Bibliography Of The History Of Knitting Update

As promised at the KHF AGM on Saturday 7th November, Lesley O’Connell Edwards has updated the Bibliography of the history of knitting before 1600 and once again has kindly permitted publication on the KHF website.

It was first compiled by Richard Rutt, author of ‘A History of Handknitting’, before passing on the task to Lesley, who has faithfully maintained and updated it for two decades. The work is unique and remains, as stated in 2018, the most complete bibliography of early knitting history currently published and an important aid to research. Permission to reproduce the document whole or in any part must be sought directly from Lesley O’Connell Edwards, who can be emailed via the address in the downloadable PDF. This, and other useful articles and information, can be found in the Resources section of the Knitting History website.

Early Modern Knitting in Denmark

Early Modern knitted cap, National Museum of Denmark, photo by Jane Malcolm-Davies

This knitted item, found in a crypt in a Danish manor church, was photographed on the day it was recognised as an Early Modern cap by Jane Malcolm-Davies during examination at the National Museum of Denmark’s store in Brede in May 2014. It is recorded in detail in the forthcoming Archaeological Textiles Review issue no. 60 by Maj Ringgaard, together with another cap found in Copenhagen. Click on the image for a larger view.

Early Modern knitted cap, National Museum of Denmark, photo by Jane Malcolm-Davies

Available by subscription, the 2018 volume of Archaeological Textiles Review will focus on knitting in the Early Modern period, with 99 pages devoted to knitted fragments and garments with many colour photographs and detailed specifications. Collaborating authors and articles are as follows:

Ruth Gilbert – reviews published evidence for Early Modern knitting
Susanne Lervad – contributes to terminology for studying knitwork
Helena Lundin – reports knitted items from the c17th Kronan shipwreck
Jane Malcolm-Davies – introduces the issue and proposes a protocol for reporting Early Modern knitwork
Rosalind Mearns – discusses crowdsourcing for experimental archaeology to reconstruct knitted items
Lesley O’Connell Edwards – discusses c16th stockings in the Museum of London
Sylvie Odstrčilová – surveys c17th silk stockings in the Czech Republic
Maj Ringgaard – reveals the remains of two Early Modern knitted caps found in Denmark
Annemarieke Willemsen – reports mittens found in a c17th Dutch shipwreck
There will also be an article on Karen Finch, our late Honorary President, by her colleague, Rosalind Janssen.

The print deadline has been extended, but only until after the weekend, so if you prefer a print copy, reserve yours soon. Subscriptions for the 2018 issue of Archaeological Textiles Review cost DKK250, approximately €34, £30 or US $38, and are available from the University of Copenhagen website http://www.webshophum-en.ku.dk/shop/2018-subscription-archaeological-2310p.html.

Archaeological Textiles Review Knitting Issue

Archaeological Textiles Review 2018 60th Issue on Early Modern Knitting

BREAKING NEWS! The 60th edition of Archaeological Textiles Review has finally been published. This long-awaited diamond issue is devoted to the study of Early Modern knitted items with more than ten articles focussing on extant evidence, including two sixteenth century caps (one being the earliest known example of Danish knitting), sixteenth century wool stockings, seventeenth century silk stockings, items recovered from shipwrecks including mittens from the Netherlands and Sweden, and the full version of the proposal for a new protocol for recording evidence for knitting (read more here). One of the articles is an obituary of Karen Finch, our late Honorary President. A major outcome of the Knitting in Early Modern Europe (KEME) project, funded by a Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellowship, the volume contains 99 pages devoted to knitted fragments and garments with many colour photographs and detailed specifications such as the tension or gauge, yarn and fibre for each item.

This issue is available by subscription and the University of Copenhagen is now deciding how many copies to print. Don’t delay! The print deadline is today (12th December 2018). Volume 60 of Archaeological Textiles Review costs dkk250, approximately €34, £30 or US $38. Visit the University website to subscribe: http://www.webshophum-en.ku.dk/shop/2018-subscription-archaeological-2310p.html.

Textile Tools for Teaching Science

‘Crocheting Neuroscience: The Retina’ by Dr Tahani Baakdhah

In the twenty-first century, Dr Tahani Baakdhah of the University of Toronto makes models in crochet to illustrate her research on stem cells in the retina and promote science literacy. She has just published a book of patterns, ‘Crocheting Neuroscience: The Retina’. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries British chemist and mathematician, Alexander Crum Brown (1838-1922), also made teaching models using a variety of techniques including knitting. Some of Dr Crum Brown’s models, including multi-dimensional knitting demonstrating his mathematical work on inter-penetrating surfaces, are shown in this article from the National Museums of Scotland blog https://blog.nms.ac.uk/2017/11/15/alexander-crum-browns-mathematical-models-interpenetrating-models-of-beknottedness/, and it is really encouraging this connection between textiles and teaching science continues today.

Postgraduate Knitting History Research Online

Two very different studies on the history of knitting are available online. One taps a vein of research that had been hardly explored before, the other re-visits a popular topic of knitting literature, but both dispel old assumptions.

‘Myth: Black People Don’t Knit – the importance of art and oral histories for documenting the experiences of black knitters’ by Lorna Hamilton-Brown can be read and downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-RM7D5lhgCYV2xHcnljX2g3UzQ/view. Her MA dissertation moves beyond facile ethnic stereotypes, examining art and using oral history from living knitters to record firsthand the experience and culture of knitting among people whose stories are often marginalised or misrepresented. Lorna spoke at the Knitting History Forum meeting last November and her lively presentation both informed and entertained.

Roslyn Chapman’s PhD thesis, ‘The history of the fine lace knitting industry in nineteenth and early twentieth century Shetland’, is available in an edited form on the University of Glasgow website http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6763/. Roslyn’s continuing examination of Shetland lace knitting and its many imitations sheds light on how knitting traditions are created, emulated and sometimes inaccurately disseminated. Her much-anticipated presentation at the Knitting History Conference in 2016 highlighted that traditional narratives of knitting should be evaluated against the historical record.

‘Groundbreaking’ is an adjective rarely applied with sincerity, but the work of both Roslyn Chapman and Lorna Hamilton-Brown genuinely breaks new ground in knitting history scholarship, challenging preconception not by deliberate provocation but research that speaks for itself.

Early Knitted Waistcoats – An Overview

Following on from Jana Trepte’s presentation on Saturday, ‘Piecing the Bremen waistcoat together: an everyday knitted garment of the early 1600s’, Pat Poppy has pieced together her own helpful overview of knitted waistcoats and jackets of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. The post lists details of select recent scholarship on early knitted waistcoats and jackets, both ordinary and elite, with links to online records of several examples in museum collections. Pat is herself an historian as well as a long-standing member of Knitting History Forum and her post is a sound springboard for further research. Visit her blog to read more https://costumehistorian.blogspot.com/2018/11/early-modern-knitted-waistcoats-and.html.

Texel Silk Stockings Project Update

The latest newsletter from the TRC Leiden Silk Stockings Project to study and reproduce those recovered from the Texel shipwreck, shows the progress of the knitters, on course to finish their work by the end of March 2019. Read the newsletter here, in Dutch and English. The group were also recorded for television, which may be viewed here, starting at 7.30 minutes in. Ravelry users can also follow the progress of the knitters on their group, Texelstockings.

Center for Knit and Crochet Collections Resource

The Center for Knit and Crochet (CKC) is a non-profit organisation whose aim is to preserve and promote the art, craft, and scholarship of knitting, crochet, and related arts. One result of this aim is the establishment of a digital repository of knitting and crochet. The new CKC Collections Resource is an online-only collection bringing together items from different sources such as museums, galleries, libraries, archives and other public and private entities.

More than 5000 items relating to knitting and crochet may now be browsed in the Library and Museum Collections. Currently in an experimental phase, the database is drawn from the Digital Public Library of America. Other contributions are to be found in the Crowdsourced Collection, which is being used to refine the design, features and functionality of the online interface before continuing expansion. The CKC are in search of further partner organisations willing to share their collections of knitting and crochet.

Visit the CKC Collections Resource to read more, browse the collections or, perhaps, contribute your own piece of history: http://digital.centerforknitandcrochet.org/.