In a village near Florence (referred to as “Scicci” in the Dutch intertitles), the female inhabitants sit in front of their houses, manufacturing straw hats. This short film depicts the entire process of a hat being made and ends with a model wearing it to demonstrate.

The film was distributed in the Neth­erlands by Amfilmin around 1925, how­ever it is unclear when and by whom it was made in the first place. Amfilmin (short for Amateur Film Inrichting) was established in the 1920s, but it seems to have also been distributing films that were made earlier.

A vintage nitrate print arrived at EYE Filmmuseum in 1981 as part of a private donation, which contained two dozen shorts from the 1910s and 1920s about the manufacture of glass, paper, textile, and at least one more film about hats. A preservation negative was creat­ed from the nitrate print in 1994, and from this a new 35mm positive print was struck in 2003.

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi