FELT exhibitions

Beaver Hats to Hockey Pads: A Canadian Social History

A look at felt in Canada from the fur trade through popular culture curated by Kathryn Walter
Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, 1999-2000

Through fashion and technology, from haberdashery to machinery, felt has been influential across fields of design and engineering. This exhibition represents only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the numerous applications for felt. The selected items relate to Canada and the cultural and environmental conditions of a Northern landscape. This exhibition that includes wilderness tips and cold weather gear may be read, at once, as a parody of clichés and a resource for survival. Artifacts, garments, machine parts and products worn by use, by weather and by time look at felt in the making of Canadian history and mythology.

The Textile Museum presents exhibitions that illuminate and build on textile histories... A museological display of historic artifacts addresses felt as one of humankind's first forms of cloth, felt's relationship to art history, felt as a thoroughly modern material and felt as a genuinely Canadian container of social and political events and traditions.
Foreword from catalogue, FELT: Social History, Technical Processes, Artists' Projects
Sarah Quinton, Curator of Contemporary Gallery
Textile Museum of Canada

Beaver Hats The beaver hat, a felt hat made from the short downy fur of a beaver's undercoat, was a desirable symbol of power and wealth well established in Europe by the 1500s. Its popularity grew with the discovery of the "New World" and an abundant supply of beaver. This fashion interest help to drive the fur trade through the seventeenth century laying the foundation for a prosperous nation. The beaver hat remained the hat of choice through the 1700s and 1800s shape-shifting according to political will and public fancy. Modifications of the Beaver Hat from Castorologia by Horace T. Martin, 1892

Exhibition detail including felt boots, felt skirt and penny rugs. Items from the collections of the Bata Shoe Museum, Ukrainian Museum of Canada and private collections.

Wilderness Tips Felts ability to act as a filter, an insulator and a wick provides tools for survival.   Old felt hat that can be used as a filter / Coleman Stove filter, 1960s / Felt-covered canteen from WW1 / Tobacco pouch / Maple syrup filter Items from private collections

Post-war American Influence and Affluence During WWII felt was widely used in the production of armaments and ammunitions. After the war, the industry found new applications in domestic markets through fashion and engineering. Advertisement for American Felt Company, 1948 Felt skirt with poodle appliqué, 1950s Items from private collections

Hockey Pads In the early days of hockey equipment was largely homemade. Cyclone Taylor was the first who thought to add felt to his uniform. Around 1910, inspired by felt-padded horse collars he saw in a harness shop, he sewed felt into his undershirt. Throughout the twenties felt became a common component to the equipment in pants, chest pads, shoulder pads, shin guards and knee pads. Dress shield for a horse / Mennonite horse harness and farmer's felt hat / Goalie chest pad, 1930s / Shoulder pads, 1940s / Shin guards and knee pads, 1970s / Children's chest pad, 1970s / Hockey skates with felt tongues, 1990s Items from Hockey Hall of Fame and private collections

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