I was speaking with someone about when and why the pointy hat came about, and what its associations are: magic, witchcraft, wisdom, etc. Does anyone know if this hat shape had a practical purpose in its origin, and who originally wore these hats? Where did the modern associations come from?
The only place you'd find "witches" wearing "pointy hats" is in illustrations of 18th century childrens books. You might have heard of the famous "Salem witch trials"which took place a century before that - the "witches" there wore regular headgear according to the fashion of the moment. As did other women accused of witchcraft before that - they all wore plain headgear such as bonnets, or were bareheaded. We know this because we have historical texts and images, but none show "pointy hats" worn by "witches".
So we have to point those 18th century childrens books as origin of the whole "witch in a pointy hat" idea. Seems it was purely an artists whim as we've found no evidence that "real witches" ever wore such a hat. And the artists had quite a few possible inspirations. There were indeed pointy hats worn by women in the late Middle Ages as this was their fashion for a while. One such was the "hennin" and you can see quite a few similar headgears worn by noble ladies posing for pictures from 15th-16th century. As you know, most childrens tales start with "once upon a time" and tell of events that happened long time ago. So it is possible that when depicting events from the past, the illustrators looked into the past to find inspiration about the fashions, including the headgear. But we can only guess, as there is no direct link showing a connection.
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