My most favorite hat that can be traced very widely throughout the 14th century and beyond is the bycocket, also known as the "Robin hood Hat." Maybe my childhood love of Robin and his merry men spawned this borderline obsession or maybe its my 14th century fashionista stylings, regardless, I give you the Bycocket....Just Rock it!!!
Below you will find images and links to various sources I have used and discovered along the journey of creating my own proudly pointed head wear.
When I began creating bycockets, my first one was extremely pointed on both brim and crown, I did this to mimic an image I saw that in retrospect I think was the artists interesting use of perspective, but who knows. My hat was made from 80% wool felt blend. It looked cool and I trimmed it with some Joann's store bought trim. As I continued my research I knew I could never stop until I reproduced something even more period proper. Since then and after a lot of research and hunting around I started to change the shapes of the crowns of the hats in order to better recreate what I was seeing in period images. With the next couple of hats I also began to create my own trims by finger weaving with silk and wool floss. As you can see below, many of the hats are highly decorative and include feathers, possible embroidery, and come in many different colors. Some of them have streamers falling from them which may have been used to tie the hat on as well as decor.
I began to produce shapes, sizes and colors that I was happy with, even going as far as to use period and natural dyes such as onion peel, turmeric (note; Put the turmeric into cheese cloth or something to avoid sprinkling your friends with yellow dust every time you turn....ask me how I know) and saffron.
Now, most people stop at the "I'm happy with the product point" but there was one thing that bugged me. I know that wool can be felted, steamed, heated, stretched and formed into many shapes. Could it be that bycockets were seamless, created like so many hats are still today? So I gave it a go. Building my own form was simply a calamity and took 3 tries or so before a usable product was born. Learning to block hats from flat sheets of wool was very different but super fun.
You will see the history/progression of my creations in part 2.