What A Hat Can Tell Us

To buy a local hat when you are travelling is usually an impulse, but to buy over and over again, and patiently cataloguing them implies an intention. Barbara’s collection of 128 hats represents work from the hands of at least 128 craftsmen, and if we involve the communities who tend the plants and collect the materials, middleman who bring the hats to the market, there must be thousands pair of hands. The hats tell all these stories.

Once a hat is put on a body, it gains an identity. It becomes a symbolic representation of a tribe or community, identifying one’s profession and social status. Hats in this exhibition lead us to diversified cultures and enable us to see that what might have started as a hat for practicality becomes an extraordinary storyteller.

A hard hat is a type of helmet used to protect the head from injury due to falling objects. Suspension bands inside the helmet spread the helmet's weight and the force of any impact over the top of the head.

In the early years of the shipbuilding industry, the was constant danger of dock workers being hit on the head by objects dropped from ship decks, workers covered their canvas hats with pitch (tar) and set them in the sun to cure. In the United States, early miners hats made of leather. World War I protective gear inspired the birth of the metal hardhat, with an internal suspension to provide a more protective headgear. Aluminium, fibreglass, thermoplastics are the many materials developed over the years.

This hard hat made of bamboo, with the stake and strand technique has the advantage of being lightweight and cool.

This highly decorative hat was purchased in the 1990s, from an antique gallery in Manila. It comes with a tag that states it is from the Gaddang tribe, made of buri palm, rattan and beads. The Gaddang people live in North Luzon, the Philippines, and their costumes display exquisite beadworks. We were not able to find any information relating the hat to the Gaddang people, whether the item is part of their culture or made solely for trade. We found commercial knit cloth on the hat, an indication of communication with the outside world.

In the early 17th century, the arrival of the Spanish missionary to the Philippines created the distinction between the "Christianized" and "non-Christian" Gaddang. The successive influence through American occupation and Japanese occupation all has its impacts on the culture of the Gaddang people.

In Barbara’s notes, this hat was acquired from an antique shop in Bali and is a “Torajan Headman’s hat”. We found little information on this hat during the research; the only photo information that surfaced relate the hat to the unusual funeral ritual of the Torajans.


The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. They are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colourful wood carvings.

Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days, with songs and dances, water buffalo fights and sacrifices. Mile-long processions move through a village, and finally, the coffin will be placed on the cliff, with an effigy displayed outside.

A highly detailed carved effigy of the deceased is created as a part of the traditional funeral practice for viewing and procession, and here we see a hat identical to Barbara’s is here. Whether this hat is explicitly made for this occasion is not known, as in other photos of the funeral, different types of hats are seen.

The Tabungaw gourd hat is made from a big round gourd that is unique to the Philippines, which are part of the Cucurbitaceae family. Teofilo Garcia, a gourd hat maker, was named the National Living Treasure Awardee in 2012.

He plants his seeds in December, and harvest the crop in March. The gourds are left in the workshop to be cured and dried, then cut into two halves and left on the ground for about a month. Ants attracted to the rotting pulp will remove the insides, leaving the case empty. It is then finished by hand and left to dry completely.

The upper half of the gourd is used to make the Tabungaw. The bottom half becomes a container used around the house. After drying, the Tabungaw is naturally waterproof, then coloured and varnished.

The most time consuming and skillful part is the weaving of inner casing and lining which makes the hat sits comfortably on the user’s head. The interior lining is plaited with palm leaves, bamboo, or rattan. It takes an average of seven days to complete a hat which will last a lifetime if taken care of properly.

How do you read a hat? We need the help of a botanist to identify the plant; We need the local person to tell us how they use the plant. We need to learn from the maker how to make it, and why it was made that way. We need to know who wears the hats, when and why. We also want to know other people’s opinion on the hat. We did not have the resources to all that, so we relied on different sources (Barbara’s notes, Wikipedia, blogs, books, friends) to put together for this exhibition.

Every hat requires cross-discipline studies, and it just proves how an artefact opens up a world of knowledge that we can explore. Let these stories inspire us to keep a curious mind to enjoy the world around us.