HAT SIZE = 6 7/8
Product of Texas, hand made high quality western cowboy or cowgirl hat, made by the iconic Stetson Hat Company, this “Lariat” style hat with the three piece silver plated buckle and felt hat band, has been made since at least the 1980’s. The newer Lariat hats do not come with the silver plated metal buckle hat band.
This classic design has 3x beaver pelt fur (see image of the interior), a hand sewn sweatband applied to the interior perimeter which has all of the markings “XXX” “Made in USA”; Size “6 7/8”, “John B. Stetson Company”; and their gold logo (see images). In addition, appearing in the well there is the proverbial; famous Stetson image of a cowboy taking water from a pond and using the hat for his horse to drink from (more on that later). The same image appears on the top of the box.
The hat is for a small man’s head or it can be worn by a lady; hat size is
6 7/8″; measurements of the interior well: 7 1/2″ front to back x 6 1/4″ wide. Overall the hat measures 15 3/4″ brim to brim (front to back) x 14 1/4″ wide. The brim is the 4″ version with a 5″ “Cattleman’s Crown”. . Resting on the box it is 5 3/4″ top to bottom. It is in excellent, almost “like new” condition; seems like it has never been worn before. I acquired it from an upscale San Francisco estate sale.
The original box has broad based appeal because of it’s subject matter and iconic Stetson image. The artist who created the illustration on top of the box and in the hat well interior, was Lon Megargee, who designed western images for periodicals, pulp magazines, and other printed journals, romancing images of the West. This is his most famous Stetson commercial illustration, having been commissioned by the Stetson Hat Company in the 1920s to produce “The Last Drop From His Stetson”. It became one of the most iconic brands in the world, and is still being used today in the lining of many Stetson western hats and on the covers of Stetson hat boxes.
Lon Megargee was born in Philadelphia in 1883 but upon the death of his father in 1896 at the age of 13 he moved to Arizona. A young cowboy, he stayed in that profession until 1909 when he reinvented himself and started painting. He died in Sedona in 1960 at the age of 77.
John Stetson started his hat company in the 1860’s establishing a manufacturing plant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, later moving to Texas where they are located today. The early hats were created from a hand carved wooden hat mold rather than turned on a lathe so that different and unique styles could be created. As John Stetson said after traveling extensively across the western United States “a cowboy hat kept the sun out of your eyes and off your neck. It was like an umbrella. It gave you a bucket (the crown) to water your horse, and a cup (the brim) to water yourself. It made a hell of a fan, which you need sometimes for a fire, but more often to shunt cows this direction or that”. That pretty much sums up the attributes of a cowboy hat.