Stove Pipe Black has been known to be quite presidential. A lofty, serious shade, yet with an air of whimsy skirting the edges. Jet black is for racing cars and black pearl possesses a hint of green that can sometimes be found on iguanas, but Stove Pipe Black can be seen regularly attending state dinners, perched atop the heads of high-ranking governmental officials, yet the prized seat at the table unarguably belonged to Honest Abe. Festooned in an inky black broadcloth tailcoat, vest, bowtie (in a diamond knot) with matching coal black trousers, the distinguishing quality that set him apart was the hat – a hat that will go down in the annals of history – the irrepressible symbol of prestige and authority, yet HIS was shabby, deliberately crumpled, and threadbare. Already standing at 6-foot-4, the hat made him taller than any man in the city, or the state for that matter. A statement of self-possession, or charming affectation, Molly tried for years to make him buy a new hat!

A descendant of the 17th Century steeple, sometimes called a sugarloaf, Stove Pipe Black fell in and out of fashion, depending on the whims of the day. Some say the hat overtook the man, or sealed his fate in history, Stove Pipe Black having sat beatifically atop HIS head that fateful day in April 1865. Sadly, such haberdashery did not save HIM, yet Stove Pipe Black made it through the horrific ordeal, having landed unscathed to the right of HIS chair. With not a drop of blood on it, the hat made its way from The Ford to the War Department, then on to the patent office, and finally the hallowed Smithsonian halls where to this day it resides, faded to an inauspicious and ineluctable brown.

  • Lee Krasner, "Abstract #2," 1947.

  • Robert Motherwell, "Ulysses," 1947.

  • Paul Klee, "Ancient Sound, Abstract on Black," 1925.

  • Pablo Picasso, "Las Meninas," 1957.