Crafty Beggar: Rachel Frost
Rachel Frost makes, among other things, traditional, period felt hats. It’s not just the shapes that are true to their time; all her methods are authentic to the era she is emulating, so, for instance, hat blocks are only used for headgear from the 17th century onwards. Her flat irons are heated on a wood-fired stove; only natural materials, such as lichen and heather, are used for dying. “I’ve restricted myself,” Frost says. “I know nothing about modern millinery, as it would impact how I think . . . even my sewing machine is hand-cranked.” Living in rural Scotland, her summer workshop is a yurt with a wood-fired stove. “I’m working off-grid,” she says. “I plan my work around daylight hours. This informs the work.”
Rachel Frost, Crafty Beggar
Frost is also mindful of her materials. The finest felt hats were traditionally made from beaver fur, and a beaver hat, or Bieber hut in Germany, denoted a certain status to the wearer, while lower ranks would have worn wool. However, Beavers have been extinct in Britain since the 12th century, so they must be imported. So Frost has been experimenting with more readily available fibres in the UK. She started using the wool of the Scottish Blackface sheep, though now she favours Merino wool, known as the golden fleece, imported from Spain as it would have been traditionally. She admits to having a scientific mind, enjoying experimenting and working things for herself, and, true to form, she has tried lots of fleeces, with different fibres lending themselves to felting in various ways.
These days, Merino is more likely to come from New Zealand or the Falkland Islands. Hence, Frost is keen to use local materials that don’t have such a heavy carbon footprint, finding the self-imposed limitations inspiring. “The more you restrict yourself, the more things you find, the more exciting things happen,” she says. Frost plans to get her own Merino sheep, though as a cross-breed, as they don’t tolerate the Scottish weather well. For now, she is also trying yak wool to see what happens. Frost believes that as her skills have developed, she can accommodate poorer materials than at the beginning of her hat-making career. Beginners need the best materials possible to have an acceptable outcome.
Rachel Frost, rustic, white peasant hats. Shaped freehand without a block and hand felted from a combination of recycled mill waste and organic wool.
Frost’s focus is the British hat tradition, and Britain was once globally recognised for its high-quality (bowed-felt) felt hats. The bow-felting (a technique for fluffing the fibres before making felt or quilting using a long bow) may have been introduced by immigrant Huguenot hatters in the 16th century and is now on Heritage Crafts’ critically endangered list. It is this early period of hat-making that interests her, the UK hat industry prior to 1860, when the process became more mechanised.
Frost makes her tools, creating her bow carder to work the fleece using source images as reference. The carder has the appearance of a giant violin bow, though it has only one string – made from sheep intestines – which needs to be kept at the correct tension. It is held suspended above the worksurface and used to align the fibres of the fleece before felting. Tools make a massive difference to the work: Frost now has three carders, including an original 19th-century bow bought at an auction (as no one else knew what it was). After carding, the fibres are pressed onto a hot plate or mould and agitated by hand until they tangle and fuse. One that can take three days from start to finish, with the drying of the felt speeded up by drying it in a wood-fired oven.
Hat by Rachel Frost. An extra tall topper. Woven in Fresh-water Bulrush. Image Credit: Leigh Preston - @ragged.victorians
Frost received a Janet Arnold award, administered by the Society of Antiquaries, to study early costume, which catalysed her research, documenting the last surviving hatmakers using this ancient technique. Little is written about Britain’s history of felt-making, as the Guilds controlled the skills and were quite secretive, so Frost found herself looking to other countries. She saw two makers, one in Hungary and one in Austria, both of whom have now died. Self-funded, Frost has travelled to Turkey, Mexico, and Hungary to meet the last remaining bow-felters working there.
Her visits to the workshop of Mihalko Gyula in Hungary were fundamental to developing her craft. “Much of my knowledge is based on how he did things,” Frost says. “I’ve visited the family three times, but I don’t think they grasped my dedication to the craft. They were in tears to see his workshop alive again.”
Frost, the child of a Morris dancer ( English folk dance), is steeped in folk traditions. She made shirts for the dancers as a sideline and worked the medieval fair circuit in a Mummers’ play. This is why her company is called the Crafty Beggars, and Frost still considers herself a Crafty Beggar, though when she was younger, her whole family trouped around. Through this background, she learned about the tradition of guising, or going from house to house, akin to the modern idea of trick or treating, but at Christmas or on the New Year. Areas have their traditional monsters and costumes, from skekling in Shetland and the Wren Boys on St Stephen’s Day in Ireland, all involving disguises, masks, straw wigs, and elaborate costumes made from whatever natural material was to hand, straw or rushes. The costumes inspired Frost’s recreation of a man’s suit from the 1830s, woven in fresh-water bulrush and using various weaving techniques. “I wanted to explore the possibilities of using wild plants, overlooked as weeds and transform them into something refined and theoretically wearable,” she says.
Rachel Frost. Hand-felted, peaked cap, with earflaps. Made from Corriedale sheep fleece, lined in hand dyed linen and stiffened with yurt canvas offcuts. Straw mask made from oat straw I harvested from my local friendly farmers field.
Made in collaboration with @skeltonjohn for collection XVIII
Photo @willwaterworth
A world away from local re-enactment groups, Frost has enjoyed some high-profile collaborations, notably with John Skelton, whose style is rooted in tradition, and stylist Luke Edward Hall, who have pulled her out of her comfort zone. For film and TV, Frost created hats for Jude Law’s Henry VIII in Firebrand and Peter Dinklage’s character in The Thicket. More recently, the curator Simon Costin commissioned his wedding hat from Frost (while award-winning costume designer Sandy Powell made his cloak). It sounds glamorous, though there are long hours behind every piece. But Frost is devoted to her art. “I want to do good work,” she says. “The best projects mean that I'm always moving every time I learn something new.”
Words By Katy Bevan
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Image Credits:
Lead Image: Rachel Frost
All other images as credited in photo captions.