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Mystery 'hat' stumps staff at Fredericton museum, who seek help identifying it

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FREDERICTON -

A summer project of cataloguing textile artifacts has a Fredericton museum stumped: one item is not what it appears to be on paper.

"We are doing a major project with our textiles collection, going through every object we have that relates to textiles so that we can better identify them," said Holly Gallant, the collections manager for the Fredericton Region Museum.

Recently, they came across a woven item.

"We found the 'hat' yesterday, and we just thought it was a very unusual object, and even though all of our documentation says hat, we just were like it doesn't necessarily look like a hat," she said.

They don't have a lot of information on the unusual item.

"It was donated to the museum in June of 1966 by a woman named Ellen Thorburn, who was from Stanley, and she was actually a nurse during the Second World War. She was a hospital ship nurse so she actually did nine crossings of the Atlantic," Gallant said.

But the owner didn't leave much information about the artifact itself, and she passed away in the early 90s.

They're hoping social media can solve the case.

"There's been a couple responses, there was a really interesting result somebody linked us to a museum in Australia that looked like it had a similar object I haven't had a chance to really look, just at the photos like 'oh yeah' I definitely see the similarities,'" she said.

It wouldn't be the first time.

"A quilt actually that somebody donated was actually a Red Cross victory quilt and it had gotten separated from its paper work and we posted it and within a couple minutes we had his information and we were able to contact him and put that information into context which is so vital," Gallant said.

For now, the item remains a mystery, unless you know more.

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