The bookshop speculates it could have been made by a Japanese, Taiwanese or Korean wartime internee in Australia.
It consists of four tiers of meticulously arranged ,overlapping sections- like plate armour-entirely hand-stitched with fine twine .
The hat - 42 centimetres in diameter -is surmounted by a convex "tip" fashioned from a large section of one packet . There is an improvised wire , apparently original, chinstrap .
It is said construction would have demanded a considerable amount of patience and spare time – possibly as much time as it took to smoke the 183 packets of cigarettes (or was the packaging souvenired from acquaintances?). The ingeniously conceived hat is not a whimsical creation dashed off in a day or two – its making was a serious long-term project painstakingly completed by someone with a lot of time on their hands.
From 1930, Turf Virginia cigarettes were manufactured by British tobacco company Carreras Limited at their Melbourne factory known as the Arcadia Works, which was located in Cato Street, Prahran.
