The Penrose Triangle was named after mathematician Roger Penrose. I had probably seen the triangle a few times before but I certainly have seen plenty of Escher’s art in which this shape was popularized. This is a t-shirt blog rather than an art or math blog so I am of course going to talk about shirts. These shirts caught my attention a while back because they are all based on the Penrose Triangle. I had bookmarked them quite a while ago for mention but the recent submission of Trippy at Uneetee made me stop procrastinating. This design is the only one of the three designs in this post not yet available as a t-shirt. I imagine it is only a matter of time though.

I had seen this design when it was submitted to Threadless but it apparently wasn’t accepted there and the artist (kaloyster on Threadless) has now submitted it to Uneetee.

It seems that Threadless is not all that interested in the Penrose Triangle because another version of the Penrose Triangle by popular t-shirt designer, Tom Burns, called the Penrose Baby, was also not accepted. Perhaps it was because of the baby’s hairstyle which caused a minor controversy in the Threadless forums. Heeding the hairstyle advice of people in the forums, the baby was given a new do and submitted to Design by Humans.

Unfortunately the new hairstyle wasn’t enough to get a win at Design by Humans either though. But for those of you who want to get their hands on one of these tees don’t worry. It is available at Loiter.

Last but certainly not least is Puzzled Putter by Glenn Jones which is my favorite of the three but doesn’t have quite the back story of the others. At least not that I know of. It is available on Glenn Jones own t-shirt store, which is called Glennz, and is currently on sale at only $13.95. Actually all tee are $13.95  from December 26-31st.