Rutt, Richard. A History of Hand Knitting. Loveland, Colorado: Interweave Press, 1987.
I wrote a summary of it, and I thought I'd post it in case anyone is interested. My comments are in [square brackets].
Origins
✧ It is very difficult to say when knitting first began. Any sort of fabric does not survive well over time. The oldest pieces of fabric which some claim is knitted come from a grave in Esch, southern Holland, which are dated c. 250-300 CE. During examination they deteriorated to such an extent that determining their structure without doubt is impossible.
✧ Another reason why we cannot say for sure when knitting first began is that there was no separate word for ‘knitting’ in English, Latin, Greek or any other language until the Renaissance period. Words which actually meant ‘woven,’ ‘interwoven,’ or ‘plaited’ (for a description of a knitted item) or ‘meshing,’ ‘netting,’ or ‘knotting’ (for the process of knitting) were used. Therefore in any written reference, it is impossible to tell whether knitting or some other craft is being referred to.
✧ Another difficulty arises from the fact that knitting can easily be confused with other craft methods in which the finished product resembles knitting closely. One such structure is Sprang, a type of weaving known from as early as 1,400 BCE in Denmark and (independently) Peru. Superficially it looks like knitting, but it was woven on a frame, and on close examination the researcher can see the threads running vertically, not horizontally across the fabric.
✧ Another method of making stretch fabric is usually known by its Scandinavian name, nålbinding, but was also seen in North Africa and other places. It looks exactly like knitting but is created in a different way – with a single threaded sewing needle which was woven through the course (row) below to create each stitch. The loops point downwards, rather than upwards, as in knitting, and are already bound into the work as they are created, so there is no need to secure the loops in a knitting needle as the craftsperson is working. [There’s no need to cast off, either!] It was always done in the round. Most experts in the past have assumed that the oldest pieces of nålbinding, found in the Middle East, are knitting, but the increases and decreases in the fabric are almost impossible to do in knitting and this reveals them as nålbinding, not knitting. Nålbinding was used to make socks in Egypt in the Roman period, and knitting was later used to make the same articles in the same place. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that knitting was derived from nålbinding in Egypt, though we have no direct evidence.
Romano-Egyptian Socks
✧ The surviving examples were made in a variety of colours (red, brown, purple, etc.) with a separate big toe, in wool. One children’s sock is red with 3 yellow bands. One sock has lacing at the instep, and 12 rounds of ribbing at the ankle (i.e. purl stitches were used). Unlike most socks patterns today, they were begun at the toe.
✧ The first knitting needles had hooked ends (similar to crochet hooks), but eventually it was realized that the hooks weren’t necessary. Knitting was always worked in the round, with at least 3 needles (plus 1 working needle). Evidence has been found that up to 8 needles were sometimes used. The fabric had a stockingette look. Aside from ribbing, the purl stitch was not used. Different colours were used to make very elaborate patterns. Knitting was usually quite fine – 5 to 8 stitches per centimetre.
✧ The Egyptian tradition continued with long blue-and-white stockings made from cotton, with numerous examples dating to c. 1,000-1,200 CE. The articles were also knitted in the round from the toe up, but with the ‘seam’ running up the side instead of the back. They resemble Islamic tile decorations with their elaborate bands of curlicues and religious mottoes in Arabic script.
Knitting Spreads in Mediaeval Times
✧ Knitting spread from North Africa to Spain with the invasion of southern Spain by the Moors. The earliest examples are two cushions from the tomb of Prince Fernando de la Cerda, who died in 1275. The finely worked patterns (8 stitches to the centimetre) are a curious mixture of Spanish motifs – eagles, lions, castles, fleurs-de-lys – and Arabic script.
✧ A number of 14th-century votive paintings of the Madonna and Child from Italy and Germany show Mary knitting. She knits either a stocking or a shirt. They show something of the technique – 4 needles are used and the yarn is held in the right hand. They show us nothing of the wider social or economic place of knitting though.
✧ Much knitting was associated with the church, especially in Germany and Scandinavia. Bishops’ gloves (‘chirotheca’) and purses for holding relics of extremely fine work have been found. Five relic purses of mediaeval make are still being used in the Cathedral of Sitten in Switzerland. They are knitted in the round out of silk, with 7 stitches to the centimetre, flattened and the bottom edges closed and decorated with tassels. The top edges have drawstrings. The largest is 34cm tall and 26cm wide. All have very elaborate patterning in horizontal bands of at least 5 colours.
✧ The knitters’ guild of Paris was established in 1527: the Guild of St. Fiacra. The guild’s arms were a silver fleece on an azure field, with 5 ships. St. Fiacra was probably chosen as the patron saint of the guild because it was believed that he was Scottish and that knitting came to France from Scotland. Neither of these beliefs is true! However, the patron saints of guilds were often chosen purely because they were already well-known, or the saint’s feast day provided a holiday at a convenient time.
Knitting in England
✧ The first articles made in England seem to have been caps. Caps could only be knitted by trained, licensed guild members. This is the origin of the surname Capper. The industry was well established by 1424. Surviving caps are usually of the ‘skull-cap’ type (i.e. closely-fitting), sometimes with earflaps. They are usually brown, black or red, made of thick wool, and very coarse – 1 or 2 stitches per centimetre. Later caps followed fashion, with concertina-style ones in the mid-16th-century, and slashed ones from the late 16th-century.
✧ Knitting grew slowly in English society. Not only were all of peoples’ needs already provided for (e.g. hose were made of cut cloth) but steel knitting needles were difficult and time-consuming for the metalsmith to produce.
✧ Woollen and later silk stockings (a luxury item) were first imported from Spain, but by 1545 woollen (worsted) stockings were being produced within the country, along with gloves, undershirts, hoggers (footless stockings or gaiters for men) and scoggers (detached sleeves worn during work).
✧ During the reign of Queen Elizabeth the technique of producing fine metal rods by drawing them through perforated plates was perfected, and knitting became much more common. By the mid-16th-century, items were being knitted by the poorer classes for their own wear, and for children of all classes.
Techniques
✧ Purl seems to have first been used on the turned heels of stockings and socks. The earliest example is in the stockings belonging to Eleanora of Toledo, made c. 1562. Purl was also used decoratively from this time – purl means ‘pearl.’
✧ Various methods of shaping were well-known in England by the Renaissance. The cap-makers’ guild made closely-fitted knitted caps in the round which still survive.
Knitting for Fashion
✧ In Elizabethan England, fine knitted silk stockings were the height of fashion. Men’s stockings were usually in a single colour with a damask-imitation pattern made of plain and purl stitches, sometimes with a gold or silver thread running through them. Women’s stockings were more likely to have patterns in many colours.
✧ In Paris, men’s stockings came in over 50 different colours, with names like Dying Monkey, Lost Time, Resuscitated Corpse, Amorous Desires, Sad Friend, Sick Spaniard, Colour of Hell, and Brown Bread (dyer’s advertisement, Neufchateau, Lorraine, 1607). This fashion led to a new phenomenon – ladders in stockings (though they were not known by that name until the 20th century). A play called The Spanish Gipsy (1623) refers to “a stitch in a man’s stocking not taken up in time … ravels out all the rest.”
✧ Knitting now became a way for poor families, especially in rural areas, to supplement their income, and became a significant element in the economy of various areas, especially when the practice of dividing land amongst descendents left many with plots of land too small to make a living from. Women and children, and in some areas men as well, could knit a pair of stockings a week in their spare time. Groups could be seen knitting together sitting under trees, etc. and knitting parties were important social occasions. Many could even knit while walking or reading aloud for the benefit of their companions. Schools were opened to teach destitute women and children to earn a living from knitting. Demand was kept up by the export of English stockings of all grades of quality to various parts of Europe.
✧ ‘Waistcoats’ (actually long-sleeved undershirts) such as the one worn by Charles I at his execution in 1649 were also made. Extremely fine work, many were made in a purl/plain damask effect stitch.
The First Knitting Recipe
✧ was published in Natura Exenterata (or Nature Unbowelled by the Most Exquisite Anatomisers of Her), a household manual published in 1655. It makes a stocking (hose) on 3 needles with a separate clock and a short seam in the bottom of the heel. It is very difficult to understand – a single three-page long sentence with no full stops, erratic punctuation, and five different terms for purl stitch. The pattern stops at the bottom of a page before describing the toe section; it seems this part was lost in the printing process. The entire recipe is reproduced in the book. Here is an extract:
...and so then divide your needles into three equal parts, allowing upon your two heel needles three masks of each, more than upon your instep needles and then at the beginning of the right-hand needles of the heel make two turned masks, and so work plain until you come at the latter end of the left-hand needle to the instep-ward and there make two turned masks again and then knit plain round till you come again to your heel needle then make one knotted stitch at the beginning of your heel needle then take up a mask between the two knotted stitches and work it plain then the next stitch make a knot ... etc.Reproduction stockings made form the recipe are clumsy and a little puckered (but perhaps this is understandable as there is no mention of gauge or tension).
Knitting Master Dubois
✧ In Kunst zu Stricken in ihrem ganzen Umfange (Leipzig, 1800), Herr Netto describes a man he met in 1779 called Dubois from Switzerland, who stayed in Leipzig in 1779-80. Dubois could knit (with thick wool) a men’s stocking in one hour. He used hooked needles, working faster than the eye could see. He kept his ball of wool in his pocket, and kept tension by threading the yarn though a ring attached to the breast of his jacket. He would knit both stockings of a pair at the same time, on the same needles. One was inside the other; he used 2 balls of yarn, one on the outside knitting purl stitches, and one on the inside knitting garter stitches. The outer stocking was knitted inside out. (This technique is mentioned in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.) [Wow!!!]
The Annals of Aberdeen
✧ (1818) notes that, unlike in many other areas, knitting was seen as an amusement for ladies, not just drudge work for the poor. In fact, in 1733, Lady Mary Drummond, daughter of the Duke of Perth, proudly made and sold 3 pairs of stockings. Up until the 1830s though, knitting was a distinctly commercial, lower class pursuit. Children (both boys and girls) in poorhouses and orphanages were taught to spin and knit as young as 4 years of age, and the stockings were sold to pay for their food and lodging. Christian reformers saw the labour as a redeeming virtue. In one school in 1800, children were paid 1½d. (pence) per week for producing 3 stockings or 4 mittens. Their annual Easter gift was a new pair of knitting needles. Adults in 1793 were paid 1s. (shilling) per pair of stockings by the onseller, which were then resold for 3s. 6d. to 4s. per pair. However, by this time, hand knitting as a commercial activity was in a slow and irreversible decline. Knitting was now done as an occasional supplement to the income, as a social activity, and to keep children busy, rather than as a necessary activity to stave off grinding poverty. A woman knitting continuously for 10-12 hours a day only earned about 6d. per day; a child 3d. or 4d. The returns were so small that in many places older people gave up knitting, and the younger generation didn’t bother to learn. Books were published on the virtues of knitting, but the Church had a hard time convincing the poor that it was a worthwhile way to fill up their spare time.
Drawing Room Knitting – for Pleasure
✧ There are few examples of obviously non-functional items from the 18th century, but the ones that do exist include small stockings, pincushions and purses/reticules.
✧ In 1835, several knitting books were published in England which reflected a sudden upsurge in knitting as a pastime. These included The Ladies’ Assistant (1836; 1840) by Jane Gaugain, and The Handbook of Needlework (1842) by Frances Lambert, who was the first to write about tension and invented the perforated needle gauge. The smallest gauge was Size 26: 0.4 mm. [!!]
Cornelia Mee and Mlle. Riego de la Branchardiere (who both claimed to have invented crochet) were great rivals and published many books on knitting from the 1840s to the 1870s.
✧ Frances Lambert and others advocated handling the needles in the “ladies” way, i.e. as if they were pencils, ostensibly because it was faster, more dainty and showed off elegant hands better to potential male suitors. Just as important was a desire to disassociate drawing-room knitting from the commercial cottage knitting industry. Tests have since shown that this way of holding needles is considerably slower and uses more energy than the traditional manner, yet many people still knit this way today, even though it is extremely awkward to knit anything larger than a purse, doiley, etc. when holding the needles this way. Despite ladies’ protestations that their knitting was an expression of the Protestant work ethic of constant labour, it was used in Thorstein Veblen’s great economic work, The Theory of the Leisure Class as an example of “conspicuous leisure,” i.e. despite the appearance of industry, the activity is done in such an inefficient way as to actually render it as almost useless: a display of “time-wasting” by the leisured classes.
To be fair, most recipes (patterns) in Victorian workbooks are for practical items such as baby clothes, socks, mittens, purses, muffs, bedspreads, etc. Very few are for purely frivolous or decorative items such as towel edgings, artificial flowers or miniature jugs.
Cardigans
✧ [a garment that everyone knows I love!] were named after the Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), who led the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War (1854-6). He only spent 3 months in the Crimea, and even though the weather conditions there (hot days and cold nights) were perfect for the wearing of a cardigan, there is no evidence he ever wore one, either at the time, or later in his life. The first use of the word (“cardigan body warmer”) was seen in 1868, the year he died.
Teacosies
✧ were invented in Victorian times – the first recorded use was in 1867 - and they quickly became extremely popular in all social classes, despite the fact that some tea connoisseurs believe they spoil the tea by stewing it. The combination of a functional item with almost unlimited decorative possibilities must have appealed to the Victorians immensely. At first they were simple inverted-bag style covers of various designs, but in 1893 Weldon’s Ladies’ Journal published a recipe for the Bachelor Cosy, made with holes for the handle and spout so the lazy bachelor doesn’t have to remove the cosy before pouring the tea.
[Later Art Deco and Pop styles made into toasters and TVs sound very interesting!]
World War 1 and After
✧ Women and children in Britain were encouraged to knit articles for the comfort of soldiers during WW1, and they took up the craft to such an extent that it was described by many as a national addiction. Not only was knitting relaxing to the lonely and worried minds of the soldiers’ relatives, but it was one of the few ways that women could contribute to the war effort. So many gloves, mittens, hats, scarves, balaclavas, socks and belts were made that the men were using them to clean their guns and wipe their dishes.
✧ The knitting craze continued into the 1920s, and jumpers and cardigans have been worn almost continually ever since. Fair Isle jumpers (worn for golfing and other sports) and ‘jazz jumpers’ were enormously popular in the 1920s.
Personalities in Knitting
✧ Marjorie Tillotson (1886-1965) was the first English designer of hand-knitted garments on a large scale. The first knitting pattern leaflet, issued by J. & J. Baldwin of Beehive Wools, was written by her. She began the famous Woolcraft series of books, which ran to at least 20 editions and became an English institution.
✧ Mary Thomas (1889-1948) was a fashion journalist who wrote 2 of the most important knitting manuals: Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book (1938) and Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting Patterns (1943). A friend of many fashion designers and other celebrities, she was an advocate of women’s rights and a member of the London Buddhist Society.
✧ Dave Fougner published The Manly Art of Knitting in 1972 (California: Scribners), with patterns for a dog blanket, saddle cloth, a hammock knitted on shovel handles., etc. His booklet claims that knitting strengthens his hands and improves his tennis game.
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