Tag: Knitting

Looped Fabric

True knitting

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I have been using the definitions of fabric structures provided by Irene Emery as starting points for the discussions of several forms of looping. Along the way, I tacitly noted that her definition of knitting is not as clear-cut as the others are and realized that it would be useful at some point to consider it here.

Emery defines the basic element of all looping as follows:

“A complete loop is formed (and will be retained in the fabric) if the element crosses over itself as it moves on to form the next loop.

Loop: a doubling of cord or thread back on itself so as to leave an opening between the parts through which another cord or thread may pass.”

Applying this specifically to knitting, a strand of yarn worked into a row of twisted-stitch knitting forms one complete loop after the other.

emery-cross-knit

In contrast, the yarn in open-stitch knitting doesn’t cross over itself at all as it is worked across a row. It does cross over the yarn in the adjacent rows but those can be separate elements (and arguably are intrinsically so). The preceding definition of loop therefore does not properly accommodate this form of knitting.

emery-open-knitting

Emery addresses this in her definition of knitting by introducing an incomplete “open loop”:

“Knitting in its simplest form consists of successive rows of ‘running’ open loops, each loop engaging the corresponding one in the previous row and being in turn engaged by the corresponding one in the following row.”

This correctly places twisted-stitch and open-stitch knitting in the same category but glosses over the contradiction in terms between a loop explicitly defined as an element that crosses over itself, and a loop as a u-shaped segment of an element that undulates along its length but does not cross over itself.

open-stitch-meander

The qualifiers “complete” and “incomplete” offset this, and treating the twisted stitch as a complete loop allows the open stitch to be an incomplete variant. However, if knitting is classified as a form of looping (as Emery does), twisted-stitch knitting would then be its primary type with open-stitch knitting as a variant.

Emery also discusses the need to distinguish between twisted-stitch knitting and the structurally identical cross-knit looping, noting (but not necessarily ascribing to) a widespread belief that I will say more about in a separate post:

“Crossed knitting is quite commonly said to be the oldest form of knitting.”

She uses the term “true crossed knitting” to narrow its scope to fabric produced by knitting techniques and not those of any other form of looping, but ultimately concludes:

“…even complete specimens (and many ancient ones are fragmentary) offer little reliable evidence of the process of fabrication. An unfinished fabric with associated implements would probably be necessary for positive determination.”

From the nominal perspective of this blog, it would be reasonable to discuss knitting exclusively in terms of looping. In that light, twisted-stitch knitting is “true looping” and open-stitch knitting is what could be termed pseudo-looping. Conveniently, there is no need to develop the latter concept unless Emery’s definition of looping is treated as inviolable, which she doesn’t even do herself.

In any case, much writing on the topic treats what is sometimes called “true knitting” as the reference point for both the historical and structural analysis not just of knitting, but of fabric produced by some other technique “that resembles knitting.” The definition of true knitting varies depending on whether focus is on the fabric structure or on the methods of its production. Regardless of the specific wording of any such definition, open-stitch hand-knitting would lie within its scope. Such fabric cannot realistically be produced with a single eyed needle, as can the twisted-stitch structure, so a qualifier similar to the one in Emery’s “true cross knitting” is not needed for it. Nonetheless, her formulation does recognize twisted-stitch knitting as true knitting.

The concept of true knitting ought reasonably (if not tautologically) to include knitting as defined by the practitioners of that craft. Current tutorial texts distinguish between Eastern style and Western style knitting. The sole difference between them that is visible in the finished fabric is whether the completed stitches are twisted or open. (I’ll discuss the origin of these terms in a separate post but will note for now that the material evidence does not establish twisted-stitch knitting as the older form.)

The Western knitting style is more widely practiced and therefore the one for which printed instructions are most commonly prepared. Eastern style knitters need to know how to deal with such patterns but the difference between the schools is otherwise of little practical concern. There is also a “combination” knitting that employs a hybrid of Eastern and Western elements to produce an open stitch structure, but this does not occupy a niche of its own in the present discussion.

A detailed classification system needs to recognize production methods. The two primary techniques for hand knitting employ a peg loom (subdivided into round and straight forms, using a single hook for working stitches on them) or knitting needles (with smooth tips or hooked tips and several ways to manipulate them). Both can produce twisted and open knit stitches with equal ease and neither can normally create other forms of looping.

This suggests that true knitting can usefully be defined both as the application of those implements to the manufacture of knitted structures, and as fabric resulting from that process. This does disallow machine knitting, but that includes many structures that cannot be produced by hand knitting and is generally discussed in a terminological and conceptual framework of its own. For present purposes, knitting machines will be seen as automated cousins of the peg loom, without encumbering the definition of true knitting.

Looped Fabric

More about the structure of early Egyptian knitting

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A previous post discussed several pieces of tubular knitting reported to have been made in Egypt during the 1st millennium CE. (Thanks to Matthew Pius for spotting the earlier studies and guest blogging their central details, summarized and commented on below.) One of the tubes had been radiocarbon dated to the interval 425–594 CE (in this test report) and is thus the oldest such object of substantiated age that has yet come to light. It is described by Dominique Bénazeth in an article titled “Accessoires vestimentaires dans la collection de textiles coptes du musée du Louvre” in a report from a conference in 2009, published in 2013 as Drawing the threads together; Dress accessories of the 1st millennium AD from Egypt.

The direct indications of this item having been made in Egypt are too weak to establish its provenance. However, its similarity to other knitted tubes that have a better-established Egyptian nexus — particularly one that is currently at the Museum of Byzantine Art in Berlin — was accepted as sufficient for grouping the Louvre piece with them. The Berlin tube is not clearly dated but is of certain geographic provenance and has been examined in greater structural detail. A report about it appears in an exhibition catalog from 2010 prepared by Klaus Finneiser, Petra Linscheid, and Meliné Pehlivanian, titled Georg Schweinfurth; Pionier der Textilforschung und Afrikaforscher. Their structural analysis concluded that it was likely to have been knitted on a peg loom, which is generally an efficient production device for tubular knitting. Since the Paris tube is both longer and narrower, the same method of production was assumed for it, as well.

The fabric structure of the Berlin tube is what a present-day knitter would call open (or uncrossed or untwisted) stocking stitch, albeit in a compound variant where each stitch is worked over the corresponding stitches in both of the two preceding courses (discussed and illustrated here). Loom knitters call this 1-over-2 (or double stitch) knitting. Its twisted “e-wrap” form commonly appears in stitch dictionaries of loom knitting, but descriptions of an open 1-over-2 structure produced with open “u-wrap” or “true” knitted stitches do not.

Compound knitting isn’t found in the established glossary of contemporary needle knitting but the structure appears in single-wale “false seams” worked with a crochet hook, such as Elizabeth Zimmerman’s phony seam (alternating 1-over-2 and 2-over-1). However, there is no particular difficulty in making compound stitches with ordinary knitting needles that justifies, much less necessitates, positing the greater utility of a knitting loom. There is no unequivocal physical or iconographic evidence of any of the candidate implements until significantly later than the production date of the Paris tube. There is also some basis for adding a circular needle to the speculative list of applicable tools.

An illustrated description of the needle-based technique was published in 1997 in a catalog prepared by Marianne Erikson titled Textiles in Egypt 200–1500 AD. It is part of the analysis of a fragment from ca. 1000 CE presented as flatwork but plausibly a segment of a piece worked in the round. That method of compound knitting was considered in further detail in a series of tutorial blog posts by Katrin Kania, in turn based on a workshop conducted by Petra Linscheid that examined the spool-based approach. A book recently published by Assia Brill titled Distitch, describes several needle-based techniques from the perspective of their contemporary application.

The photograph included in the Berlin report shows the compound structure from both the front and back of the fabric. The tube is not intact and several courses can be seen from the inside. The photograph in the report on the piece at the Louvre shows similar damage and reveals additional structural detail that might otherwise go unnoticed. Both tubes display the notable vertical compression of the individual stitches that is typical of compound knitting.

However, the second yellow band from the left in the lower segment in the following photo of the Paris tube has several stitches that are strained open and appear as though they might be looped into the immediately adjacent course only. The entire piece is close to two meters long and the full published photograph shows it in a serpentine position. The fineness of the stitching can be understood by visualizing the segments shown here as parts of a continuous tube of such length. If it is accepted that mistakes in this form of compound knitting can appear as ordinary knit stitches, there is no need for further explanation of the deviation in the lower segment.

af6027-detail
© 2010 Musée du Louvre / Georges Poncet

The Berlin report references additional examples of Coptic tubular knitting and other sources include still more. Both simple and compound stocking stitch are represented and the detailed examination of a larger number of samples would permit a more certain determination of the balance between the two types. Some of the tubes are also closed at one end either with a drawstring or decreases in the final few rounds of stitches. The analysis of those structures might also provide more specific detail about the technique(s) applied to their production.

Looped Fabric

Methods for knitting metal tubes

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Tubular open-stitch knitting of the previously described type is a common find at Viking sites. This discussion began with it because there is little question about it being stocking stitch in the present-day Western sense, albeit with a compound structure. Comparable specimens with twisted stitches have also been found, as has the cross-knit looping that can often be difficult to distinguish from it.

Correctly differentiating the knitted and looped forms is not eased by their often being conflated in the literature of the modern craft known as “Viking knitting.” Despite calling this technique knitting, it is straightforward cross-knit looping. The underlying issue is that twisted-stitch knitting and cross-knit looping share the same basic structure. An archaeologically-recovered metal tube made in either manner may not reveal the secondary structural detail needed to tell them apart, especially if only a fragment remains. Other indications of the production method might also help but we lack specific knowledge of the techniques used by the Vikings to make any such wirework. It is possible nonetheless, to test the suitability of more recent methods and list conceivable options.

The post linked to above cites a remark by Richard Rutt about the equivalent Irish tubular knitting: “…the Celtic work was done with a knitting nancy. Complex knitting is much easier on a knitting nancy than it is on knitting needles.” (A knitting nancy is a small peg loom, also called a knitting spool.) This judgment would be entirely correct for work with yarn and is consistent with what other authors have suggested about the use of a peg loom for the Egyptian knitted tubes. However, metal has a number of mechanical properties that yarn does not. It is vulnerable to kinks and dents, breaking easily at either, and hardens when worked. All of the methods for open-loop knitting on a peg loom put the stitches under significant tension, as does compound knitting. This can become critical with wire, particularly at small diameters. The method that strains it the least, minimizes the risk of damage.

The stitches on a peg loom are commonly worked with a hook. Although a peg loom can be used for knitting both yarn and wire, a hook alone is adequate for the latter. Wire is rigid enough for a loop formed of it not to require mechanical support pending its being secured to another loop. The process is illustrated in this video where it is named for the tool, but the parent website also uses the more analytical designation “Invisible Spool Knitting” — ISK.

This basic technique will be familiar to any knitter who has repaired dropped stitches by re-knitting them vertically with a crochet hook. It is easy enough to see how it can also produce a twisted-stitch structure simply by rotating each loop 180° after it is pulled through the corresponding loop in the previous row. If one similarly envisions a loop of the one color wire being drawn over the loop of the other color in the next row, and then secured to the loop of its own color in the row after that, the result is compound knitting. (The strip of 8th-century Irish flat knitting shown in the preceding post displays precisely such a two-colored compound structure.)

The drawplate is another important implement specific to wirework. It allows a tube to be knitted at a comfortably large diameter which is then reduced to whatever is desired for the finished tube. This means, at least in principle, that knitting needles can be used to form a looser version of the same structure, which is then drawn down to size — but also elongated in the doing. Ensuring adequately dense stitching in the final tube is one of the effects of compound knitting. It also appears for that purpose in the tutorial literature of modern Viking knitting as double knitting, with triple knitting also described.

Again, though, none of this establishes how the Viking and Irish tubes were actually knitted. Nonetheless, of all the plausible alternatives, using a hook in the manner shown in the video affords the greatest economy of motion and subjects the wire to the least stress. Minimizing the number of contact points that can potentially injure the surface of the wire might similarly explain a preference for an open-loop structure.

Looped Fabric

Early Irish knitting

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Knitted silver wire of the type found in the 9th- through 11th-century Viking hoards in England and Scotland (discussed in a preceding post) and at other Viking sites, has also been found in 9th-century CE Irish hoards of altar vessels. Two such objects are of particular interest. The Derrynaflan Paten is decorated around its circumference with three knitted tubes (seen in greater detail here).

derrynaflan-detail

The tubes appear to consist of shorter segments with slightly different appearances (and perhaps structures) joined together. One of the alternating elements was created by a gently spiraling band of silver wrapped tightly enough around the tube to press into it, forming a secondary decoration.

The paten is described in great detail by Michael Ryan in The Derrynaflan Hoard and Early Irish Art, published in the October 1997 issue of Speculum. He notes that the knitting around its outer circumference is soft enough to risk being deformed during normal handling (for which reason the hoard includes a separate support for the paten). He also states that “nothing later than the ninth century occurs in the find” but does not provide a more specific date for the paten.

It is currently in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland, which dates it to the 8th century, together with the more widely known Ardagh Chalice. On the basis of the shared intricacy of their decorative detail, the museum believes that both can have been made in the same workshop, which was presumably near the sites where they were recovered. Unlike the jewelry found at the Viking sites, where the knitting was the centerpiece, the Irish knitting considered here was a decorative component of larger elaborate objects that would in all likelihood have been commissioned by the churches where they were found.

The following detail from one of the two strips of knitting on the chalice shows the same compound structure as that seen on the Viking and Egyptian knitted tubes. It is formed by alternating rows of different-colored wires worked over each other. This is placed alongside plain open-loop knitting. The most noteworthy difference between the knitting on the chalice and all the other early knitting examined here thus far is that it was worked flat.

ardagh-detail-1

This upsets the established notion of knitting first having arrived in Europe at some time after 1000 CE, from its Egyptian origin, via Islamic Spain. There is convincing evidence of knitting in yarn having traversed that path, nonetheless, but knitting in wire was well established in northern Europe by the time it did.

There is no way to determine if the contemporaneous appearance of tubular knitting in Egypt and the northern European sites is coincidental, or provides yet another indication of cultural exchange between those communities. (Ryan includes a footnoted reference to the silver used for decorating Viking objects seeming “to have been derived in the main from Islamic dirhams with inscriptions in Kufic characters…brought along Viking trade routes to the East.”) Similarly, there is no way to tell if the Vikings introduced the craft to Ireland or picked it up there — assuming that’s the way it happened, at all.

The knitting found at all sites displays the same fundamental structure. The yarn used in the one region and the wire used in the other can be knitted with the same tools, although the working properties of the respective materials make some implements and methods better suited to the one than the other.

The Ardagh Chalice was examined in minute detail by the Conservation Laboratory at the British Museum during the late 1960s. A report about it was presented by Robert Organ at a seminar on the Application of science in examination of works of art, in 1970. This report was included in the published proceedings of the seminar three years later, titled Examination of the Ardagh Chalice — A Case History.

The preceding photograph shows a detail of one of the decorative elements on the chalice presented in that report. It is the less complex of the two strips of knitted wire. The other is significantly more intricate, with an additional structure woven into the knitting and the legs of some of the knitted stitches tracing an elaborate path through the work. This parallels the secondary device worked into half of the knitting on the Derrynaflan Paten. I’ll return to it when I feel surer about my ability to provide an accurate description. Puzzling that out will likely reveal more about the method of production, the basics of which I intend to discuss next.

Looped Fabric

Viking knitting close up

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When I blogged about the Cuerdale Hoard yesterday, I had no expectation of seeing it right under my nose today. In the interim, I had visited the Gold Room at the Swedish History Museum, which is as close to an encyclopedic exhibition of Viking metal art as can be. There was a tubular silver chain there that appeared to be twisted-stitch knitting. This got me thinking about the extent to which pulling the tube through a drawplate to reduce its size and even out its surface (a normal step in this form of wirework) might alter the appearance of the knitted structure. The force of that action can shift the position of the legs of the stitches, potentially both giving twisted-stitch knitting a flatter appearance and open-stitch knitting a crossed appearance. I’ll explain the technical and structural nuance of all this in another post.

Anyway — when I was again confronting an overwhelming amount of material, today, all I had at hand was a cellphone for dealing with an unanticipated photo op that deserved more appropriate equipment. I’ll be better prepared next time, but here is one shot of the knitted tube yesterday’s post includes a drawing of, showing it from the other side.

cuerdale-photo

The full tube is significantly longer than Hawkins’s truncated illustration suggests and it’s misleading to describe the wire as hair fine.

cuerdale-strip

Other photos illustrate several points I intend to make in the post promised above. This is already in gestation and the photos will appear with it.

I obviously knew that I’d be traveling to the British Museum this morning but was doing so for an unrelated bit of loopery — another tale to be told — and was surprised to see material from the Cuerdale Hoard on display. To my greater embarrassment, although I knew that at least some of it was in the museum’s collections, I hadn’t checked beforehand if anything was on exhibit, to say nothing of it jogging a memory of having seen the display on an earlier visit without registering its significance.

Looped Fabric

Knitted tubes in Viking hoards

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One of the largest hoards of Viking silver ever found was deposited in Cuerdale, England, during the first five years of the 10th century CE. It was discovered in 1840 and Edward Hawkins published An Account of Coins and Treasure Found in Cuerdale in two issues of the 1847 volume of The Archaeological Journal. The first includes illustrated descriptions of a number of silver chains, to which he then adds the following object.

cuerdale-armlet

“Fig. 84 is probably a portion of an armlet, in the collection of Mr. Assheton, and may be included among the chains; it is composed of fine wire knitted precisely in the same manner as a modern stocking; it is hollow, so that a large pencil may be easily passed within it; one end is inserted into a flat piece of silver, bent, the side riveted together, to contain the silver ring by which the two ends were united to fix it upon the arm.”

Hawkins makes a series of general remarks about the wire objects in the second part of the article.

“The wires of smaller diameter, scarcely larger than a hair…[were used]…in the production of several useful and elegant ornaments…The article 84 is produced from one continuous wire knitted precisely as a modern stocking is made, as will be perceived by examining the forms of the stitches both on the inside and the outside.”

A similar item was found in the Croy hoard near Inverness in Scotland, dating from some time not long after 820 CE. Joseph Anderson, the Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, published a Notice of a Find of Silver Ornaments, &c, at Croy, Inverness-shire now Presented to the Museum in the 1876 volume of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. This includes a description of a 6 inch long silver chain (also shown in a recent photograph taken by the museum).

croy-chain

“The Band of Knitted Work of fine Silver Wire, knitted with the ordinary knitting stitch, resembles the modern Trichinopoly work, and connects this find with those of Cuerdale and Largo, in both of which similarly knitted bands of silver-wire occurred.”

Anderson uses similar terms to describe yet another chain found at a 10th-century Viking burial site at Ballinaby, on the Scottish island of Islay. This was first presented as a lecture in 1881 and published two years later in Scotland in Pagan Times: The Iron Age.

ballinaby-chain

“The chain of silver wire is an object of very peculiar character but its relations are not difficult to establish. A portion of a similar chain occurred in the Croy find; also in the Skaill hoard, to be subsequently described; in the hoard at Cuerdale; and in a small hoard found in the Isle of Inchkenneth. Its total length is 16 inches, and its width is ¼ inch. It is formed of silver wire of the fineness of sewing thread, knitted as a hollow tube, with the common knitting-stitch used in knitting stockings. The knots at the ends of the tube are produced separately and fastened on.”

This chain and the one from the Croy find were examined in 1978 by Helen Bennett of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (whom we met previously in the discussion of how nålebinding became nalbinding). The results were communicated privately to Braham Norwick who was preparing an article titled The Origins of Knitted Fabric, published in 1980, including a photograph of the Ballinaby chain and Bennett’s report, which states:.

“I find them to be of identical looped structure, made from long lengths of wire, which at first sight strongly resembles stocking stitch. Both are in the form of flattened tubes, that from Croy having 16 ‘stitches’ per round (7 stitches and 6 rows per cm) and that from Ballinaby having 6 ‘stitches’ per round (6-2/3 ‘stitches’ and 7-1/2 rows per cm). Although the fabrics strong­ly resemble knitting, on examining them under the microscope I found the structure to be different. Whereas in knitting the loops are usually drawn through those of the preceding row, in these cases the loops have been drawn through the two preceding rows.”

The final sentence defines compound knitting, which can also be described as two overlapping systems of stocking stitch worked into the same fabric. It is the same structure as that of the Egyptian knitted tubes described in a previous post.compound-knitting-structure

It is puzzling that Bennett regards this as being something other than knitting. In his book from 1987, Richard Rutt — who cites both her and Norwick extensively — goes beyond that and categorically excludes all of the wirework they described (including additional flat-knitted material) from the realm of knitting.

“…as Helen Bennett points out, the method by which they were made is far from clear. Recognizing their knitted structure does not give them a place in the history of hand knitting, unless some direct connection can be shown between the techniques of bending metal and of manipulating yarn.”

It didn’t take long before he reconsidered this. In correspondence with the editor of Piecework Magazine in 1990 (published in its Jan.-Feb. 2017 issue) about an article he had recently prepared where the compound knitted structure was described in detail (Knitted Fabrics from China, 3rd Century BC; more about this in a separate post), he says:

“I went on from that to have another look at the Celtic pieces which have knitted silver in them and discovered that the Celtic work was done with a knitting nancy. Complex knitting is much easier on a knitting nancy than it is on knitting needles.”

Knitting Nancy (aka knitting spool) is a common designation for a smaller form of peg loom normally associated with i-cord, although Rutt appears to be using it as a general name for knitting looms regardless of size. I will discuss them together with other methods for the tubular knitting of both yarn and wire in a later post. But first, I want to look at the flat knitting from 8th- or 9th-century Ireland mentioned parenthetically above.

Looped Fabric

Knitted tubes from Egypt

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Hi there.  Your regular blog writer has graciously allowed me to submit this guest post. Following up on his recent posts about knitting and nalbinding in Egypt, this post will talk a bit more about some lesser-known archaeological finds.

There are several controversies in the history of knitting, but possibly the biggest one is the question of when and where knitting was invented.  It is now widely acknowledged that many non-woven textiles were labeled as “knitting” by early archaeologists who did not necessarily have the detailed knowledge of textile production that has since been cultivated.  For the most part, non-woven textiles from the pre-Medieval period have since been identified as having been made with other techniques such as nalbinding or sprang.  Most recent histories of knitting (such as Richard Rutt’s A History of Hand Knitting) say that the oldest surviving examples of true knitting date from 11th or 12th century Egypt.  While it is definitely possible that knitting could have been invented independently by more than one culture, it seems that the most popular hypothesis at the moment is that knitting in early modern Europe was introduced via the Iberian peninsula by Muslim craftspeople.  This hypothesis thus traces the development of knitting in Europe back to Medieval Egypt.

The surviving knitted material from Medieval Egypt consists of a number socks.  In general these socks utilize complicated two-color patterns, so it has been theorized that the technique of knitting is probably somewhat older than this.  And this theory turns out to be right (with some caveats, that we’ll get to below).  Although they do not seem to have gotten much attention, there are at least three surviving knitted tubes from Egypt which date to the pre-Islamic era.

Explaining why these tubes are interesting requires a bit of a discussion of the earlier nalbinding from Egypt.  There are numerous nalbound socks from Roman-era and post-Roman Egypt in museum collections around the world.  The majority of these are made with “Coptic stitch” nalbinding.  Other terms for this are ‘cross-knit looping’ and ‘encircled looping’.  It is a fabric structure that is identical to ‘crossed-stitch’ or ‘twisted-stitch’ knitting when worked without increases or decreases.  However, as was recently discussed on this blog, nalbinding is made by using a single needle with an eye, pulling the entirety of a finite-length yarn through each stitch.  Each stitch forms a loop whose legs are crossed one over the other.

In contrast, true knitting forms stitches which are loops whose legs do not cross.  Each stitch appears as a ‘V’ shape on one side of the fabric.  While there are several methods that can produce true knitting, this structure can not be made with nalbinding.  Any method of producing the true knitted structure with soft yarn requires some tool or mechanism to hold the loops until they have been stabilized by having the next row worked through them.  The exact same structure can be made using knitting needles (straight needles with a blunted point at one or both ends), hooked needles, or a peg loom.

The earliest of the Egyptian knitted tubes was found at Maximinion (Cardon, D. “Chiffons dans le désert: textiles des dépotoir de Maximianon et Krokodilȏ” in La Route de Myos Hormos, 2003).  This was dated between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, although the description of the piece does not detail how this conclusion was reached.  Cardon does not describe in detail the structure, but only notes that it was “tubular knitting” 0.9cm in diameter stuffed with 15 z-spun pieces of wool.  Since Cardon did not provide a detailed description of the knitted structure, it is possible that this piece was nalbinding mistaken for knitting.  The black-and-white photos in this book are low resolution and it’s hard to tell.  However, by 2003 the distinction seems to have been pretty well understood among textile archaeologists.  Also, the similarity with the following pieces argues that this was a true knitted structure.

There is another tube from Krokodilopolis held at the Museum für Byzantische Kunst in Berlin (Finneiser, K. et al., Georg Schweinfurth — Pionier der Textilarchäologie und Afrikaforscher, 2010).  The dating on this one is more uncertain; they list it as 4th – 11th century.  However, the authors clearly illustrate that the structure is not only a true knitted structure, but it is a double-deep knitting, also referred to as “compound knitting”.  Unlike typical knitting in which each stitch is pulled through a loop of the previous row, in this piece each stitch is pulled through stitches in the 2 previous rows.  Therefore, each stitch is pulled through two stitches: the one immediately below it and also the one below that.  The authors also mention similar tubes found in two Nubian graves from a comparable period (8th-10th century), which were used as belts.  They therefore speculate that this was also a belt.

Lastly, there is a tube currently held in the Louvre.  (Bénazeth, D. “Accessoires vestimentaire dans la collection de textiles coptes du musée du Louvre” in Dress Accessories of the 1st Millenium AD from Egypt, ed. Antoine De Moor & Cäcilia Fluck, 2011)  This item’s provenance is unfortunately unknown.  The author believes that this is from a female grave that was excavated in 1900-1901 at Antinoé, but this is based on a vague description in the notes from that dig.  Regardless, radio-carbon dating places it as from the 5th-6th centuries and they do seem confident that it is from Egypt.  Bénazeth states that this piece has the same appearance as the one held in Berlin, mentioned above.  She also mentions the two Nubian belts as justification for assuming this piece to also be a belt.  I have not managed to track down more information on the Nubian belts.

So, these three pieces attest to the creation of true knitted structures in Egypt as early as the 5th-6th century, and possibly as early as the 1st century, CE.  It still remains an open question whether these knitted tubes were produced on knitting needles or on some sort of peg loom.  The double-deep structure can be produced in either manner.  This blog has some posts on how to do it on needles: here and here.  However, it is MUCH easier to achieve using a knitting loom, where the technique does not differ substantially from ordinary, single-deep knitting.  Also, there is no evidence that anyone had figured out how to make other sorts of shapes (like the heels in socks) this early.  It’s entirely possible that this was one of the things which spurred a move from peg looms to knitting on needles.  But that’s just speculation for now.  Unless someone digs up some looms or needles with unfinished work still on them, we may never know for sure how these items were made!

Putting aside the question of needles vs. looms, these pieces push back the date of the development of knitting in Egypt by at least 500 years compared with the patterned socks from the Medieval (Fatimid) era.  This is of great interest to those who would like to find “the oldest known examples of knitting”.  While not the only candidates, these knitted tubes provide the early part of a strain of development that may be the root of knitting in early modern Europe.

Looped Fabric

Arabic inscriptions on knitted stockings

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A descriptive catalog of Textiles in Egypt 200–1500 AD in Swedish museum collections, prepared by Marianne Erikson and published in 1997, includes a “Knitted stocking with Arabic text.” It belongs to the Swedish Museum of Textile History (Textilmuseet) in Borås and is dated to the 11th–15th century CE. The photograph in the catalog shows the inscription that was introduced in the preceding post.

Borås-stocking.BM34713

Erikson gives the following explanation for the pattern, citing an analysis by the Arabic Section of the Dept. of Oriental Languages at the University of Gothenburg:

“Five transverse white bands of Kufesque [footnoted as Pseudo-Kufic] text in dark blue. The text is a form of “Allah” — ‘-ll-h (‘allahu), the name of God repeated. The first consonant, possibly by reason of the ornament, has been left out… To a faithful Muslim it would seem impossible to have the name “Allah” on a stocking, or on any part where one has to step… Might somebody with a different religious belief have worn such footgear, as a kind of protection, during his or her lifetime?”

A conference report titled Textile Messages: Inscribed fabrics from Roman to Abbasid Egypt was published in 2006 and includes a paper by Antoine de Moor, Chris Verhecken-Lammens, and Mark Van Strydonck on the Relevance and irrelevance of radiocarbon dating of inscribed textiles. It focuses on the collection of antique textiles held by the shipping firm Katoen Natie in Antwerp, Belgium. The items selected for analysis include four stockings of the type illustrated above. The introduction to the section about them states:

“Cotton Z2S, sometimes Z3S stockings in blue — sometimes with two shades of blue — found in Egypt and knitted in the round have been dated in the Fatamid [969–1171 CE], Ayyubid [1171–1250], or even Mamluk [1250–1517] periods. Katoen Natie has four fragments of such stockings. Some of these stockings do show simple repeating pseudo-Kufic inscriptions that could be read as ‘Allah,’ which would probably be a problem for a stocking of a Muslim. Arabic-speaking Christians however also use the name of ‘Allah’ for God. Another more probable translation of these inscriptions would be ‘happiness.’”

Only two of the stockings include this graphic device (which appears on numerous additional objects and fragments of fabric with varying degrees of stylization) but all four were radiocarbon dated. The inscribed pieces most probably date from 1110–1149 and 1116–1143 CE, and one of the non-inscribed ones from 1115–1145. At a lower degree of certainty, they could all have been made as early as the 1040s. The corresponding latest possible dates differ for the three, but lie roughly between 1220 and 1260. The final stocking dates from 1019–1213 CE. The most likely dates are all significantly earlier than the one estimated for the sock in Sweden but the basis for comparison is uncertain.

These numbers leave a comfortable century for this form of knitting to have made its way into Spain, if the accepted notions of transmission are correct. These regard the cover of a cushion found in a Spanish tomb from 1275 CE as the earliest reliably dated item knitted in Europe. It is bordered with a repeating pseudo-Kufic Arabic inscription blessing the owner, without specific religious connotation, supporting the belief about the path taken by the craft into Europe. However, there are several examples of wirework with a true knitted structure (not so-called “Viking knitting”) made in Europe at a significantly earlier date, to be considered in detail in coming posts.

The interval from the knitted stockings back to the earliest nalbound Egyptian socks — whatever point of cultural or religious anchorage the Arabic inscriptions might indicate — is about ten times larger. This leaves a significant amount of technical and cultural detail to be considered while working out the relationship between nalbinding and knitting in that region. This also applies to the overlap in the stitch repertoires seen in Egyptian and Nordic nalbinding.

One of the uninscribed socks discussed above is shown on the webpage for an exhibition at the Katoen Natie “headquARTers.” The other photographs appearing with it include an extremely well-preserved specimen of what is generally termed a Coptic sock. It is radiocarbon dated to the interval 74–262 CE (as detailed in a separate report by the same lead author, which will be presented here at greater length in yet another post). Although the latter part of that range can be regarded as Coptic, the earlier part cannot be with anything approaching the same ease. The curatorial attribution of the sock to Roman, rather than Coptic Egypt is therefore worth noting.

Looped Fabric

Romano-Coptic nalbinding and Islamic knitting

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The preceding several posts examine older documents about the production of looped fabric in Scandinavia. The earliest of them, a Swedish text from 1730, makes a clear distinction between garments that are knitted (stickes) and those that are [needle]bound (bundna). Texts from the following decades use those terms with greater ambiguity. Although the crafts remained separate and distinct, either of the two terms could be used as a generic designation for both. The resulting confusion was offset in later academic contexts by applying the more specific name vantsöm (“mitten stitch”) to what ultimately became nålbindning — less robustly anglicized to nalbinding — a nomenclatural process that has also been discussed here.

The structural identification of looped fabric and its association with contemporaneous terminology is a recurring concern. It was examined in a number of German texts starting in the 1890s, all noting that many objects in museum collections that had been classified as knitted were, in fact, nalbound. I’m going to work through these in more or less reverse order, starting with an article that appeared in ten installments in the German industrial journal Wirkerei- und Strickerei-Technik (“Warp and Weft Knitting Technique”) from 1954 to 1956.

This was written by Regina von Bültzingslöwen and Edgar Lehmann and titled Nichtgewebte Textilien vor 1400 (“Non-Woven Textiles Before 1400”). It was an extension of a chapter Lehmann wrote in a book commemorating the 50th anniversary of the operation of a textile factory, published in 1949 as Geflochten, gestrickt, gewirkt (“Woven, Weft Knitted, Warp Knitted”). The serialization was the upshot of an intervening attempt at the separate publication of Lehmann’s contribution to the commemorative publication (with an intervening manuscript here) and examines a large number of objects in public and private collections. It continues to promise a book edition that, as far as I can determine, never materialized. The preliminary description of its intended scope is interesting nonetheless.

“The book edition to follow these essays will, as already stated, take the form of a catalog with a structured overview of about 140 textiles from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The largest part of them appear in the catalogs and inventory lists of private and public collections, incorrectly regarded as knitting. Only about sixteen of them can have been made beyond doubt with a knitting technique.”

Lehmann and Bültzingslöwen go on to describe the distinctive characteristics of what has subsequently been called true knitting and the often confusingly similar technique of cross-knit looping (aka encircled looping) produced with a single eyed-needle. They then present two other structures found in the examined material: “språng” and “vantsöm.” (I hadn’t initially intended to discuss the former but have stumbled across what may be the earliest published instructions for its production, which I will provide more detail about in a future post. In contrast, vantsöm has already figured prominently here.)

Thirty-three items are listed as vantsöm and include compound looping as it is otherwise well known in Nordic nalbinding. Since such structures are also found in Romano-Coptic Egypt, care needs to be taken to avoid conflating them with the cross-knit looping that present-day nalbinders often term the “Coptic stitch.” Three of the observed stitch structures differ significantly from all the others and are put in a class of their own pending further investigation. One of them is “shepherd’s knitting” as it appears in extant material and written documents beginning in the latter half of the 18th century, and is now referred to as slip stitch crochet. Bültzingslöwen’s and Lehmann’s failure to recognize it as such, as well as the structure itself, will also be considered in greater detail in separate posts.

One of the more significant observations they make is that three of the objects that are knitted rather than nalbound include calligraphic Arabic script as a repeating decorative element. They pose a question about whether such fabric was made on multiple knitting needles or a pegged knitting loom (on the basis of a non-Egyptian piece they feel likely to have been loom-knitted) and expect that to clarify as additional objects come to light.

Either technique readily supports the stitch-by-stitch change in yarn color required to embed text. This is not seen in any of the Romano-Coptic material, where color changes are made (if at all) in bands that are a number of rows wide. This is consistent with the use of yarn by the needleful that is an intrinsic property of single-needle looping. Both multi-needle knitting and loom knitting can use larger continuous sources of yarn and are more amenable to the alternating use of different colors within a single row.

Quite a bit of additional material has subsequently been added to the list of knitting with Arabic calligraphic decoration, with the name of the deity Allah being a common motif. This would appear to establish an Islamic nexus but subsequent studies note problems with that interpretation. Additional readings were proposed in a report about the radiocarbon dating of a number of other stockings containing that inscription. I’ll provide details in the next post but will note for now that some authors suggest that it may have non-Islamic significance.