Three years and 100 posts later

30 December 20192 April 2023 stringbedLeave a comment

When I started this blog I had no idea how much time I would soon be spending in the alternating roles of researcher and wordsmith. I’ve enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. However, the project has been increasingly beset with need for retrospectively harmonizing earlier posts with recent ones and updating references to source documents that have since been digitized and placed online. More than a few substantive conclusions drawn along the way have been, or still need to be, recontextualized in light of subsequently acquired information.

The round numbers attaching to the present post make it a suitable final entry in Series One of this blog. I had intended to release it on the third anniversary of the inaugural post (19 November) but as noted in the one closest to that date, related commitments interfered with that seemingly simple action. The overdue housekeeping has become even more urgent in the meanwhile. There’s also a formidable and growing backlog of unread articles and books amassed with the intention of fueling future posts that I’m eager to make at least a dent in. Doing this may require easing off what has become a regular schedule of biweekly postings. Continue reading “Three years and 100 posts later” →

Looped Fabric

Diamond mesh

22 December 20191 May 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

I’ve devoted an inordinate amount of blog space to slip stitch fabric made with a hook, tracing it back along a number of paths to printed sources in the mid-18th century, and discussing objects made in that manner found in museum collections. I’m going to restore some balance with material and written evidence of European hooked openwork from the same period, starting with an elaborate Robe à la Française (sack-back gown) in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 1995.235a,b), dated to the 1740s.

I saw it in their exhibition Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade,1500–1800 in late 2013. This was about a year before my focused interest in looped fabric was kindled. I therefore didn’t take particular notice of a wide strip of chain mesh passementerie providing a prominent yoke around the dress extending to its hem, with a second piece of the same mesh along the hem between the ends of the yoke. In early 2016, my friend Dora Ohrenstein called my attention to their potential relevance to the chronology of crochet. The ensuing discussion cascaded into a seminar on differentiating crocheted fabric from that made with other looped techniques, arranged by and held at The Met in May 2016.

The dress wasn’t accessible for examination alongside the other objects presented to the seminar participants. One of the questions we had otherwise hoped to be able to answer was whether the chain mesh had been affixed to the dress when it was first made, thus conferring the 1740s date on it, or could have been a later addition. We did get to take a close look at two specimens of comparable passementerie dated to the 18th century. I documented them in detail and let the dress slip out of mind.

Continue reading →

Looped Fabric

The “ice cream cone” crochet hook

8 December 201922 November 2021 stringbedLeave a comment

Crochet hooks are used as auxiliary tools in other crafts, either in their original form or adapted to the alternate context. It is, for example, a matter of personal preference whether a knitter uses an ordinary crochet hook to reknit the ladder resulting from a dropped stitch, or a specialized repair hook modified for the purpose. That redesign typically involves shortening the shaft of the hook and shaping its other end either into a second hook or a pointed tip. Another example is the hook used for joining elements in tatting. This will be either a stock crochet hook or one with a shortened shaft with a metal chain and ring attached to the other end so that it can be held ready on a finger. (The truncated shaft and hole for the chain are telltale, even when the chain itself is missing.)

The tatting variant is also marketed as a compact alternative for crochet, illustrating the interesting question of how a multipurpose tool should be categorized and labeled. This becomes even more complex given the potential utility of hooks made to serve some unrelated purpose, for working crocheted fabric. The converse situation is also of historiographic significance. If something that looks like a crochet hook is found in an archaeological context that can in no way be associated with the production of fabric — to say nothing of its crocheted form — the hook does not constitute such evidence without robust external corroboration. (Although not the focus of this post, both perspectives also pertain to eyed needles and nalbinding.) Continue reading “The “ice cream cone” crochet hook” →