On 21st February the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki will begin their INREES seminar series for 2023 with a paper on “Hand-knitted Woollen Lace Fabrics in Shetland (Scotland) and Haapsalu (Estonia): A “Wheel-Powering” Mechanism Between People, Place, and Products”. The presentation is by Sophie Qiaoyun Peng, a PhD candidate at Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow and will be discussing and explaining the “wheel-powering” mechanism in regional knitted lace-making traditions, using Shetland (Scotland) and Haapsalu (Estonia) as examples through which to explore the relations between lace and place, and how hand-knitted lace has developed from being a crucial part of making additional income to a crucial part of leisure and local-branding in contemporary contexts. The paper will explain the “wheel-powering” mechanism in producing hand-knitted lace fabrics, and the role of lace-knitting in forming a shared identity in culturally-distinctive areas, as well as using the “wheel-powering” mechanism as a model for examining why the popularity of lace-knitting is higher in Haapsalu than in Shetland now.
This seminar will be available online on 21st February 2023 via Zoom and details are available at the University of Helsinki website https://www.helsinki.fi/en/aleksanteri-institute/whats/news-archive/hand-knitted-woollen-lace-fabrics-in-shetland-and-haapsalu