Pirate Style
May. 25th, 2022 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilohat we think of as pirate style- big hats, bandanas, floofy shirts, baggy trousers, cloaks- is largely the creation of the 19th century American illustrator, Howard Pyle. No-one really knows how pirates presented themselves- such things don't appear in the records- so he invented a dress code for them- and everyone from Barrie's Captain Hook to Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow- has had to conform to it.
It has been pointed out that wearing all this romantic clobber would seriously embarrass you if were swarming up the rigging or swinging on board an enemy vessel...
"Dammit, can't locate my cutlass in all this fuckin' drapery"
(Did pirates say "Fuck"? Course they did. Robert Louis Stevenson has written about the pains he took and the fun he had devising a lingo for his pirates that would be both appropriately blood-curdling and clean as a whistle...)
Interesting fact gleaned from wikipedia: Pyle's work was admired by both William Morris and Vincent Van Gogh- as well it might be because he was a virtuoso and daringly original. Illustrators like Pyle get shunted off onto their own separate art-historical track where they can be safely ignored by critics and connoisseurs- but actual artists know better.
Here's Pyle's Captain Kidd supervising the burial of his treasure. Does that composition owe something to the then very fashionable Japanese printmakers? I think it does.
As we and Edgar Allen Poe are aware only one man is going to walk away from that treasure site and it ain't any of the hard-working saps in the background.
link
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It has been pointed out that wearing all this romantic clobber would seriously embarrass you if were swarming up the rigging or swinging on board an enemy vessel...
"Dammit, can't locate my cutlass in all this fuckin' drapery"
(Did pirates say "Fuck"? Course they did. Robert Louis Stevenson has written about the pains he took and the fun he had devising a lingo for his pirates that would be both appropriately blood-curdling and clean as a whistle...)
Interesting fact gleaned from wikipedia: Pyle's work was admired by both William Morris and Vincent Van Gogh- as well it might be because he was a virtuoso and daringly original. Illustrators like Pyle get shunted off onto their own separate art-historical track where they can be safely ignored by critics and connoisseurs- but actual artists know better.
Here's Pyle's Captain Kidd supervising the burial of his treasure. Does that composition owe something to the then very fashionable Japanese printmakers? I think it does.
As we and Edgar Allen Poe are aware only one man is going to walk away from that treasure site and it ain't any of the hard-working saps in the background.
link
