A family business established in 1989 by Tim Bent, Bentleys antique leather shop is a collection of beautiful objects reminiscent of a museum. Unlike a museum, everything is for sale, and we’ll be featuring one of these objects each month. You can read more about Bentleys here.
This month, Tim’s son Ned tells us about a gorgeously aged leather hat bucket dating from around 1900.
Leather hat bucket
Every gentleman or man of means wore a black silk top hat in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. There’s an urban myth that the taller your hat, the greater your wealth!
These hats were prized possessions and extremely delicate, so the cases that carried them needed to be as robust as possible.
Crafting a leather hat bucket is extremely tricky because the leather curves in both directions – concavely on one axis, and convexly on another. They’re an example of British leather craftsmanship at its best and sometimes feature their owner’s name or initialling on the lid.
We see hat buckets in various shapes and sizes but always go for ones in the best condition possible. The linings were typically done in silk but we have also had a few velvet lined examples in the past.
It’s unusual to get a triple hat bucket like the example we’ve highlighted — they were usually designed for a single hat. The triple bucket is priced at £2,900 and we have a few other examples which can be viewed on our website www.bentleyslondon.com, or in our shop at 91, Lower Sloane Street, London.
Wearing top hats isn’t as commonplace these days, but hat buckets are still the perfect way to carry your headwear for a day at the races. Like our trunks, hat buckets have also become a stylish interior accessory – we’ve even seen people use them as a camera case with a foam insert.
Check out more hat buckets and all of Bentleys’ amazing pieces here.
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