History of the Pinstripe
If you were to ask a person off the street to pick out the most classic, recognizable element of a custom paint job, most people would name one thing: the pinstripe. Pinstriping can be found everywhere from hot rods to t-shirts to refrigerators — even toilet seats. However, few people know the origins of the design. In fact, the pinstripe is one of humanity's oldest design embellishments.
For as long as people have owned things, we have felt the need to customize them. In nature, there are no straight lines. Straight lines were the product of the human being’s first efforts to conceive perfection beyond nature. We can find early examples of these attempts in the Maltravieso cave—located in Caceres, Spain—where 64,000 year old line drawings are found etched upon the walls. As technology developed, something resembling the potter’s wheel was created, and, from this point, the use of line for embellishment extended from only 2 dimensional surfaces to 3 dimensional.
Storage vessel with blue decoration (blue-painted style) from the 18th dynasty
Pots were adorned with many different patterns applied by various techniques. To the left is a pot from the 18th dynasty of Egypt, nearly 3,500 years ago. The intersecting lines, two color palette and triangular shapes could be foreshadow to how line will be used thousands of years later with the pinstripe.
The ancients used line for other object surfaces as well, such as chariots and their wheel spokes, musical instruments and ritual devices.
New advances are made, and suddenly line is a craft of the industrial revolution, decorating sides of railways cars, signs, horse drawn carriages, and eventually trimming the side panels of the Model T.
When WWII ended, and the middle class was created, people were able to make larger purchases than ever before– amongst them were cars. The fad of mass produced factory pinstriping faded, and the desire for customization grew as the car became an extension of the person driving it.
Hot rods were the rage, and custom paint work was sought after. Enter artists such as Ken Howard “Von Dutch”, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Tommy “The Greek” Hrones, and Dean Jeffries. These artists revolutionized pin striping by not following the standard pin striping rules, but instead their artistic intuition. Before this golden age of Kustom Kulture, pinstriping was sequestered to the outer edges and was marginal decor, but Von Dutch, Roth, Hrones and Jeffries moved beyond accent work and started adding stripes to hoods, trunks, side panels, around keyholes- wherever they felt the car could stand to be flourished. And what’s more— their thin, steady lines of uniform mirror images were all done freehand.
After appearances in Magazines like Hot Rod and Rod & Custom, the trend spread like wildfire all over the world, creating the popularity of the pinstriping we see and love today. Herb Martinez, author of the best-seller Guide to Pinstriping, says, “… just as hot rod culture evolved as an antidote to the conformity of the ’50s, pinstriping became one of the cornerstones of Kustom Kulture, really the visual expression of alienation and rebellion.”
If we investigate pinstriping as we know it today, made popular by the Kustom Kulture on the 1950’s, as the story of line— it has a long history, intertwining through many cultures, regions, time periods and each one’s different implementations. Pinstriping today continues to be popular and is a common thing to see on motorcycles as they race by on the highway. Hand-pinstripers are becoming fewer and farther between as the art has become mechanized with special tapes and stencil as opposed to hand striping. Though it is easy to find do it yourself kits online, none come close to the quality of line originating only from the painter’s spontaneity— for the artist is the one thing that has held steadfast through the story of line, wielding their brush and intuition, honoring tradition and creating history.