When a B&W Photographer Makes a B&W Rabbit Hat….

A friend asked me if I had trued farm raised rabbit skin for my work. I had not, for the simple reason that the ones I have seen are predictable in shape and pattern and the fur is too short compared to wild hare hide.

But, since I was given two such rabbit skins, I decided to make a new hat.

Immediately, the weeks of preparing and preserving a wild hunted hare skin is gone. In my hands I had two clean rabbit skins with a black stain pattern on white fur. A bit like a cow hide, I suppose.

So, I cut the largest skin in half and sawed the ends to make the outer ring of the hat. Then placed the smaller rabbit skin inside and made the dome. All this took me less than 2 hours. To finish it, I added a rather crooked snow fox tail that I have been keeping for a while wondering what to do with it.

Voilà – a working man’s rabbit hat with some character, extremely warm and easy to fold in a backpack.

… Of course, this is not a hat I would wear for an outing to town like the other hats I have made (https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2019/02/when-you-lose-your-hair-you-cover-your.html) but now that it is still snowing in the high desert, it will do just fine for my outings there.

Proportion wise, it is a bit smaller than my previous hats made of coyote and hare fur. Here is the comparison with an elk hide I preserved couple of years ago (I wanted to learn how Native Americans preserved elk hide, so I used a small skinning knife, a stretch frame I made, salt, sunshine and had stones to soften the skin by rubbing it. It took me more than 3 months to finish it….)

The hat is “proletarian” at best. I tried to take photos from different angles, but all look the same with farm-raised rabbit skin… So, here it is on a peccary skull:

Well, the predictability of the farm-raised rabbit skin did not excite me... So, I decided to add some real character but placing a silver fox face at the front of the hat. Now that is what I like to wear when it is snowing in the high desert!

When all was said and done, I realised that it fits into my penchant for B&W photography! Indeed, there is no other colour on this hat. So, and for the first time, I used the stamp I “brand” my photographs with, to mark the hat I made.

And that felt good.

February 17, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2109