Several years ago, my parents went to my mom’s  hometown – Skopje, Macedonia –  for a family event and to clear up some business.  She brought several things home from my grandparents property before it was sold.  The tea sets and glassware are gorgeous but there were a few very old and somewhat odd items that she wanted to put in a display box.  One item in particular that was handed down from my grandfather’s grandmother always made me laugh though.  It’s supposed to be a small metal hat adorned with old coins.  I can’t imagine how it would have stayed on someone’s head and if it did, it had to have been hot and uncomfortable.  It’s not put together very well since you can see the poor soldering.  But, my mom pulled it out again yesterday and I decided to take a closer look at it.

I honestly still don’t know what to make of the hat part itself.  I can see some Arabic influences in the design which make sense since the Ottoman Empire covered that part of the Balkans for centuries.  But I’ve always understood that I’m descended from poor peasants on both side of my family so it seems interesting that something this ornate would have been in my family, even that long ago.  After all, it’s not like people many generations ago were able to take their shiny credit card to the nearest shop around the corner to by whatever frivolous item tickled their fancy, right?  It’s clearly handmade (which, I suppose is what most things were back then but in this case, I mean that it may have been made by a family member instead of a tradesman) but if so, the parts alone wouldn’t have been that cheap or easy to find.  Seriously, was metal really just laying around like you can find in the dumps now?  So, not only would this have had extreme value for whoever first owned it but I would assume that it would have been a special occasion thing.  A wedding, perhaps?  That makes sense to me because of what’s hanging from the hat – coins.

I’ve heard of numerous wedding ceremonies that include coins in some way or another.  Often, they seem to be given for luck but even today in western culture, giving money to the happy couple is sensible since they will most definitely need some, shall we say start up cash, to use a business term.  But, maybe this hat had another purpose.  I don’t know.

The bulk of the coins on this hat have Arabic characters on them which again, is unsurprising considering where the hat is from.  They’re mostly the same size until you get to what I can only assume to be the back of the hat because the coins are a little larger.  It’s possible that I’m wrong about these pieces being coins but, there are three on the back that are most definitely currency from some point in history because the Latin writing on them follows a similar format to our current coins.  Actually, it’s inaccurate for me to say “from some point in history” because I know exactly what point in history those three coins are from: 1788 is the date stamped in them.  There’s also picture of a Joseph II on the back who, it turns out, was the Holy Roman Emperor at this time meaning that these are currency from the Holy Roman Empire!  How cool is that?

(FYI – Hapsburg Joseph II was the older brother of everyone’s favourite spoiled French aristocrat, Marie Antoinette.  Personally though, I think it’s cooler that he was the first child of Maria Theresa who, if my history teachers were correct, was a rather powerful and intelligent woman and who’s reforms had quite an impact on Europe.  Can you imagine carrying out a 40 year rule of several ‘countries’ when you’re also the mother of 16 children?!)

Anyway, I found someone online selling the same kind of HRE coins for $100 a piece.  The hat has three so already, the value of the hat is $300.  But what about the other coins?  My family is certainly not interested in selling the hat (appraising it maybe but not selling it) but I am curious to know more about the hat in general.  Why was it made?  Where would it have been worn?  Was it a man’s hat or a woman’s?

I suppose that because I grew up on the Canadian prairies, away from most of my relatives, it feels weird to have this kind of family history in my hands.  Unfortunately, centuries of invasions, colonization, and massacres plus, a false history bestowed upon us by the current powers that be have made it very difficult for people like me to trace my family history in the way that most people here can.  It can be embarrassing to have to tell people that you don’t know about your background because you can’t – it’s been erased – but I’m glad that some things have survived.  Even if I don’t know the story of where they came from.