Ethnographic Museum “The World of Hat”

The history of our museum started on a sultry January night in 2002, when its first exhibit, a women’s headdress of the Akha people, decorated by cowries, metal plates and coins, was acquired at a night market in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. From that day on and until 2014, the collection continued to expand with new finds from all corners of the world, until the exhibits would no longer fit into cabinets or shelves. Then came the idea to create the world’s only museum of ethnic headwear in Rīga’s quiet “embassy block”.

The museum was conceived as a journey around the world; fit in five halls, it can be made within an hour. But in fact, it took twelve years of travel to assemble all this variety of traditional headgear in a Rīgan apartment. Many exhibits are handmade, many were literally removed from the heads of the locals, many have the value of jewels or antiques. Every cap, every shawl, every headdress has its own story, vivid and exceptional, sometimes even worthy of a detective novel. Getting to know them almost equals going around the world. The world of hat.