souvenir, part material sample and part advertisement. The Great Exhibition of Works of Industry in London in 1851 – represented by Joseph Paxton’s famous Crystal Palace – could boast the participation of 17,000 exhibitors from twenty-eight countries. One of them was the hat maker Gaimes, Sanders & Nicol, inventor of a light cork hat that was designed to be an export product for British colonies. A German-speaking visitor took the curious advert from the Great Exhibition home with him as a souvenir.