CB you switched topics on me! LOL! I meant top hats, like Dodge's. A lot of the repros have a slight dome instead of being dead flat on top with a sharp edge. That dome is CW and later.

I found this website while poking around the other night and thought I'd share it with y'all in case anyone's looking for folks to make leather frocks/coats like the ones shown here.

www.gareneker.com

I have had no dealings with them myself and can't say much more about them other than what I saw on their site. They say they hand stitch all of their products. They offer leggings, coats, shirts in several styles, some they say are styled after origional museum pieces. Hope that this helps someone out who's looking for this sorta stuff.

Those are fascinating photo's GreyWolf. Did you find these jackets in person? What are the sources for your 15 april postings, and your 16 April 2008 12:34 PM postings? James Hanson, with the MofFT found a couple of similar coats which i'm sure you've seen in his sketch book. Also Tom Tobin was photographed wearing a similar one in the 1850's? i think. It is unfortunate that all of these were documented after 1840. With the exception of your colonel Dodge sketch, of course. What was your source for that work? I've seen a black and white version of it before, but i can't remember where. I don't dispute the fact that there may have been ornamented hunting frocks such as you've pictured in the western fur trade. I don't think they were incredibly common, and i think they became more common later in the fur trading era--especially after about the mid-1830s. I think they probably were a french/indian style--as you've annotated. I imagine a more utilitarian design being common in the west. I don't know if i would call it a frock or not. I wish i knew how often the western design was caped--and fringed. I think if i were going to make a leather hunting cape, i would make sure my persona was French or Eastern Indian, married to an Indian womean and in the late 1830s or 1840s.

I have an elkskin hunting coat made by the Stitchin' Scotsman. He can be found on Muzzleloader's links page. Really nice work and not too expensive. It is my rendezvous coat. I am wearing it in my "avatar" picture.

I also have a copy of an "1820's mountain man coat" from the Gene Autry Museum in Los Angeles. It has a double cape.