About Buckram

Just a little entry today from my notebooks (I will soon be making buckram hats for my production of The Music Man, opening in November):

Buckram, a two-ply, coarse open weave fabric heavily filled with starch sizing, is now commonly used both as a binding for books and as the stiffening base for hats, belts, drapes and other items that are not comonly washed in water (the glue sizing is usually water soluble and can be pulled over a hat block, then left to dry into a hard shape, but too much exposure to water can result in a limp cheese-cloth-like fabric). It originally was used as the foundation fabric for rugs made in Bokhara, Turkey, from whence its name derives.

In the Middle Ages, bokeram was also a fine cotton or linen cloth, and not stiff. Italian merchants imported buckram from Turkey back to Italy, where it was called bucherame, as early as the 12th or 13th centuries. Marco Polo noted in his journals that a fine buckram was made by the Armenians who lived in the Turkish town of Erzincan.

According to Wikipedia, white buckram is most commonly used in hatmaking, though black is common as well. In fact, nowadays buckram can be found in a wide array of colors as it can be used as a hat shape by itself or stiff decoeration without covering. Millinery buckram comes in three weights: baby buckram (often used for children's and dolls' hats), single-ply buckram, and double buckram (also known as "theatrical crown"). I usually buy the double buckram because it is much stiffer, and otherwise I have to sew two or even three layers together to achieve the effect I want. The open thick look of plain buckram can be seen on the left in the image above, and on the right is a pre-made hat form one can buy ready to cover. It's a whole lot easier if they already have the style you want!!