More About The History Of Knitting

The history of knitting is intimately intertwined with the history of weaving. Weaving was remarkably sophisticated even in Neolithic times. As early as 3000 BC the Egyptians were picking up loops of warp or weft (crosswise) thread on sticks as they wove, making decorative raised-loop designs on fabrics. Bedspreads are often made this way even now. This shows that the basis for knitting â€“ a row of loops on a stick â€“ was familiar technique in ancient Egypt. The next step of picking up a loop through each loop on the stick might not occur for 4000 years, but the first step was established.

Egyptian nailbinded socks have moderate-looking stitch gauges, such as you might obtain using a slim kitting needle. It seems likely that a thin rod (rather than the thumb) was used as a gauge when forming stitches. Early connections between nalbinding and weaving might have made differences between "woven" and "knitted" less significant in ancien times than the way we view them today.

There is evidence of knitting worked on rods (modern knitting) in the Islamic period in Egypt, which began c. AD 639. One fabric fragment (now lost) from the collection of textile expert Fritz Ikle (d. 1946) was dated 7th-9th century AD, though the stitches were twisted. Egyptian fragments and stockings, done with untwisted stitches and characteristic knitted (rather than nalbinded) shaping, exist from c. AD 1200-1500. At lest some of these examples of multicolored knitting were done in the round for clothing.

Exotic goods from the farthest reaches of Roman power and beyond, anything novel in dress or fashion, was of great interest in wealthy, luxury-loving, Imperial Rome. Egypt became a tributary to Rome in the first century AD when Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Marc Anthony had their disastrous romp. Had knitting been a significant, or even insignificant, craft while Rome was the dominant power in Egypt, it would have aroused interest in Rome simply because it was new and different. There is no evidence that it did.

Even when the Roman Empire became the Byzantine empire in AD 330 with Emperor Constantine's new capital city of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) conveniently linking the Easter and Western Roman Empire, knitting did not show up in the West until well into the Islamic period. There is no reason to believe that knitting did not originate in the Middle East and linger for a while in relative obscurity.

From Islamic North Africa it is but a short jump to southern Spain, where knitting appears next. The craft was already highly developed by the last quarter of the 13th century, from which period we find a beautiful knitted pillow in the tomb of Spanish royalty. Fernando de la Cerda, Infante of Spain, was buried circa 1275 with a silk cushion knitted in two colors, gold and brown (or faded dark red). One side has a pattern of alternating fleur-de-lys and eagles in a lattice pattern, and on the other side is an even more complex pattern.

Socks and funerary cushions are very different objects. Socks pragmatically exploit the stretch qualities of knitting to permit a wide range of motion to an oddly shaped appendage. But the Spanish funerary cushion is an unshaped bag, stuffed and stationary. The knit-like qualities of knitting are completely ignored while multicolored brocade qualities are the focus. This is a contrary use of knitting if you see it as knitting, but not very surprising if you see it only as fabric. There was no functional reason for custions to be knitted rather than woven brocade, which suggests that the knitted textile was chosen for its beauty or novelty as a textile rather than for its knit characteristics. The fine gauge of 20 stitches per inch is finer than most modern socks, but not particularly find compared to woven fabric, especially the silks, damasks, and brocades of the East; the Arabic inscription around the cushion links the craftsman with the Islamic world. A blurring of the distinction between knitting and decorative weaving would not be exceptional if knitting were originally perceived as being merely a variant of weaving, with socks being either functional offspring or even the surprised parent of a new use for loops picked up on rods.

About the Author

Chaka is a knitting enthusiast who loves to knit baby clothes. In fact, she has a great baby knitting pattern to recommend for anyone else who likes baby knit patterns.

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