Tag: Nalbinding

Looped Fabric

Twists and turns in the development of crochet — Part 3

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The authors whose writings illustrate the early Victorian practice of crochet in the preceding installments of this series (Part 1, Part 2) continued to publish extensively about the craft. Its development can be traced through each of their works and is concordant across them all. Frances Lambert is particularly clear in relating crochet to the predecessor craft of shepherd’s knitting and I’m going to wrap things up by focusing on how her perspective of the differences between them shifted during the 1840s (also summarizing snippets presented more fully in an earlier post on Scottish Knitting).

In The Handbook of Needlework, from 1842, Lambert notes that crochet had come into fashion only four years earlier “although long known and practised.” She published the first book devoted exclusively to crochet, My Crochet Sampler, in the following year (the 1844 printing is available online). It specifies the earlier form as “a species of knitting originally practised by the peasants in Scotland, with a small hooked needle called a shepherd’s hook.”

In the same work, Lambert defines “plain single crochet” and “plain double crochet.” These correspond to the present single (or slip stitch) crochet and double crochet (UK) with one key difference. The initial forms were worked into the front leg of the chain loop at the top of the corresponding stitch in the preceding row — a technical detail designated as “plain” (now abbreviated FLO; front loop only) — rather than under the entire loop (“both loops”), as is the current standard.

Lambert published a revised second edition of the Sampler in 1848, again emphasizing that:

“Heretofore, Crochet had been practised in its most primitive shape—as a species of knitting; the stitch now recognised as Crochet, being but little known. From that period—now ten years since—Crochet has gradually progressed.”

The reference to “the stitch now recognised as Crochet” and the dropped mention of the Scottish tradition are significant. Lambert and her contemporaries emphasize that a crochet stitch presented without further specification is to be taken as a “plain double crochet.” The 1848 Sampler labels this a “plain stitch crochet” and does not include the definition of plain single crochet that appeared in 1843.

Lambert describes several additional stitches, some of which are relevant to the present discussion. Here is double crochet worked into the back leg of the loop. (Although the concordance between the legs when designated as back/front or top/bottom is not always clear, in this case the description of the stitch provides the requisite context.)

“Raised, or ribbed crochet,—sometimes called elastic crochet—is worked in the same manner as plain stitch crochet, with this exception—the under loops of the stitches of the previous row are always to be taken. It is worked in rows backwards and forwards.”

Double crochet can also be worked under the two legs of the loop rather than into it.

“Double stitch crochet—is worked in the same manner as plain stitch crochet, with the exception that both loops (the upper and under) of the stitch of the preceding row are taken. It is only employed where extra thickness is required,—as for the soles of shoes.”

This extends her 1842 description (noted in Part 1) and drops the earlier constraint that “it is not suitable for working patterns,” taking a step toward eliminating the constraint on inserting the hook under both legs of the loop. There is also a significant structural difference between stitches worked into the loop and those worked under the loop but not into it. The former has a stronger affiliation with knitting that does the latter, providing greater justification for categorizing shepherd’s knitting as a species of knitting than there is for any form of crochet worked under the entire loop.

The visual effect of the changed technique, as that of turning the work at the end of each row rather than the waning practice of cutting the yarn, was to equalize the appearance of the two sides of flat crocheted fabric. Beginning each row from the same edge otherwise preserves the difference in appearance between the front and back, which is particularly marked with slip stitch crochet. That contrast is prominent even when it is worked in the round, as seen in extant shepherd’s knitting where both sides are juxtaposed on the public face of the fabric.

Two ways of changing their orientation were presented in the preceding installment. One is found in an instruction by Lambert for a slip-stitched bootee: “When finished it is turned inside out.” The other is a less obvious technique described by Jane Gaugain in 1842.

“It is not necessary to work an edge stitch [i.e., turning chain] on a round, but only where the work requires to be turned to the wrong side, in order to work round the other way.”

Slip stitch crochet itself successively disappeared as a method for producing fabric, as signaled by the difference in the 1843 and 1848 editions of My Crochet Sampler. It reemerged in the encyclopedic reviews of 19th-century fancywork published later in the century and the beginning of the following one (illustrated in a previous post on Bosnian crochet). Some recent pedagogical material fully reinstates it, illustrating the common legacy stitches and variants that only appear sporadically in the earlier repertoire. Nonetheless, there was a relatively long period when crocheters would likely have had difficulty recognizing shepherd’s knitting (by any name).

That interval spanned the late 1940s and mid-1950s, when the broader research community was first becoming aware of the distinction between the crafts of nalbinding and knitting. The joint applicability of these techniques for producing the structure alternately termed cross-knit looping and twisted-stitch knitting has been discussed in a number of previous posts.

The back side of FLO slip stitch crochet also has a superficial resemblance to that structure. Although someone familiar with the craft would immediately recognize the difference, that erudition was not shared by all of the participants in the initial discussion of the candidate production methods. As a result, some exemplars of shepherd’s knitting were identified as nalbinding, with the conflation of the two crafts in earlier research reports echoed in more recent studies.

On the other hand, the basic slip-stitch structure that characterizes shepherd’s knitting can also be made with an eyed needle pulling a single strand of yarn. Pending the identification of decisive secondary detail equivalent to that used to differentiate nalbinding from true knitting with regard to the cross-knit structure, it is safest to stipulate that there can be reasonable contention about the craft identity of a given slip-stitched object.

However, if the object under examination includes shaped details such as the toe or heel of a sock, the practicability of the respective techniques can also be factored into the evaluation. I’ll be discussing a few such equivocal descriptions of potential historical significance in separate posts. These put nalbinding in contexts where it is otherwise unknown and date the crochet-type slip-stitch structure far earlier than can be corroborated by any other evidence.

Looped Fabric

Looped tubes from Ancient Siberia

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Sergei Rudenko published a book in 1953, titled Culture of the Altai People in Scythian Times. It includes photographs of the structural detail of two pieces of “woolen lace fabric.”

scythian-structure

They were taken from two tubular “braid covers” (shown fully below) with the one detailed on the left being an inner lining to the one on the right. The composite object was used as a sheath for the braided hair that had been removed from the skull of a woman in preparation for her interment in the grave where they were found.

scythian-hair

An English translation by Michael W. Thompson, Frozen Tombs of Siberia, was published in 1970. This includes Rudenko’s revisions to the initial text and notes a subsequent radiocarbon dating of the tombs, setting their average age to 430 BCE. Thompson calls the tubular objects the “inner cover of pigtail” and “outer cover of pigtail,” and their structure “lace weave.” It is not clear why he regards this fabric as woven, which it clearly is not.

In her review of the history of nålbinding from 2012, Nalbinden – Was ist denn das?, Ulrike Claßen-Büttner notes that Thompson’s ascription was incorrect and says that the structure of the fabric “was presumably [vermutlich] twisted looping.” The English translation published three years later strengthens this to “obviously made by twisted looping.” The reasons for the increased surety aren’t explained but the photographs certainly do appear to be of loop-and-twist fabric, which is among the earliest archaeologically recovered forms of looping and has been found at a Neolithic site in Denmark.

This appraisal was not shared by Lyudmila L. Barkova in her article titled A technological characterization of woolen textiles from the Great Altai kurgans, in the 2013 volume (nr. 39) of the Archaeological Digest published by the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. (There is an English summary at the end of the article and a clickable list of its references here.) It includes full photographs of both objects.

scythian-tubes

The text describes the structure and method of its production as crochet in the modern sense, but if for no reason other than a single structural detail visible in both her and Rudenko’s photographs, this is not possible. The joins at the corners of several squares in the openwork portion of the fabric are strained, revealing a single strand of two-ply wool (the material noted in the description) stretched across the gap. In crochet, the basic element of such work is a row of chains into which the vertical stitches are worked. It is not possible to pull this in any manner that would expose a single stand of yarn bridging adjacent squares.

The openwork outer sheath was on display at the British Museum from September 2017 to January 2018 in the exhibition Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia, produced together with the State Hermitage Museum. The text accompanying the object said it was made at some time during late-4th and early-3rd centuries BCE and called it a “crocheted wool hair-case,” further explaining that “…other finds suggest that crocheted hair-cases were common among Scythian women in this region.”

The exhibition catalog describes the object in greater detail, but calls it a “woman’s knitted hair-case” and additionally referred to “crocheted netting” in one of the comparable other finds. The Russian word vyazaniye (вязание) designates all three crafts, with an additional qualifier used to distinguish among them. Barkova’s text, which is cited in the catalog, unequivocally describes the use of a crochet hook to make crochet stitches.

The structure of the object resembles crochet closely enough for it to be seen as such under the viewing conditions in the exhibition. While in front of the display case, I overheard other visitors comment with surprise about crochet having been practiced so long ago. This is unfortunate, given the opportunity to offset — rather than propagate — a misconception that has been sustained by many other examples of loop-and-twist (as well as simple looped) fabric in museum collections being misidentified as crochet. (This piece shares the additional distinction of having been identified elsewhere as sprang, a plaiting technique often enough applied to hairnets — but not to this one, as seen in the same structural details that preclude its having been crocheted.)

The decisive attribute noted above is readily apparent in the catalog photograph.

scythian-hair-tube

The details of close-worked loop-and-twist are seen here:

close-spanish-stitch

and square mesh here:

triple-spanish-stitch

The individual stitches in the Scythian piece appear to have one or two fewer twists but the basic structure is identical. The tool used for its production would almost certainly have been an eyed needle, and such work remains a basic element of needlecraft (with the illustrations here taken from a text on needle lace from 1870). Considering both their structural detail and current trends in the ascription of historical craft identity, the braid sheaths would reasonably be categorized as nalbinding. In the doing, however, a spotlight is cast on the need for a nuanced terminology that distinguishes clearly between the various simple and compound looped structures that nalbinding subsumes.

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.

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All binding is not nalbinding

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I’ve gotten myself fairly well bogged down (blogged down?) in Scandinavian etymology while examining the origin of the term nalbinding (starting here). This is also a recurring topic in the current craft literature. However, one of the conclusions sometimes reached there is incorrect. The appearance of the word ‘binding’ (or one of the many variant or inflected forms of its parent verb) in a Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish document without contextual information beyond a general association with yarncraft, cannot automatically be taken as a reference to nalbinding. The tool-based compound form nålebinding (needlebinding) has that connotation by definition, but a garment-specific one such as strømpebinding (stocking binding) does not, nor does the word binding on its own.

A Swedish travel chronicle from 1730 (presented in an earlier post) makes a clear dichotomy between knitting and binding. The first is the craft still known by that name and the second is now commonly termed nalbinding. The same post notes a dialect dictionary from 1766 that more ambiguously defines ‘to bind stockings’ (binna strumpor) as ‘to knit stockings’ (sticka strumpor). Since the purpose of that dictionary was to present regional usage to a distant readership, it is possible that a less widely known craft was defined in terms of a more familiar one without signifying the lack of a substantive difference between them.

In 1773, Anders Gustaf Barchaeus wrote a report about agricultural activity in the Swedish province of Halland from an economic perspective. One of the endeavors he discusses is “strumpe-bindning,” both for household use and for sale in nearby cities. He describes knitting needles as the tools of that trade, so there is no doubt that it was knitting rather than nalbinding, and uses the terms knitting (stickning) and binding (bindning) with equal frequency as interchangeable designations for it. This is illustrated in a section from his text on stocking production in and around the city of Laholm. (I use the term knitting consistently in the translation and indicate Barchaeus’s own choice in square brackets.)

“Wool stockings are knit [stickas] prolifically in this city; mostly women’s stockings with decorative gussets. This occupies everyone who has nothing else to do. Men’s stockings are knit [bindas] primarily in six parishes in the surrounding countryside…in others to a lesser extent. It is worth noting how intensively they knit [binda] both while underway and indoors, even where they have come as guests. One stocking is knit [bindes] per day by children aged 6 or 7 as well as elderly women. What counts against them is that they are not worked firmly and strong. The knitting needles [strumpstickorna] are heavy and the knitting [stickningen] in the stocking is as loose and open as a sack. This is believed to be a result of their being knit [sticka] mostly for sale to residents of the cities, who give them wool and soap for fulling, and pay 8 to 10 öre per pair.”

The chronicle then indicates the extent of this industry by naming a single urban client who provided wool for 10,000 pairs of such stockings annually, which he then sold to the Admiralty for twice what he paid for them.

The same synonymous relationship between knitting and binding is still recorded in larger Scandinavian dictionaries, albeit with the latter term generally presented as an obsolete or dialectal designation. A book on home and industrial knitting in Denmark was published in 1947 by H. P. Hansen with the title Spind och Bind — literally “Spin and Bind.” He also alternates between the terms binding and knitting, although it is not clear if he regards them as equivalent in all senses. However, he does use binding preferentially in several contexts, including the manufacture of stockings.

The first explicit use of the term nålebinding was in a Danish publication from 1945. Its author, Margrethe Hald, is certain to have been familiar with the strømpebinding described by H. P. Hansen but apparently saw no particular risk of confusion between the separate crafts of ‘needlebinding’ and ‘stocking binding.’ In contrast, Swedish researchers immediately after Hald appear to have dealt with the potential ambiguity by avoiding the term ‘binding’ altogether. They label needlebound fabric by association with mittens, which were commonly produced in that manner, preferentially using the term ‘mitten stitch’ (vantsöm) for what was nonetheless ultimately termed nalbinding.

Looped Fabric

Knitting and stitching in 1730

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Olof Johan Broman’s text from 1730 divides yarnwork into two categories: knitting and stitching. The first of them is the well-known form of looping that is still designated as knitting. It can be traced back before Broman’s day in both fashionable and utilitarian contexts, and in urban and rural traditions. His stitching is an older looping technique that he also calls binding, frequently referred to as nalbinding in current English discourse.

One problem with this knitting/binding dichotomy is that the definitive tool for the latter, the eyed needle, can produce a basic structure (cross-knit looping) that is identical to twisted-stitch knitting as produced on the equally iconic tool of hand knitting, the long eyeless needle. Indeed, the understanding of the early history of knitting was once occluded by a failure to recognize the secondary details that distinguish the one production method from the other.

Although that difference cannot always be described in terms either of the employed tool or resulting fabric structure, the production methods themselves can be categorized unequivocally by the way they work a strand of yarn. With an eyed needle, the tool is at the leading end of the yarn, the other end of which is anchored to the burgeoning fabric. The entire length of yarn is pulled through each successive stitch, limiting how long that yarn can be.

In knitting, the tools are placed between the yarn supply and the fabric, and move a small length of yarn from the one to the other with every stitch. A new stitch is formed next to the preceding one without pulling more yarn through the existing fabric than is needed to form the new stitch. This places no intrinsic limit on the length of the unworked yarn. Yarn used for stitching is measured by the needle full, and for knitting by the ball full.

This applies neatly to nalbinding and ordinary knitting. However, the knitting made on a small hook defined in the 1790s Swedish dictionary discussed previously is a further distinct type of looping. It is not clear that it was practiced in Sweden by 1730 but it begins to appear in the European craft literature after the middle of the century. The oldest extant object made in that manner noted so far has been dated to around 1780.

In retrospective analysis, this technique is referred to as slip stitch crochet but all descriptions of it in documents prior to the 19th century call it knitting. This is an entirely reasonable categorization if the decisive criterion is the interposition of the tool between the work and an effectively unlimited source of yarn. It is unknown if such hooked looping only coincidentally fits into Broman’s framework or if he was deliberately accommodating it. If the latter, it indicates a date by which the technique had set root in Sweden (or at least in the province of Helsingland).

At some similarly indeterminate point, slip stitch crochet began to share the same name (påta) with nalbinding despite a rich alternative vocabulary. Both techniques were applied within the same community to the same kinds of garments (caps, socks, mittens, etc.), suggesting that the functional commonality weighed at least as heavily into the naming process as did the differences between fabric structures or production techniques.

Similar relationships between needle-based and hook-based looping are seen in a number of additional contexts at widespread locations. One example is the mochila bags made in simple looping by the Arhuaca people in Columbia, and crocheted by the neighboring Wayuu. Another is in Papua New Guinea, where bilums are made under the same roof both by crochet and hourglass looping (“double interconnected looping” in contrast to the single interconnected looping of nalbinding, but produced with the same basic technique).

A quick look at Norwegian terminology may be an appropriate way to wrap up this discussion of classification and nomenclature. It’s the source language for the word nålbinding where this whole excursion began, and one of the designations it includes for slip stitch crochet is krokbinding. This translates literally to ‘hook binding’ and is a reasonable counterpart to ‘needle binding.’ It also illustrates the term ‘binding’ used not just to categorize knitting and nalbinding, as seen in the previous few posts, but also to include at least one form of crochet.

The most widespread designation for slip stitch crochet in Norway is now pjoning. That term has been borrowed into descriptions of that craft in other languages, in the apparent belief that it unambiguously labels a technique and fabric structure that is separate and distinct from knitting or binding. However, the word pjoning is the gerund of the Old Norse prjóna, which is normally translated into English as the verb “knit.” There is obvious latitude for discussion about the nature of the craft it designated in communities where what we call Old Norse was an everyday language. However, prjóna remains in the modern Icelandic vocabulary, where it designates knitting in the current sense of the term.

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More historical terminology

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In the third volume of his Glysisvallur — a massive description of all aspects of the Swedish province of Hälsingland written circa 1730 — Olof Johan Broman includes the following description of yarncraft under the heading of sheep husbandry.

“Caps, mittens, stockings, and sweaters are knit [stickes] from both single and plied wool yarn. These are also stitched [sömes], especially the first named garments, but never sweaters. The difference between knit and stitched stockings, mittens, etc., is known. The latter practice is also called ‘to bind’ [binda] and the product, for example, bound [bundna] stockings, etc.”

The phrase ‘to bind stockings’ (binna strumpor) has its own entry in a Swedish Dialect Dictionary from 1766. This defines its use in the province of West Götaland as “to knit stockings” (sticka strumpor). Nothing else in that dictionary clarifies if knitting is distinct from binding, a synonym for it, or a generic term that subsumes both. These various senses are attested in other documents, where knitting and binding are used both to name specific crafts and as broader designations for other forms of looping.

The term knitting is used in that overarching sense in the definition of a name for slip-stitch crochet in the same West Bothnian dialect dictionary from which the definition of sömma presented at the outset of this excursion into Swedish lexicography was taken.

påta — v. (pōtă) … 2. to knit [sticka] caps, mittens, etc., with a small hook [krok].

This craft is commonly referred to as “shepherd’s knitting” in English texts. Written and illustrated descriptions of it began to appear in several European countries in the second half of the 18th century. All share one important attribute — they treat it as a form of knitting, or even binding. Prior to the 19th century, wherever the word crochet appears in a craft-related document, it designates the tool.

The word påta remains an accepted Swedish designation for traditional slip stitch crochet made with a flat hook. In the preceding post, we also saw it used to designate stitching with an eyed needle to make mittens. It appears in an intervening fictional narrative from 1907 consistent in all regards with the preceding dictionary definition.

She graciously took out a half-knitted [halfstickad] mitten. to which the white wool yarn was still attached. It was påtad as the women in Norrland used to do, who with a small bone hook [benkrok] put together [påtade ihop] splendid strong mittens.

The hook and the needle techniques also share contemporaneous dictionary definitions that categorize both as forms of knitting, and the 1790s dictionary says both were used to produce the same kinds of functional garments. A redundant array of names for techniques and crafts can be teased out of all this — binding, hooking, knitting, looping, needling, stitching, etc. They are all applied to the production of a more clearly defined number of warm utilitarian garments — caps, mittens, socks, and stockings.

Of these craft designations, knitting appears to be the one used in the broadest generic sense. However, the early sources differ on the other techniques they place in that category. All obviously agree that it includes knitting as a discrete craft, and slip-stitch crochet generally appears there as well.

The 1730s narrative unequivocally regards knitting and stitching as separate categories. Given the native Swedish terms for the implements fundamental to each — sticka and nål — the term ‘needling’ contrasts most clearly to knitting. In fact, nålning is used preferentially in Swedish scholarly texts through the 1960s, despite Margrethe Hald having introduced the term nålebinding into the vocabulary of Scandinavian textile research in 1945.

In 1963, Anne Marie Franzén published an article about a nalbound medieval sock, with the Swedish title En medeltida socka i nålning. The report on nalbound mittens Maria Collin published in 1917 noted that traditional practitioners called them nålade. Franzén cites Hald’s earlier work but does not mention nålbindning.

A Norwegian article headed Nålbinding, by Marta Hoffman in a volume of a pan-Scandinavian encyclopedia published in 1967, lists the corresponding Danish term as nålebinding and the Swedish as nålning or vantsöm — again without mention of nålbindning. Anna-Maja Nylén did adopt that term in her book from 1968 (perhaps having consulted the other sources noted above) but landed somewhere in the middle with ‘needle looping’ in its English translation in 1976.

I’ve taken the derivation of the various Swedish designations for nalbinding about as far as I can. One of these terms — virka — appeared in a previous post about looped purses (linked to above), and will be revisited in the contexts of chain-stitch embroidery and crochet. In the meanwhile, I’m going to consider the 1730s distinction between knitting and needling from a technical perspective and set etymology aside.

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Nalbound mittens in 1917

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The 1917 volume of the Swedish periodical Fataburen includes an article by Maria Collin titled Sydda vantar. This literally means ‘stitched mittens’ and is an inversion of the term vantsöm (mitten stitch) seen in preceding posts. She discusses alternate designations at length, including a dialectal reference to a mitten that was “bound with a needle or needlebound” (bunnen med nål eller nålbönnen).

The article was a watershed both for research into regional forms of nalbinding and the practical description of the underlying technique. Mittens provide the point of entry into the discussion but it extends to other items that were traditionally nalbound. Collin’s approach to relaying information provided by tradition-bearing practitioners and then turning it into illustrated instructions, has been applied by almost all subsequent writers on the subject in Sweden.

Collin begins by reporting the first time she saw nalbound mittens, shown to her in Värmland as an example of a characteristic old craft of that province. (She was born in 1864 but does not say when the encounter took place.) She asked how the mittens were made and was told:

“They are called needled [nålade] mittens and it is old women who make them. They sew them on their thumbs but do not want to teach the art.”

Collin got no further in obtaining the desired information until a regional handicraft exhibition in Uppsala, in December 1915. Many exhibitors displayed what the catalog listed as stitched mittens (sömvantar or sömmade vantar), and she was taught how to make them. Despite the way the mittens were named in the catalog, she said that the makers spoke about them as påtade (a term that lacks a direct English equivalent, explained below). That word also appears in the introduction to the catalog with the parenthetical clarification that the designated technique is also called stitching, in precisely the same sense as in the title of Collin’s article.

The word påta (which may be a cognate of the English ‘putter’) has otherwise been broadly applied to various crafts over time. In the context of mitten making in 1915 it would normally be taken to designate slip stitch crochet made on a flat hook. (It retains that meaning but is also frequently applied to making i-cord on a small knitting dolly.) In fact, the catalog lists a number of påtade mittens, raising an interesting question about whether they were sömmade and the name was simply not normalized, or if some were slip stitch crocheted on a flat hook notwithstanding the introductory remark.

In the next post, I’ll provide more information about the overlap in the use of påta to name the structurally and technically different crafts of nalbinding and slip stitch crochet.

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Nalbinding: stitch structures

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Margrethe Hald’s definition of nålebinding presented in the preceding post was intended to describe older textiles of Scandinavian origin. It covers a number of stitches that are named for the location where the earliest exemplar was found, or for a person with whom the stitch is strongly associated, all with predominantly Nordic representation.

Nålebinding is quite an apt term for a craft that is so strongly associated with the Nordic countries. There has, however, been some debate about it being equally appropriate as a generic designation for forms of looping with structural characteristics that don’t conform to Hald’s definition, or appear in a diverse array of craft traditions that have no particular tie to Scandinavia.

These structures include simple looping (aka buttonhole), loop-and-twist and cross-knit looping, which are frequently regarded as part of the nalbinding repertoire without being in any way specific to it. They can, and often are, made by other means other than leading the end of the working material through the burgeoning fabric with an eyed needle.

Regardless of how they are produced, these forms of looping differ from Hald’s nålebinding in a fundamental structural regard. By her definition, a stitch made by nålebinding is worked both into one or more loops in the corresponding stitch in the preceding row, and laterally into adjacent loops in the same row. With the other forms, the connection is with the preceding row only. (This is precisely the same structural detail that distinguishes crochet from knitting.)

Cross-knit looping, in particular, has a number of properties that differ from doubly interconnected nålebinding. For example, one of the salient characteristics of the latter is that its stitches don’t unravel when the fabric is cut, or the end of the yarn is pulled backward though and unsecured stitch. However, cross-knit looping unravels just as knitting does. Cross-knit looping can also be produced in different ways, of which nålebinding is one, and knitting either with needles or on a peg loom are others. The applied technique cannot be determined by examining the basic structure of a piece of fabric and can, at best, be ascertained by the presence of secondary characteristics that are specific to a single candidate technique.

There is no reason for practitioners to regard this as problematic. The tutorial literature distinguishes between simple and compound stitches, and generally categorizes them as Hansen does, by the path the working material takes laterally through the loops and the type of interconnection with the preceding row. Comparative research, on the other hand, often requires the description of fabric structures separately from the crafts in which they appear. If for no other reason, this is to avoid the conflation of structurally similar crafts that arose independently at widely separated times and places.

This is why so many generic designations for this form of looping have been put forward in scholarly contexts: looped needle-netting, knotless netting, one-needle knitting, etc. However, there has never been any general agreement about a single preferred term. My own initial preference was the straightforward translation ‘needlebinding’ and I’ve never quite understood why it failed to gain traction. I abandoned it after a discussion with someone with expert understanding of closely related crafts who clearly had no idea what I was talking about until I starting calling it nalbinding, at which point comprehension was instant.

Irene Emery, whose book The Primary Structures of Fabrics has been regularly cited in this blog, adopted Hald’s definition for her own preferred generic term ‘interconnected looping’ (with ‘single interconnected looping’ being the closest specific match to Hald’s ‘looped needle-netting’) and then strongly criticizes one pre-existing suggestion.

“…the expression knotless netting is hard to justify because knotless netting is used as a general term for a somewhat indefinite group of structures of undefined characteristics and only remotely related to the general concept of netting.”

And then another:

“Needleknitting is one of the terms ‘coined’ to express the idea of a fabric that is not really knitting although it looks like it. The term has been widely used in English publications on Peru in spite of many objections to it… Needleknitting is a term which non-specialists find particularly misleading and confusing. It is used to designate the cross-knit structure in whatever form it occurs in Peruvian fabrics.”

Emery does not use the term nålebinding in any of its alternative spellings but parenthetically notes that looped needle-netting is called vantsöm (lit. ‘mitten stitch’) in Swedish. It is the only time she uses a foreign term to designate a looped structure. It is included in Hald’s definition, to which Emery closely adheres, but reclassified and rephrased to fit into her broader framework. This suggests that she regarded its Scandinavian aspect to be worth retaining.

The term was carried forward by Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger in her book Textiles: a Classification of Techniques, which is a frequently cited complement or alternative to Emery, especially where a purely structural perspective is insufficient. The 1994 edition includes the following category.

“Pierced interconnected looping:  As in simple pierced looping the thread is also drawn through the loop of the preceding row in the interconnected version. The more distant the loops which are interconnected, the more complex the structure becomes. These methods are known collectively as ‘Vantsöm.’”

Seiler-Baldinger then lists terms used for this by other authors, including nålebinding. Given how firmly established that term had become in the craft literature by 1994, Selier-Baldinger placing it subordinately to vantsöm seems noteworthy, although she may simply have been maintaining consistency with Emery and Hald. In any case, vantsöm figures prominently in early–20th-century Swedish writing and remains a key theme in recent descriptions of the craft’s history.

Looped Fabric

Nalbinding: derivation and description

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Analytic studies of older textiles began to recognize the difference between knitting and other forms of looping that it resembled toward the end of the 19th century, using a number of different terms to mark the distinction. The descriptive terminology became a focus of study in itself. Egon H. Hansen reviewed one facet of this in a paper read at the NESAT III symposium in York, in 1987. It is titled Nålebinding: Definition and Description and presents his system of structural notation, which is now in widespread use.

Hansen repeatedly uses the name of the technique in his native Danish, nålebinding, noting that the prior literature includes numerous other designations for it. He credits his compatriot Margrethe Hald with the “only absolutely firm definition” of its structure, but prefaces his remarks on English nomenclature with the disclaimer:

“Unfortunately my knowledge of English is not extensive enough for me to judge whether the expression ‘looped needle-netting’ used by Hald fully covers the definition above…”

Hald was the reigning Nordic scholar on the topic (and devised a classification system for nålebinding that is still applied) but Hansen proposed nonetheless that the craft be given a Scandinavian name in English discourse.

“I suggest therefore that in future research in this kind of textile we use the modern expression nålebinding, bearing in mind that Märta Brodén, who was the first to use this word, was also the first to make this almost forgotten technique known among needlework people today.”

That suggestion had the intended effect but is in error on a few important points of fact (nor was Hansen the first to make it). The most glaring in the present discussion is a failure to acknowledge Hald’s prior use of the word naalebinding. (In the Danish orthography of the time, “å” and “aa” were equivalent.) She included it in a Swedish article about a mitten published in 1945 and again the following year in the Danish journal Acta Archaeologica, in an English language article comparing early Egyptian and Scandinavian textile techniques.

“…there is a rather special sewing technique which in Scandinavia is usually spoken of under the name of ‘Naalebinding.’”

Hald uses the term yet again in her book Olddanske Tekstiler from 1950 (presented as a doctoral dissertation the year before), not just in the running text but also to head two sections. This includes a detailed English summary, in which the term appears in the form cited by Hansen.

“‘Looped needle-netting,’ (in Sweden called vantsöm). In this variant the new stitch not only loops around the corresponding stitch in the preceding row, but also back through the neighboring stitch of its own row, or sometimes through several of the last-sewn stitches of this row.”

It is not clear why Hald brought the Swedish language into the discussion, especially in light of her use of naalebinding in the English article from 1946, but vantsöm (lit. mitten stitch) was a common designation at the time. It remained a preferred term for a number of researchers through the 1960s and she may have been recognizing its status. Nonetheless, a Swedish study from 1934 included in Hald’s 1950 bibliography, lists alternate designations for vantsöm, including nålbundna vantar — needlebound mittens. Another Swedish text in her bibliography, from 1917 (discussed in detail in a separate post), makes a similar dialectal reference to a mitten that was “bunnen med nål eller nålbönnen” — bound with a needle or needlebound.

An expanded English translation of Hald’s book appeared in 1980 as Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials. The introductory definition includes the Danish term exactly as it appeared in the earlier edition.

“…a special sewing technique known as ‘looped needle-netting’, naalebinding…”

The captions to the photographs in the English edition are bilingual, using nålebinding throughout. (The preferred Danish orthography changed from aa to å between the two publication dates.)

Märta Brodén was Swedish and published her book titled Nålbindning in 1973. A Danish translation appeared three years later with the title Nålbinding. Neither of these is the word Hansen ascribed to her. It is difficult to understand why he didn’t directly credit Hald’s far earlier use of precisely the term he recommended unless he was unaware of her initial Danish publications (which would be peculiar enough).

Hansen’s paper further cites the work of the Norwegian, Odd Nordland, whose Primitive Scandinavian Textiles in Knotless Netting from 1961 also discusses Hald’s terminology (and presents yet another classification system).

“…a technique which Margrethe Hald calls by its Danish term ‘nålebinding’ ‘needle-binding’…”

Additionally, Brodén was not the first to use the explicit Swedish word nålbindning (disregarding the inflected forms already noted). A review (in Swedish) of Nordland’s book, published in 1963 by Inga Wintzell begins:

“Nålning [lit. ‘needling’] or nålbindning is a textile technique that has been of great interest both from the perspective of textile research and more generally oriented research into cultural history.”

Wintzell then criticizes Nordland for translating (her preferred term) nålning as “knotless netting.” She also states that the English term introduced by Margrethe Hald — “needle binding” — would have been less prone to misunderstanding as it clearly designates both the tool and the technique, whereas knotless netting designates neither. However, Wintzell does not indicate the context in which Hald used the term needle binding. Its appearance in the snippet of Nordland’s text quoted above would otherwise seem to be his own translation of Hald’s Danish term, but he and Wintzell may both have been referring to a source that I haven’t located.

It is also worth noting that the term knotless netting first appeared in late-19th-century German texts to designate a fabric structure seen in archaeologically recovered Egyptian head coverings before the associated craft was recognized as sprang. This is a major topic in Hald’s article from 1946.

The standard reference work on Swedish handicraft, Hemslöjd, was published in 1968 by Anna-Maja Nylén. It includes a section headed Nålbindning, which says the term was one of several regional names traditionally given to the craft. The 1976 English translation of her book, Swedish Handcraft, calls it ‘needle looping’ and places nålbindning on a list of “different local terms.”

Regardless of how it is spelled in the Scandivanian languages — nålbindning in Swedish, nålebinding or nålbinding in Danish and Norwegian — the anglicized form that transforms ‘nål’ to ‘nal’ has become firmly entrenched. In fact, ‘nalbinding’ was on the path toward common use by the time of Hansen’s presentation.

An unpublished doctoral dissertation from 1981 by Helen M. Bennett titled The Origins and Development of the Scottish Hand-Knitting Industry includes a review of the history and development of the earlier technique. It is a typescript produced on a typewriter that did not have an å. The rings were drawn in above the base letter by hand at many points where they were needed but several were overlooked. These include the pivotal list of Scandinavian designations, which thus became:

“…nalbinding (Norwegian), nalebinding (Danish), nalning or vantsöm (Swedish).”

Bennett then comments on the array of generic English designations that had previously been put forward and concludes:

“None of these names has proved entirely satisfactory and, in the absence of international agreement, the use of the established Nordic term — of which I shall use the Norwegian form — seems preferable.”

She applies the correct native orthography in the very next sentence:

“The history of nålbinding has been particularly well documented in Scandinavia…”

Richard Rutt acknowledged and adopted Bennett’s approach in his A History of Hand Knitting, published in 1987 (the same year as Hansen’s presentation). However, he either failed to note the typographic inconsistency or found the unintentionally simplified form to be convenient. His own discussion of “nalbinding” installed what began as a proofreader’s oversight, into the core literature of the history of knitting. It has, however, yet to be universally accepted in scholarly publication about the eponymous craft, where the alternatives noted above and others still appear.

In colloquial usage within the reenactment and craft communities the term nalbinding has led to the coinage “nal” as a designation for what is believed to be a characteristic form of needle used in historical practice. This is despite much extant nalbound fabric having far finer-gauged stitches than can possibly be produced with the imagined archetypal nal. (If nothing else, this gainsays the notion of a single type of needle having a characteristic association with the craft.)

Where the native orthography is the starting point, the first component of the form used by Hald — nålebinding — is often shifted to “nale” and then “nail.” The latter part of the compound designation has similarly spawned the participle “binded” as a replacement for “bound” despite a complete lack of grammatical warrant or need. This has led to a by no means uncommon discussion of “nail binded” objects, which is not reasonably a borrowed representation of the original term. Both binding and binded are also frequently pronounced with a short i, as in “tint,” further distancing the word from recognizability.

Given the total absence of lexicographic rigor in the genesis of the anglicized nalbinding and its widespread corruption, it can reasonably be suggested that “needlebinding,” “needle-binding, ” or the fully assimilated “needle binding” (cf. needle knitting, needle lace, loom knitting, etc.) might have been preferable alternatives. In a publication venue with a strong Scandinavian language identity it might even be justified to retain the native nålebinding (or nålbinding or nålbindning) as an italicized term in text otherwise presented in English.