Ink Blotters for a Hat Collector

The perfect ad for a vintage addict like me. Hats, blotter and a great red roadster! Who wouldn’t want to hitch a ride inside that ad?

The brick-and-mortar closing of my favorite hat shop (Hats Plus) in Chicago saddens me, as I cannot count the number of hours I’ve spent there trying on hats and envisioning my latest vintage looks. I probably started obsessing over hats at about the same time I began obsessing over fountain pens. Baseball caps, flat caps and Civil War souvenir hats are staples in photos of my childhood. I finally found some fedoras to wear around the time I was 13. It was all downhill from there.

While they will carry on in the webosphere, I shall miss my friends at Hats Plus in the flesh.

Thanks to my friend Len P. here in Chicago, I’ve been able to crossover my love of pens with hats. While divesting his blotter collection this past summer, he gave me some of his great hat advertising blotters.

In honor of Hats Plus, I’m sharing some of my favorites from the hat blotter collection. I hope you enjoy them as well as Len and I do.

Even a World War couldn’t stop the progress of hatters. I’d kinda kill get get my hands on the blue or “mallard” fedoras. Good ol’ Victory Felts by Swann Hats.

Women look just as good as men in this alluringly fashionable advertising ink blotters from what looks like the 1910s and ’20s.

Stetson was known both for its cowboy and western hats as well as its urban fedoras. Gotta love those silent film star cowboy fashions.

Here’s a snazzy look at Stetson’s mens’ hats from the 1930s! The times back then sucked, but people sure looked good…if they could afford it.