Figure 1.--This German CDV portrait show two unidentified brothers with little dog. The boys look to be about 7-12 years old. The yonger boy wears an upturned straw broad-brimmed sailor hat with a heavy blouse and bloomer knickers. His big brother weas a school cap with a single-breasted long pants suit. The school cap suggests he attended a secondary school. We suspect they came from a middle-class family both because of the wide-brimmed sailor ht and the fct the older noys is attending a secondary school. The portrait is not dated, but the clothes and mount style suggest the 1900s. The studio was August Lutz in Gera, a city in Thuringia south of Leipzig.

Social class, age, and gender all affected the types of headwear worn. We are just beginning to work on these conventions and hope to expand as HBC expands. We do not yet have information on social class conventions. The boys on the previous page look to be like boys from modest income families, except for the boy on the right. We suspect they were primarry school friends. Primary schools often included children from a range of social backgrounds. Age conventions are more easily assessed. Wide-brimmed sailor hats were popular for younger boys, but seem most common with boys from middle- and upper--class families. The brothers here provide information on both social-class and age conventions (figure 1). Gender is also easier to assess, although the number of images we can definatively date to the 900s is limited. Girls wore mostly hats and tam-like headwear. We do not see girls wearing caps to any extent. Some of the girls' styles were also worn by younger boys.

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Created: 4:24 PM 2/12/2010
Last updated: 4:24 PM 2/12/2010