One of our latest additions to the online shop, is this fabulous victorian metal tole hat box.The thing that I love about hat boxes is not only do they look great, you can use them to store a variety of items and not just hats.I use mine as a memory box and it is filled with old photos, letters, postcards etc.Finding the hat box got me wondering about the history and I found a fabulous article about the history of hat boxes and I thought it was sharing....The hat box became a popular item in the 19th century ? matching the popularity of hats for both day and evening wear ? and accessories were produced to assist with both storage and cleaning. While milliners often packaged designs they sold in cardboard hat boxes, more robust designs were produced for travelling. Some designs were made to store more than one hat ? including designs that could store both a daytime top hat and a collapsible version for evenings, known as a gibus. They might also include storage space for items such as a hat brush.Designs became quite large during the Victorian era. A letter to The Times in 1844 warned travellers that Blackwall Railway's porters had charged a 1d to carry a hat box onto the train and a further 6d for transporting it to the London terminus, with the traveller himself paying only 4d for the journey. He recommended that travellers with luggage should go by steamboat.An interesting article and you can read the rest here.bon dimanche et à demain, Leeann x
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