The subscribers respectfully inform the public that they have now on hand,
and offer for sale at their shop, a quantity of
Made of raccoon taken in season, dressed by hand, and fitted to the head of any man, woman or child who intends to be out of doors and not complain about it.
To the citizens of the several states
The beaver was hunted near to nothing for the sake of a gentleman’s stovepipe. The raccoon was never in any such danger, and the raccoon makes the better cap: heavier guard hair, a denser under-fur, and a tail that tells the world you are not lost.
We take our skins in the cold months, when the fur is prime and the pelt is worth the animal. We dress them ourselves. We block them on wood cut by our grandfather. What leaves this shop is a cap that will outlast the man who buys it, and probably his opinions.
We are not going to sell you eleven of them. There is the one you wear when you are moving, and the one you wear when you are not.
Skin, and no further. Nothing between the fur and your head but the work of dressing it. Lightest on the neck, quickest to dry, and the cap a man wants when he is going to be walking all day and sweating in January like a fool.
Lined throughout with heavy wool of the Mackinaw trade, quilted in by hand. For sitting still in weather that has no intention of improving — a blind at first light, a stand at dusk, a stalled truck on a county road at two in the morning.
Measure before you write
| No. | Called | Head, inches | Hatter’s size | Suited to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I. | Small | 20¾ – 21½ | 6⅝ – 6⅞ | Children, and slight heads |
| II. | Medium | 21¾ – 22½ | 7 – 7⅛ | Most women, many men |
| III. | Large | 22¾ – 23½ | 7¼ – 7½ | Most men |
| IV. | Extra Large | 23¾ – 24¾ | 7⅝ – 7⅞ | The ample head. No shame in it |
Fur gives. A cap that is snug in October will be right by December. If we have sent you the wrong number, send it back and we will make it right at our own cost in postage — we would rather eat the freight than have a man walking around in a hat that does not fit him.
Every one of these is done by hand in the shop. We have tried to make several of them faster. We were wrong each time and we quit trying.
First hard frost to the breaking of the ice. A summer skin is thin, patchy, and not worth the animal. We will not buy one.
The hide comes off whole and goes on the board. Every scrap of fat is taken off with a dull blade. Miss any and it will turn on you in a year.
Salted heavy, stretched on a wire, hung in the cold shed. Nothing hurries here. Ten days, sometimes fourteen.
Bark and brain, the old way, worked until the leather goes soft and white. This is the step everyone else skips with a drum and a chemical.
Only No. 1 heavy fur goes into a cap. Seconds go to trim and mitts. Thirds go back to the woods where they came from.
Damped and drawn down over a maple block turned by our grandfather in 1904. Four blocks, four sizes. That is why there are four.
Six panels, waxed linen thread, stitched from the inside so no seam ever shows on the outside of the cap.
Set at the back seam with a leather saddle so it hangs right and does not tear out. The tail is not a decoration. It is the point.
Stamped inside the band with the size, the year, and the initials of whichever brother finished it. Then it goes in the mail.
No showroom, no photographer, no brand consultant. Eighteen hundred square feet behind the house, four maple blocks on the bench, a wood stove that we feed all winter, and a radio that only gets the one station.
Come by if you are passing through. Knock loud — the planer is usually running. If you cannot get here and want proof the caps are made where we say they are, write to us and we will send photographs, or answer the telephone, which is a thing we still do.
Our great-great-grandfather ran a trade counter on the river and paid cash for hides. Four generations later the counter is gone, the river has a bridge over it, and we are still doing the one thing the family was ever any good at.
People ask why we do not make ten other products. Because a man who makes ten things makes all ten of them a little worse. We make caps. We have gotten better at it every single year, and we are not finished getting better at it.
Everything you wear from this shop was cut, blocked, sewn and stamped by one of two people. If something is wrong with it, you already know exactly whose fault it is.
— Amos & Elias Swanson, proprietors
“Sat in a cedar blind at eleven degrees for five hours and never thought about my head once. That is the whole review.”— R. Halvorsen, Timber Cruiser, Upper Peninsula
“My grandfather had one from a shop like this. I did not expect to find another. The stamp inside the band about finished me off.”— D. Pruitt, Farrier, Sevier County
“Wore it to a wedding. Was asked to remove it. Declined. Would order again.”— T. Boyle, Well Driller, Cass County
“Bought the lined one for my wife and had to order a second because I stopped being allowed to touch the first.”— M. Ackerly, Surveyor, Big Horn Basin
“Four winters on a snowplow route. It looks better now than the day it came.”— J. Weathers, County Road Dept.
“I am a professor of American history. It is correct in every particular, which I did not expect and cannot stop mentioning.”— H. Lindqvist, Historian, Missouri
Questions put to the proprietors
Yes. Raccoon. Procyon lotor. If you were hoping for polyester there are a great many websites that will sell you some.
Raccoons. There is no shortage of raccoons. There has never in the recorded history of this continent been a shortage of raccoons. They are in the corn, they are in the trash, they are in the attic insulation, and last April one of them was living in a truck that we were still using.
We buy from licensed trappers working a regulated season set by the state wildlife agency — the same agency, funded by the same licenses, that manages the population so it does not crash or explode. We use the whole animal. Nothing gets thrown in a hole.
We have read the letters. We have also read the license.
The honest comparison is not cap-versus-no-cap. It is this cap against a synthetic one: petroleum, spun in a factory eleven thousand miles away, shipped across an ocean, worn for two winters, and then sitting in a landfill shedding plastic into the water for four hundred years. One of these two hats came from an animal that was already eating your sweet corn. Pick whichever you can sleep under.
No.
Shake the snow off and hang it somewhere with moving air. Never on a radiator, never in a dryer, never in a plastic tote for the summer — fur needs to breathe or it will dry out and the leather will crack. A cedar closet in July, a hook by the door from October on.
If it gets soaked through, shape it by hand and let it dry slow and cold. Do not help it. It does not want your help.
We work in batches of forty. If the size and style you want is on the shelf it goes out inside two days. If it is not, you are looking at three to five weeks and we will tell you which when you order, not after.
A properly dressed raccoon cap, kept dry and hung in air, runs thirty to fifty years. We have re-blocked caps our father made in the seventies and sent them back to the sons of the men who bought them. Bring one back to us any time and we will repair it. There is no charge and there is no receipt required.
The circular
Forty caps at a time, and they do not last long once the weather turns. We send one notice when a batch comes off the blocks and one when the season opens. That is all. We are not writers.
Mock-up — Swanson Bro. Fur Co. · Prices, names and testimony are placeholders for your review