The BORSALINO BROTHERHOOD RECAP
I haven't been posting for the last few day, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I've been re-reading all of the posts on this thread and made a recap for myself of all things borsalino (well, not all, but a lot).
Let's start with the colours. These are the ones we've seen and of which the pictures have been preserved. I've called the lighter colours "naturals", but these are somewhat in line I guess with the silverbelly colours of the American hats. Black (nero) doesn't get its own group. I did notice there are very few blues, which means they were either difficult to make or there was not much demand for them.
Most of the metals belong in the group "greys" as well (but not all of them).
Colours
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Then there are the colours we've not seen as felts, but could still be out there. How do we know this? When Steve (@mayserwegener) and Daniele (@Daniele Tanto ) visited the Borsalino factory, Steve took this shot:
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While it is true that these are the colours of the windcords that are in the boxes and not necessarily of felts, it is still a tantalizing picture. We've seen some of these colours as ribbon colours, but who knows? All in all a mindboggling amount of colours.
Next to that is the list of Misto felts. Quite a number of those too.
Another little tidbit is that on the left hand side of the picture a list can be seen on the rack with country codes on them. I wonder if these could be traced back to numbers on the labels.
Then there are the model names. I've limited that list to the model names on the labels inside the hats. The model names that come from sweatbands or retailers are not on this list. We hold the theory on the lounge that these are completely made up names, because neither google translate nor Italian speakers can make heads or tails of them. I'm beginning to think this may not be the case. Looking at all of them in a row there are a certain number of affixes that appear regularly, like "sca", "sti", "spo", "san" and "la". I'm thinking these are so frequent that they don't seem to be random at all, but follow certain grammatical rules. That would point to a language and I'm beginning to think that these names could be originating from the Piemontese dialect or language (the jury is still out on wether it's either one or the other) and maybe even specifically the dialect of Alessandria. Maybe these are words that are pronounced in a certain way phonetically in that dialect and then were written down, which would explain why certain names occur in different forms, which resemble each other closely. I can relate to this somewhat, because I'm a dialect speaker myself and there is not set of rules or given spelling for the way the pronounciation is supposed to be written down. If you're trying to write down a dialect you just take a stab at it. Which is what these name look like to me. Now all we need is someone from Alessandria who speaks the local dialect to test this theory.
The model names of lobbia/homburgs and bowlers/melones are separate.
And finally there are the quality designations found on the liners.
More colours, misto felts, models and designations
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The list doesn't include the felts, because there's some uncertainty about these refer to either the felt itself or to the finish of the hat. But for completists: I've found these felts:
nutria
castoro
martoro
aquila
lontra
visone.
Finishes are named specifically as well on a good number of hats. These names I've found so far:
serikon
diamante
angora
pesca
imperiale
silchi
mimosa
krystal
peluche
castoro.
There's a separate thread on the borsalino label lore, specifically the celled format (recommended). Generally the concensus for now seems to be for the labels:
* celled format: earliest form occuring in the earliest dated hats from the twenties (two different types)
* cerrated format with the borsalino name sideways: appears in the thirties (my theory would be after the GB Borsalino fu Lazzaro was taken over in 1936) up until the early fifties (there are known combinations with OPS tags)
* cerrated format without the borsalino name: appears in the early fifties (again: there are examples in combination with OPS tags) up until the late sixties
* rounded edge label: appears in the late sixties up until 1980. Usually has the colour name on it. These labels for several years hold the fabrication year as the first two numbers of the upper right label number.
* elongated rounded edge label: just holds codenumbers and size in lower right corner. Still in use today.
That's all you need to know for now. Test tomorrow
Stefan! Wow. You have done a great job documenting these colors and hats for prosperity. I have often wondered about the colors of Borsalinos. My hat is off to you Sir!
