Camera Talk

titrisol wrote: Since I´m on holidays in my home turf (Ecuador) I have been traveling around a lot.
This week my wife and I had a getaway in the beautiful city of Cuenca where panama hats are made. Why these are called Panama hats if they are made in Ecuador is stil a mistery to me....

During a short spell of rain we got into the "Panama Hat Museum" or Paredes-Roldan Hat store, where they still finish the hats and use machines that are 50+ year old.
While we were there I had a custom made hat just for me.

The hats come from the "tejedoras" who work in the country side and they are graded based on the number of threads per sq.cm as standard - semi fine - fine - super fine and ultra fine -- super fine and ultra fine hats can cost over 300 bucks (even here!)



Then the straw tips are cut and the hats look half finished


After which the hat is "chamuscado" to burn the tips of the straw


Experienced women sew the rim and add inside ribbon and the outside ribbon; and then goes to be finished by the sombrerero


So this is the final product


The final product in the head of this ugly boy


All taken with a Pentax K-X

jake wrote: Cool to see the origins of the hats. I used to have a Panama hat from my granddad. It said inside that it was an "authentic" Panama hat but was made in Ecuador just like you said. I don't remember where it went to, but it was a nice hat. You could roll it up, and it would spring right back into shape. I think I lost it while fishing or something.

Note: Wikipedia says that they are called Panama hats because that's where they were imported from, even though they have always been made in Ecuador.

titrisol wrote: I bought a book called "The legend of the Panama Hat" (La leyenda del sombrero de Panamá)

In there it says that Toquilla Straw (Carludovica Palmata) hats have been made in Ecuador since the 1600s and maybe even before that. They were known as Montecristi or Jipijapas for centuries after the names of the towns were it was made originally (Province of Manabi in the Ecuadorean Coast). After the 1700s the people in the South of Ecuador (close by Cuenca) in the towns of Chordeleg and Sigsig also started making the hats with straw coming form the Amazon basin. The hats were exported since Colonial times but were stil known as jipijapas or montecristis.
At the turn of the 20th century Teddy Roosevelt wore one such hats during the Panama affairs which included secession from Colombia; establishemnt of a banana republik and that ended up with the construction of the canal in that piece of land. Since the pictures of Roosevelt travelled around the world it was known as Panama Hat.

Even now a hat can take between a day and 6 months to be made; I guess the ones they sell for 10 bucks are the first while the ultra fine (200+ bucks) are the latter.

The website of the place where I bought my hat

Martolod wrote:i stand corrected.

and nice story.