Etruria covered the district now occupied by the Italian straw plait and hat makers, but while there is an extreme likelihood, from the shape of the hat in the accompanying sketch, that the denizens of this fertile champaign, producing as it does, and probably did, unlimited materials that could be plaitted, made these hats of straw, there is no definite information as to their being constructed of any vegetable fibres.
Fig. 3
ETRUSCAN HAT (circ. 440 B.C.), HEAD OF PELEUS FROM PAINTING ON EARTHENWARE DISH FOUND IN A TOMB AT VULCI
Another very important link of classical interest with the remote past is shown in the two sketches of hats and bonnets as worn by the ancient inhabitants of ill-fated Pompeii.
The mural decorations of this long-buried city illustrate in a far more cogent manner than any other known examples, the probable actual appearance of the people who lived there before its catastrophe, and the hat shown on the head of Penelope is a model that has been imitated during the last thirty-five years. The little knob on the top is, however, quite novel.
The other example from Pompeii is from a comic fresco in which two men, dressed as women, are having an altercation, and here the artist has not only shown the lines which indicate the ridges of a woven vegetable fibre hat, but this painting provides the first known drawing of a Bonnet. Note the tilt at which it is worn, and the portion cut out at base to admit the neck, and also the absolute resemblance to what is known as a “Granny” Bonnet.
Fig. 4
HAT WORN BY PENELOPE
Fig. 5
BONNET