Jacob is a second generation Oregon hat maker, following close in the traditions established by his parents with the creation of Hat People. The photographs below show some of his work. Hat People began in 1978, the year before Jacob was born. He was always around the hats, and has done various work for the business off-and-on throughout his life, mostly in sales and shipping. In 2010, after completing a Graduate Degree in Creative Writing-Fiction, he began working full-time with Hat People. He incrementally learned to make all the family hat styles, and began the monumental task of bringing the Hat People presentation into a second generation.
Hat People rose from the artisan market traditions of the Pacific Northwest. It was like so many other cottage industry craft business at the time, inspired by the openness of the Eugene and Portland Saturday Markets’ formative principles that upheld local handmade products by excluding imports, and the more generalized craft fair culture of the 1960s. Often running on a shoestring budget and making it up as they went along, Hat People has become a sustainable product-based business, gathering many long term fans and supporters along the way. The marketplace of Hat People’s peer vendors is incredibly varied: well worn professionals, newbie artist/artisans, visionaries just budding with their first real profit, and absolute dinosaurs, participating since the early 70s... Jacob believes that even with this rich living history, this is only the beginning.
“Lets do more than dip our toes in the river of time, lets get wet. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll be wearing a hat for this swim.”
-Jacob@thehats
