Pink witch hats have become a popular fashion trend in recent years. The current pink witch hat is a representation of the modern witch, blending traditional witch aesthetics with a touch of femininity. They are often seen as a statement piece, with their vibrant pink color standing out in a sea of traditional black witch hats. The pink witch hat symbolizes individuality and self-expression, allowing people to showcase their unique style and personality. It is not just limited to witches or those practicing witchcraft; it has become a fashion accessory embraced by people from all walks of life. The popularity of the pink witch hat can be attributed to various factors.
Examination Of A Witch, Painted By Tompkins Harrison Matteson (c. 1813–1884)
This painting was created by the American artist, Tompkins Harrison Matteson (c. 1813–1884), and is housed within the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. It is a fitting location for a painting themed on witchcraft, as colonial Salem was the location of the most famous witch trials in the history of North America. One such witchcraft trial is depicted in Matteson’s painting, and the woman with the exposed back is the suspected witch in this scene. The crowd in the courtroom looks on at a mole, birthmark, or other skin blemish on the woman’s back, which they believe is a so-called ‘Witches’ Mark.’ King James of Scotland and England, in his Daemonologie, wrote that Satan gave witches “his mark upon some secret place of their body, which remains sore [and] unhealed until his next meeting with them, and thereafter [the mark is] ever insensible, howsoever it be nipped or pricked in any way, as is daily proved” (Daemonologie, Book 2, chapter 2). With this in mind, Inquisitors would poke and prod at these skin blemishes, and were highly suspicious of any pain tolerance or lack of sensation that they discovered.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
- The Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated by Montague Summers (Dover Publications, 1971).
Like this:
Like Loading.- TAGS
- art
- Colonial Age
- England
- King James I of England
- Malleus Maleficarum
- Modern
- Painting
- Religion
- The Malleus Maleficarum
- Tompkins Harrison Matteson
- U.S.A.
- Witch Hunts
- Witchcraft
If you enjoy the content produced by this website and want to support our research and publications, consider contributing to our site by clicking the 'P' (PayPal) icon below. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!
Peabody Essex Museum’s Gripping New Exhibition Shines a Spotlight on Salem Witch Trials
Drawing on rarely seen items from the sprawling collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, “The Salem Witch Trials 1692” tells the tragic, true stories behind one of New England’s most notorious events.
By Ian Aldrich
Sep 23 2020
PEM’s exhibit includes two of T.H. Matteson’s famous depictions of the crisis. In this 1855 oil painting, “The Trial of George Jacobs” we see a scene from the famous court case in which Jacobs’ own granddaughter accuses him of witchcraft.
Photo Credit : Courtesy of PEM
In mid-September 1692, Mary Esty made a final, emotional appeal for her life to be spared. The wife of a wealthy farmer in Topsfield, Massachusetts, the 58-year-old mother of 11 had weathered a harrowing spring and summer. Since the early part of the year, her community, along with others in and around the town of Salem, had been roiled by a series of witch trials that threatened the very core of the Massachusetts colony. Families and friendships had been ripped apart in a crisis that eventually involved more than 400 people and led to the deaths of 25 innocent men, women, and children.
Part of “The Salem Witch Trials 1692,” a riveting new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum, the 1855 oil painting Trial of George Jacobs, Sr., for Witchcraft depicts the defendant’s own granddaughter accusing him.
Photo Credit : Courtesy of PEM
Esty and her family were at the center of the madness. One of her older sisters, Rebecca Nurse, had already been tried and convicted for witchcraft; she was hanged in July of 1692. A younger sister was also charged with the crime, and even Esty’s mother was under suspicion. Esty herself had submitted to arrest in April and was sentenced to death in early September.
In a carefully worded petition she filed only a week before her execution, Esty pleaded with newly appointed Governor William Phips, the court, and the clergy to reconsider not just her conviction but also the trials themselves. “I petition to your honors, not for my own life, for I know I must die,” she wrote. “And my appointed time is set. But the Lord, he knows it is, that if it be possible, no more innocent blood may be shed.”
The popularity of the pink witch hat can be attributed to various factors. Firstly, it challenges the stereotypical image of a witch as dark and sinister, instead embracing a more fun and whimsical interpretation. The pink color adds a playful element to the hat, making it appealing to a wider audience.
Delivered Daily: The Latest in Travel, Food, and Living in New England
That powerful document, along with a host of other rare papers and relics associated with this period in colonial Massachusetts, is now on display at the Peabody Essex Museum as part of its newest exhibit, “The Salem Witch Trials 1692,” which runs through April 4, 2021. The exhibit showcases a curated selection of PEM’s collection of witch trial materials, which is the largest such collection in the world but has rarely been on public view.
Included in the exhibit is the execution warrant for Bridget Bishop, the first of 19 people to be hanged in the Salem trials; invoices from the jailer; and direct testimony from accusers. Adding context to such documents are rare books such as Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century guide to finding and executing witches that was recently acquired by PEM’s Phillips Library.
Among the documents featured in the new exhibit is this jailer’s invoice from 1692, discovered decades later in an old closet in the former prison building.
Photo Credit : Courtesy of PEM
This is not an exhibit that merely displays what PEM has in its collection, however. Instead, it’s a tightly constructed and personal journey into the witch trials and the lives of those who survived them, presented in five thematic, roughly chronological sections: “Witchcraft from Europe,” “Salem and Early New England,” “Intolerance and Suspicion,” “Reflection and Impact,” and “Reckoning and Reflection.”
Along with the documents, visitors will see personal possessions of those involved in the trials, such as a trunk that belonged to a judge named Jonathan Corwin, who resided at the 17th-century house in Salem that is today known as the Witch House. There are also two original beams from the Salem jail and an 1855 painting from PEM’s collection, Tompkins Harrison Matteson’s Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, that details the pandemonium in the courtroom as the drama unfolds, as George Jacob Sr.’s own granddaughter points an accusing finger.
“My hope is that visitors will encounter these original witch trial documents and objects and recognize that there were real people that are at the heart of this historical drama,” says Dan Lipcan, head librarian at PEM’s Phillips Library. Along with Lipcan, the exhibition’s curatorial team includes Dean Lahikainen, the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Art; Paula Richter, curator for exhibitions and research; and Hilary Streifer, assistant manuscript librarian at Phillips Library. “The victims of the Salem witch trials had complex emotions, fears, and doubts just like we do,” Lipcan adds. “To empathize and understand their experience emboldens us to speak out against injustice and cruelty in our own time.”
This valuables cabinet belonged to a wealthy Quaker couple, Joseph and Bathsheba Pope, who were among the accusers of their innocent fellow citizens of witchcraft, including Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor.
Photo Credit : Courtesy of PEM
The context for the witch trials begins with what came before. Witchcraft hysteria had gripped much Europe since the 15th century. During the great age of witch hunts, from 1400 to 1775, religious upheaval and warfare, political tensions, and economic dislocation led to waves of persecutions and scapegoating in Europe and its colonies. In all, roughly 100,000 people were tried for witchcraft and some 50,000 were executed.
“The Salem Witch Trials 1692” carefully walks PEM visitors through this early history while also detailing the challenges that the colonists faced — from extreme weather to the threat of constant war to a series of crop failures — that fueled a sense that allies of the devil lived among them.
“There was really this perfect storm of events that made people feel unsafe,” says Emerson W. “Tad” Baker, vice provost and history professor at Salem State University, who consulted on the exhibit along with Richard Trask of the Danvers Archival Center, at the Peabody Institute Library of Danvers, and Kerry Anne Morgan, director of gallery and exhibition programs at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. “If you don’t feel safe and you don’t feel secure, then you start looking at people to blame your problems on. That is when the scapegoating begins.”
Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.Photo Credit : Peabody Essex Museum
“The Salem Witch Trials 1692” marks the first time in nearly three decades that artifacts from PEM’s vast witch trials collection have been put on display. The exhibit was born from an initiative of PEM’s director and CEO, Brian Kennedy, to give greater Salem a stronger presence at the museum — something that’s also reflected in the companion exhibit “Salem Stories.” Open now and continuing through October 3, 2021, “Salem Stories” uses more than 100 works, including paintings, sculpture and textiles, to bring Salem’s history to life, from past to present day.
Artist in the United States, witch weathervane, about 1900. Iron and paint. Museum purchase, 1985. 136517. © Peabody Essex Museum.
Photo Credit : Kathy Tarantola/PEM
Taken together, the two exhibits show how far the city has come in telling its story authentically. It wasn’t until 1703 that Massachusetts begin issuing pardons for victims of the witch trials, a process that wasn’t completed until 2001. Shame over the trials became so ingrained that it took 300 years before a memorial to the victims was constructed — which is why the most moving part of “The Salem Witch Trials 1692” comes at the end, where a wall reminiscent of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington lists the names of the victims by the date they died. It’s final, somber reminder of the human toll of this event.
“In 1692 we made the mistake of prejudging people and rushing to judgement,” says Baker, author of the 2015 book A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience. “Today, I think the city really prides itself on welcoming everybody because of what happened. So I hope when people come to Salem and take in the wonderful history, the PEM, the culture, and the architecture, they’ll be able to have a more serious reflection on what this period all means.”
The Peabody Essex Museum is located at East India Square, 161 Essex St., Salem, MA. It is currently open from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Reserve tickets in advance atpem.org/ticketsor by calling 978-542-1511. For details on PEM’s safety protocols, go to pem.org/safety. To listen to a riveting podcast episode about the Salem Witch Trials, got to pem.org/pemcast
The Witch's Trial
Each and every piece of our artwork is entirely hand-painted by artists with over a decade of experience. Every painting is infused with a unique personality and an unrivaled value, showcasing art in its rawest and most authentic form just for you.
Museum quality
We adhere to museum-level standards in our creation. Each piece of work is reproduced using techniques as close as possible to the original, coupled with the finest paints and canvases, making the color, structure, and texture of every replica as similar as possible to the original.
Top-level materials
We insist on choosing the best quality paints and canvases from around the world. These selected materials not only offer unparalleled color saturation and durability, but also ensure that the reproductions can withstand the test of time. Only the finest materials can replicate the most authentic artworks possible.
Online proofing
We offer online proofing services, allowing you to be hands-on with every step of the artistic journey. You can personally review and suggest tweaks, and we'll meticulously fine-tune every detail until it aligns with your vision to the tee.
In addition, the pink witch hat has also gained traction due to its association with feminism. Pink has long been associated with femininity, and the pink witch hat can be seen as a way for women to reclaim and redefine the witch archetype. It symbolizes empowerment and embraces the idea of strong, independent women. The pink witch hat trend can be seen not only in fashion but also in various forms of popular culture. It has been featured in movies, TV shows, and even in music videos, further cementing its place in contemporary society. Overall, the current pink witch hat is a representation of individuality, self-expression, and empowerment. It challenges traditional notions of witches and embraces a more playful and feminine interpretation. Whether as a fashion statement or a symbol of empowerment, the pink witch hat has undoubtedly made its mark in the world today..
Reviews for "Meet the Designers behind the Current Pink Witch Hat Trend"
1. Jane - 2/5 - I recently purchased the current pink witch hat for a Halloween party and was quite disappointed with the quality. The material felt flimsy and cheap, and it didn't hold its shape very well. Additionally, the color wasn't as vibrant as shown in the pictures online. Overall, I found the hat to be of poor quality and not worth the price.
2. Mark - 1/5 - I was really excited to receive the current pink witch hat, but it turned out to be a complete letdown. The hat arrived damaged, with visible tears and frayed edges. The stitching was sloppy and uneven, which made it look cheap and poorly made. The sizing was also off, as it didn't fit properly on my head. I would not recommend this hat to anyone looking for a decent quality accessory for their costume.
3. Sarah - 2/5 - I was not impressed with the current pink witch hat at all. Firstly, the material felt really scratchy and uncomfortable to wear. It was also quite small and didn't fit my head properly. The hat looked more like a child's toy rather than a Halloween costume accessory. It lacked the attention to detail that I was expecting. I was really disappointed with this purchase and ended up returning it.