Mean Eyed Matt
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,142
- Location
- Germany
What a wonderful hat - like the other one before: Fantastic!Hello everyone and thanks for your kind and as always very interesting answers that I had the big pleasure to read on my last post.
Exactly as promised, today I am going to show you the other Borsalino Antica Casa that came together with the black one I showed you some days ago. Same absolutely perfect conditions as the other. As I wrote in the last post, the original owner of these 2 hats died in 1943, some months before the seller was born. I think this is a really legendary hat.
This is the life companion of the mysterious same-sized (59cm) black Borsalino Antica Casa that appears to be born before 1920 (I would date it around 1915, please correct me if you have to): wonderful brown colour called VIRGINIA (from the inscription on the internal celled label), very high and full crown, darker brown ribbon; the light-coloured sweatband with the marking "QUALITA' SPECIALE" shows on his back a writing that indicates exactly the same serial number on the celled label (556) making me think that the sweatband is also original.
The wonderful and very elegant pink/champagne liner is made of a type of silk that I have NEVER seen before, which is kind of shiner and much thinner than the other liners' silk I have seen before. The same mysterious golden "X" on the liner as for the black one is present and in this case it is covering the "Qualità superiore" logo; the liner itself indicates that the hat was originally made for the american market (hat shop LOGAN PHILLIPS located in Jackson, Mississippi).
The internal celled label, completely handwritten (from the same person writing on the label of the black one) appears to be of the oldest type, it is short and narrow and the serial number is very low also in this case (556).
No doubt it is a real Borsalino Antica Casa, but the "golden X" mystery remains.
Another hat which is a pearl and that I am so proud to begin wearing!
I pick this occasion to give you all my best wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy new year 2024, that will make our hats become even older
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I already followed the discussion about the strange X on your first Borsa and wondered whether it really had anything to do with Borsalino and 'unrecognisable' stamping or similar - in a gold stamp. Now I'm wondering again, and please excuse me if this is a far-fetched and stupid thought: Could it perhaps be that it is 'simply' the individual marking of the owner - instead of the small tin letters or the gold embossed initials in the sweat? Old German (and other) hats - top hats, for example - from the imperial era or from the 1920s often have elaborate gold embossing on the lining, sometimes with crowns for higher aristocratic owners. A large X in gold is certainly easy to recognise at the cloakroom in the dark.
Just a thought...