Text by Joseph M. Schuster

Twenty years ago, Ignatius Creegan was a stained-glass artist in Richmond, Virginia, who found that his studio—a three-story loft in a structure shaped like a giant milk bottle, located outside a dairy—was drafty. “So I made a fur hat for myself to stay warm,” he says. Then he made another…and another. “I realized no one was making hats anymore. People no longer wore them the way they used to, and all the hat makers were dying off.”

   He started selling hats at street fairs and to a local theater’s costume department. Then the Radio City Rockettes placed an order. Soon, he was supporting himself through what others considered a dying art. A decade later, artist-friend Rod Givens joined him to form a company they called Ignatius Hats.

Rod and Ignatius share a 150-year-old mansion in Richmond. “It needs major renovations, and we’re always torn between working on the house or working on the business,” Rod admits. His studio is in a converted kitchen building behind the 7,000 square-foot home, while Ignatius’ studio is in the basement.

   For half the year they work exclusively in straw, using a combination of wheat straw because of its resilience and, when they want to add color, a Swiss synthetic braid (wheat straw doesn’t dye well). For the other six months they use felt, partly because working with straw is so physically taxing but also because, Rod says, “it helps our creativity if we take a break from straw and use other materials.”