Late 1940s Hungarian Velour Fedora – Kalpagyar

Another black hat, and another Central/Eastern European velour finish. This one is more of a smooth finish than the German long hair I posted yesterday. The markings on the sweatband shows that it was made by Kalapgyár (literally, ‘Hat Factory’)/Budapest/XIV. Gisella Ut-44. On the labels: Fogy. ár is the price. Ellenörizve (‘checked’) is the quality control. FEKETE is black and Antilop is, unsurprisingly, Antelope and could be the felt finish.

Now for the detective work, with huge thanks to Steve over at the Fedora Lounge, to try to figure out how old it is. So, we know that Kalpagyar was at Gisella Ut-44 in Budapest XIV. It turns out that Budapest XIV came into existence in 1935 being formed fro bits of 3 different previous regions, so that gives an earliest date. There was a hat factory at Gisella Ut-44 listed in Kelly’s Directory Of Merchants, Manufacturers And Shippers, 1915, Hat Manufacturers in Budapest but that the company was called Ung. Woll-, Stumpen und Hutfabriks A.G. This company may have provided materials to J. Hückel’s Söhne, the major German hat manufacturers (see invoice fro Steve below). Some markings on the label could correspond to the JHS Futter (850), Leder (902), and Farbe (8065) designations. The name of the company that made this hat – Kalpagyar – suggests post war Soviet nationalisation of the pre-existing company.

Finally, Steve dug out an undated environmental assessment that mentions “Giselle street No. 40-42 Hat Factory has been discontinued Foundation schools , the construction industry
designer company operates.”

Whew. All that work to find out it’s probably a late 40s-early 50s hat, as I suspected.