Iconic Designs: the bowler hat
Download 3.58 MB What a peculiar thing a bowler hat is. How can something so perfectly ordinary stand for so much? It started out in a perfectly normal way. The younger son of the Earl of Leicester, Edward Coke, decided the gamekeepers on the family estate, Holkham Hall in Norfolk, needed a hat that didn't get knocked off by low branches as they did their rounds. So in 1849 he went to London's venerable hat making firm, Lock & Co, who've been making hats since 1676, and set them the challenge. While the hat is properly called a Coke hat, the man who actually designed it was called Thomas Bowl...