About the Master Hatter
My name is Kate Essington. I’m a hatmaker and a lifelong maker, drawn to materials, process, and the satisfaction of building something with my hands. My background is in anthropology, but it’s through craftsmanship that I connect most deeply to people, place, and story. I make hats with intention, one at a time, using traditional methods, natural fibers, and a commitment to things that last.
How I Got into Hat Making
There aren’t many hat makers who arrive at this craft from conservation work, ranch labor, anthropology, entrepreneurship, and a deep fixation on the fur trade. That combination is unusual. The combination of those 5 things are the reason I make the hats I do.
My first job at fourteen (with a signed work permit from my parents) was hunting nutria for the federal government at a wildlife refuge in Oregon. Nutria had been brought to North America for fur farming and escaped, where they damaged riverbanks and displaced native species. I had no idea 20+ years later I would be making hats out of them.
I later worked on a buffalo ranch in eastern Washington, running bison alongside nearly thirty horses. This was my entry into ranching and equestrian culture. We brain-tanned hides, stretched rawhide for drums, processed meat by hand, fixed fence, hauled hay, and kept tack in working order.
Alongside that physical work, I studied anthropology with a focus on material culture and adornment. Across time and place, headwear has been one of the most consistent human tools for signaling identity, labor, and belonging. Long before fashion systems existed, hats were functional objects that carried meaning.
I’ve also been an entrepreneur my entire life. Starting businesses from the ground up, learning by doing, solving problems as they arise. Hat making fits that rhythm perfectly. I love making technical things with lots of complicated steps that require obscure vintage equipment.
Running through all of this is an obsession with the fur trade and Oregon history. Beaver felt hats drove global demand, mapped rivers, and pulled settlers west. John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company established Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River not for gold, but for pelts. Beaver was soft gold. It shaped the land, the economy, and the state I still call home.
Those five threads rarely intersect. But together, they explain why I make hats the way I do. I build traditional fur-felt hats using beaver, rabbit, and nutria. Each one is steamed, blocked, shaped, sanded, and stitched by hand. Leather sweatbands and silk liners are sewn in to be replaced over time. These hats are meant to be worn, repaired, and lived in.
That’s the work. That’s the lineage. And that’s how I got here.
