A wonderful solution to my question

lkranieri

lkranieri

VFG Member
I posted this to a forum on antiques in general and was amazed at the answer I got--and so quickly:

I wrote: "A friend of mine went to an estate sale in, as she said, "A very interesting old house." She added it was in the hallway "leading from the most dilapidated garage you've ever seen, to another narrow hallway to the kitchen. The powder room is between this wall it is on and the back door hall." I am completely stumped. Have you ever seen this before?"

And this is the picture she sent:
JoansWallHungMysteryItem.jpg



The first respondent replied: "For something that you don't want to take into the main part of the house, but you want to be able to grab it quickly again on your way out ..."

And immediately after that a second respondent wrote: "Collapsible opera hat."

YES! That fits all the features we see there and it has to be the correct answer. I never would have guessed that.
 
Metro Retro Vintage said:
That's amazing! Both the structure and that someone would know its purpose.
Click to expand...

Well, the person who suggested the collapsible hat admitted it was a WAG, but he has to be correct, as it fits the clues exactly. Smaller than a closet in a very old house that probably didn't have a coat closet and takes up less space than a standing coat/hat rack. It is perfect for that purpose.
 
Edited to update the info.

OK I was so puzzled by the responses, so I am taking another look. I guess the curved wooden piece is meant to hold the hat? While that might work, to me it seems a strange thing for a man to do with his opera hat. First, if he is coming home from the opera or theater, why would he come in the back door? That in itself seems odd. If he came in the back door because of rainy weather and so as to not track water in the front hall, he would not immediately flatten his hat and store it. He would want to leave it "up" and let the wet or damp evaporate before collapsing it. Actually, this is true in dry weather as well, he would want to leave it up and let the sweat evaporate. And why a special place only for the most formal of men's hats? If it was, as has seen suggested, a hat he wanted to grab quickly on his way out the back door , one would think the hat would be less formal one like a Homberg, Fedora, Standard top hat or cap. I do not think of men running out the back door to the opera in a big hurry or moment's notice like that!

I might be overthinking this, but it sure seems really odd to be for a formal silk top hat. Also, they would not be stored out in the open, but were either placed temporarily (for traveling) in a special low box that had a concave curve to it, and I am not sure that space would accommodate this curved box. Or.....

More importantly, collapsible top hats would never be stored in these narrow boxes, those were used only for for traveling purposes. A collapsible hat would be stored in its "up" position in the proper tall top hat box. Never store one collapsed and in one of those flat boxes as it creases and weakens the silk and puts stress on the spring mechanism.



Has anyone confirmed what this is?
 
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