Riddle 2: A stalwart guard, I protect the most precious tool. I greet you first with warm embrace, then I see you off to find your grace. I am with you always in station and task.
Summary
This is a tarpuş, a 16th-century Ottoman woman’s hat, made from red cotton velveteen over a stiffened foundation. The tarpuş is the low, flat-topped hat seen on women throughout 16th-century Ottoman pictorial sources. It sits at the base of the whole Ottoman headdress system, worn on its own around the house or dressed up with a hatband and veils for going out.
This piece answers Riddle 2 because a hat is the stalwart guard of my most precious tool: my head. It is the first thing to greet me when I dress, wrapping my head in a warm embrace, and it stays with me through everything that follows. As part of my regular Ottoman garb, it is with me in station and task, whether I am teaching, running the Chatelaine table, or just getting through a long event day.
Historical Background & Process
Small, flat-topped hats appear on Ottoman women across the 16th century in both Ottoman miniatures and European costume albums. The style shows up in a range of sizes, from small hats perched on top of the head to larger ones that cover it, but they are consistently wider than they are tall. Interestingly, the name tarpuş was assigned by later scholars. Period sources do not give distinct names to different styles of women’s hats, and from about the middle of the 16th century a woman would most likely have called her hat an arakiyye no matter its shape. These hats were commonly decorated with a çember, a narrow embroidered band or scarf wound around the base, and worn with veils when out in public.
My tarpuş is red cotton velveteen over a foundation of canvas and layered brown paper glued together, which is essentially handmade pasteboard. The internal construction of period examples is not well documented, so I chose a stiffening method using materials that were available in period: cloth, paper, and paste. The paper layers give the hat its structure and help it hold its shape, while a layer of cotton batting softens the profile and makes it comfortable to wear. The body is lined for a clean interior finish. Some structural seams were sewn by machine for durability, and all visible finishing was done by hand.
The result is a hat that actually gets worn. It is fitted to my head, warm, and sturdy enough to survive being packed for events, which was the point. Like the rest of my garb, it was made to be used, not displayed.
Bibliography
- Issendai. “Arakiyye and All the Trimmings: Hat, Veil, Hatband, Scarves.” 16th-Century Istanbul. https://www.issendai.com/16thcenturyistanbul/womens-garb-piece-by-piece/arakiyye-and-all-the-trimmings-hat-veil-hatband-scarves/
- Issendai. Ottoman Turkish Garment Database. http://issendai.com/ottoman-turkish/