But the article does cover that. German gnomes (Kobolde, especially Hödekin) are usually depicted with pointy hats, or at least ones that curl backwards. The smurf hats are clearly wearing Phrygian caps.

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cubefox 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

A quick Google image search for "garden gnome" and "gartenzwerg" shows that both types are quite common. But they originally didn't necessarily have the hats common today. These are the oldest surviving garden gnomes according to [1]:

Schloss Mirabell: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mirabellgarten_%E7%B... (1690-1695)

Schloss Greillenstein: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schloss_Greillenstei... (around 1700)

1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartenzwerg

	▲	Cerium 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		A simple thanks for sharing these images. I had no idea that garden gnomes could be so artful, interesting, or powerful as those in these two images.

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fvdessen 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

the first smurf drawings had pointy hats, the curve is most likely a stylistic evolution.

https://www.lm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/schtr...

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larsiusprime 4 days ago | parent [-]

That’s still arguably a classic Phrygian cap design. Whatever or not that was the intention/inspiration, it does resemble them - the hats you just showed are not perfectly conical, there’s a flip at the top.

	▲	adfm 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The article does state that the Smurfs and the French got the wrong hat and that it's supposed to be a conical pileus rather than the crooked phrygian. "In Rome, a freed slave had his head shaved. Then, they would wear a pileus, in part to keep their head warm. The hat was a sign of the slave’s freedom/liberty. Somewhere along the line in the French Revolution, they adopted the freed slaves’ head gear as their own symbol of freedom, but picked the wrong one." Fun fact: You can see a pileus on the Ides of March coin reverse from 43 BC, minted by Brutus to commemorate the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March_coin People have been using silly hats for political purposes for millennia.