How To Make A Pressman’s Hat

L AST OCTOBER’S issue, devoted to the American press, omitted one crucial bit of newspaper lore: those deftly constructed square hats that pressmen would whip together from a sheet of newsprint at the beginning of the working day to keep ink, grease, paper lint, and oil out of their hair. Here is how the pros do it, according to the New York School of Printing, which distributes these instructions to its students, and which tells us that pressmen were wearing paper hats folded along this pattern as early as 1748.