Sinister Saturday WOOL fact
Did you know that in 1678 an act was passed in the British Parliament decreeing that the dead must only be buried in WOOL and not in any other sort of textile?
A guide to Justices of the Peace on how to enforce the “Burial in Woollens Act,” dated 1710.
It seems that the act was passed in order to create a compelling reason for folk to stop illegally smuggling wool out of the UK. If the wool was legally required for entombing the dead, (so the reasoning went) the same communities which assisted the illegal export of wool out of the country would be obliged to demand that it remain in Britain. The threat of imprisonment, or – in the case of poor Joan Diamond being exhumed if incorrectly buried – was enough to make civilians join forces with the authorities to keep wool in the country. As Hufton & Baird observe:
The struggle to protect the wool cloth trade from all assaults took a truly bizarre turn in 1678 when an act ordered that the dead should be buried only in woollen shrouds, that registers and affidavits guaranteeing the material of the shrouds should be kept and be open to inspection. The words of the act have a final biblical ring, saying witnesses to the affidavit had to swear that the body, ‘was not put in wrapt or wound up or buried in any shirt, shift, sheet or shroud made or mingled with flax, hempe, silke, haire, gold or silver or other than what is made of sheeps wool only’.
Ardent bibliographers have tried to argue that the purpose of this act was to save linen rags for paper-making, as paper which at that time was made mainly of linen rags was of poor quality and in short supply. This is not so, its purpose was to protect the cloth trade which was so sorely beleaguered by the activities of the wool smugglers. The act, ridiculous as it may seem, was more easily put into action than any of the legislation against armed smugglers: some affidavits and registers still exist, and there is one in the Parish Registers for Sedlescombe in 1745. Also in these registers is the chilling entry, in 1710, ‘Joan Diamond, a traveller, was buried on July 2nd, and because not buried in wool, then taken up again and reburied’.
The authorities, however, were apparently satisfied that in this respect at least they were protecting the wool trade, and combating ‘the misery of England’ by the ‘wool stolen out of the Kentish, Essex and Sussex Coasts’ and the consequent unemployment bemoaned by William Carter, and we learn from the Gazette in 1688 that widow Amy Potter, ‘has made of woollen only decent and fashionable laced dresses for the dead, as well as other plainer, for burying in woollen will be much quieted, and many hundreds of subjects employed’.
After the dizzy success of the ‘Burial in Woollen Act’, the authorities continued to address themselves to limiting the activities of the smugglers.
Geoffrey Hufton & Elaine Baird, Smuggling in Kent and Sussex, 1983
It seems that the textile trades in Scotland and Ireland were displeased with this bit of British Ruling, as prior to the ‘Burial in Woollen Act’ it had been customary in both Scotland and Ireland for the deceased to be shrouded in linen.
In 1707 – just after the act of union between England and Scotland – a pamphlet was published in Scotland declaring “a pox on their [British] fashions… we cannot get leave to bury our dead in linen but must rowl them up in plaiding and blankets like as many wat-na-whats.”
Scottish Pamphlet, published 1707
The absurd wool burying act was extended to Ireland in 1733. Jonathan Swift refers to the differences between Irish and English burial textiles in the following poem:
To live in this or t’other isle
We cannot think it worth your while
For, take it kindly or amiss,
The difference but amounts to this
We bury on our side the channel
In linen; and on yours in flannel
Jonathan Swift, On Mr Ford’s birthday, 1723
One final note: if you think these ideas about cadaverous uses of wool are a thing of the past, think again. Woollen coffins may still be purchased today which I personally think is a good thing, considering wool’s sustainable, biodegradable qualities.
However, I absolutely draw the line at creating a legal obligation for folk to choose to be buried in them, no matter how passionately I love WOOL!
Woolly roundup
It’s time for the WEEKLY, WOOLLY ROUNDUP!
Thanks again everyone for all the Wovember work you’re doing to raise the profile of WOOL FOR WHAT IT IS on your own blogs, in your knitting projects, in your felt-making and – yes – in your Christmas plans. I learned this week about Christmas Tree Skirts from Katherine Williams, who sent in these photos of a 100% WOOL Christmas Tree Skirt made for her sister and brother-in-law. I did not know of the existence of Christmas Tree Skirts until this week, and I am glad that my introduction to the idea of a giant circle of embellished fabric to go under the Christmas tree has come in the form of an example crafted in 100% wool felt.
Katherine writes “While we were dressed only partially in wool the day we finished this project, our Christmas trees will forever be clad in 100% wool, as will the little elves, dragons, and other decorations on their skirts.”
I am not organised enough to have any Christmas-related wool projects on the go, but I am aware that ’tis the season for the tupping’ and I’ve been enjoying the updates on the Juniper Moon Farm blog concerning the important business of putting the ram to the ewes. Do you agree that Solomon the RAM is awesome?
I first met a ram when I was staying with Julia Desch in 2009 and she was deciding how to partner up her sheep for the best wool results. She explained that – in order to keep a ram away from any bunch of ewes – 6 fences were necessary to separate them. In spite of her conscientious efforts to keep Boy No. 1 in one field and Boy No. 2 in another field, their urge to find females led them astray and I was greeted by two very curious mansheep who came right up to where I was staying and peered in through the window to check that no stray ewes were wandering around needing their attentions. I was very struck by the strong, ovine pong of these rams, their fearless, proud manner, and their chest-out manly-sheep walk. I do not have photos of Julia’s magnificent Wensleydale boys, but I did photograph these noble rams at Mudchute Farm a couple of years back.
Whitefaced Woodland Rams, Mudchute City Farm, London, photo by Felicity Ford
To understand the relationship between WOOL and rams a bit better, I can thoroughly recommend Barbara Parry’s amazing essay The Ram is half the Sweater, which featured in Twist Collective magazine a few years back; it’s is one of my favourite essays about the relationship between sheep and wool.
All this talk of ram behaviours reminds me of a video I should share with you all which was made by my friend Rob Hawthorn for the National Trust’s My Farm project. Billed to become “a Ewe-tube sensation” Rob’s video was shot from the vantage point of a Portland Ram being put out to the ewes. I am assured that a very experienced farmer supervised the affixing of the camera which gives us this perspective and that no sheep were harmed in the making of the video. I wasn’t sure that the video was very dignifying to the sheep when I first saw it, but on balance I think the choice of Rossini’s William Tell’s Overture Finale as a soundtrack is suitably epic, and a befitting musical tribute to the masculine prowess of the ram in question. What do you think?
In other woolly news, I think it is worth drawing attention to the fact the the longterm collaboration between Finisterre UK and Devon Fine Fibres has borne fruit in the form of a hat made in 100% British Bowmont Braf yarn which is now on sale to the general public on Finisterre’s website. Lesley’s post about the hat and her back calatogue of posts detailing the process of getting a commercial product made out of UK wool to market make for very heartening reading. I am delighted to see a hat which has been made out of 100% UK wool, by a company with declared interests in sustainability. I also like the breed-specific way that this particular woollen garment is being marketed, and the fact that the story of the hat’s production is shown on the Finisterre website with photos and texts. This kind of transparency in marketing and production is to be encouraged.
As Kate wrote in her post about her Deco knit in Corriedale, (which is a Merino cross) as is the Bowmont Braf breed. However there was news in the Wovember inbox this week regarding some 100% Merino creations by Jody Hayes, who handknits sculptures of native New Zealand birds from New Zealand Merino. Jody was inspired to write to us about her birds after she saw Caroline’s beautiful needle-felted animals in our post earlier in the week. I love the idea of describing the birds of a country in the wool of that land.
Handknitted Tui, knit in New Zealand 100% wool Merino by Jody Hayes
Handknitted Tui, knit in New Zealand 100% wool Merino by Jody Hayes
In final news, I wanted to thank commenter Liz Evans for her tip about a wonderful book she remembers from childhood entitled The Wool Pack. It can be found on any of the rare and out-of-print book stores and it’s by Cynthia Harnett. A sort of historic novel/children’s adventure story, it provides a lot of information about the wool trade in Britain in the 1400s.
Have a wonderfully woolly, Wovembery weekend! And look out for our sinister Saturday post…
A smuggling story featuring sacks, cloves and fells.
One of the themes running through these WOVEMBER posts concerns how the word ‘WOOL’ conjures certain imaginative associations. Our imaginative associations are gold dust to advertisers and brand experts, and Kate has written about – amongst other things – the specific lure of the word ‘wool’ and its evocation of ‘cosiness’ when it is addressed to parents in the marketing of such things as children’s Winter coats. However what happens to wool when we broaden our understanding of it by delving into its history, and discovering that it has some decidedly darker imaginative associations… such as its historic links with Tax-evasion, Contraband, and SMUGGLING?
Paul Hardy, “The Owlers” taken from the WikiGallery, originally created in the late 1800s
Wool is not often linked to visions of a thriving black market and a decidedly crooked constabulary. Yet wool was illegally smuggled out of England to Belgium and France in great quantities between the 1200s – 1800s, and indeed whole towns along the South East Coast of the UK are built on the profits of murky, underhand dealings in WOOL. Smugglers operating further East along the coast – in Kent – were also in on the act, and were known locally as “Owlers” – possibly because they mimicked night-bird calls to communicate with one another whilst struggling with heavy sacks of wool down to the coastline where boats lay waiting for them in harbours, concealed by the bewildering flat maze of the impenetrable Romney Marshes.
The sun setting over the Romney Marshes, photo by Felicity Ford, 2008
How did nice, cosy wool get caught up in such dodgy dealings, you may ask. Well, around the 1200s in Britain, Flemish weavers had settled in Kent and established themselves as successful tradesmen dealing in wool across the channel with their kinsmen back in Flanders. These merchants were viewed as a threat by the native English weavers who wanted to safeguard their supplies and protect their textiles from foreign competition. Subsequently, export duties on wool were escalated throughout the 1200s in an ongoing attempt to curtail the free flow of wool from the UK to Europe. In 1203, King John imposed a massive tax on wool, and in 1275 the ‘New Custom’ was enacted and export duty on wool was imposed at £3 per bag. This sum was raised even further in 1298 to £6. I don’t remember decimalisation and maths is not my forte, but even I can gather that – when wool was only worth 1s, 6d (7.5p according to this) per lb – this draconian level of taxation was imposed entirely as a political measure to protect the British weaving industry from foreign competition. Because it seemed financially ludicrous to pay over thirteen times its value in order to legally export it, wool was exported illegally in great quantities, instead. A culture of smuggling wool out of Britain thrived in towns along the South East Coast such as Rye and Hastings, and the involvement of local establishments (especially Inns) in this business is evidenced through the many secret compartments located in such buildings for the concealment and storage of contraband wool away from the prying eyes of the authorities. A secret tunnel once connected the Church to the Woolpack Inn at Warehorne; The Mermaid Inn at Rye had many secret passageways for quick getaways and wool storage; and many other such examples are described on the excellent Smuggling Map here. This illegal enterprise went on well into the nineteenth century, though the hard work of wool smuggling declined in profitability when compared with the more lucrative substances such as silk and tobacco which smuggling became later more famously associated with. By the seventeenth century, wool smuggling was only undertaken by the hardiest of characters, as it would only earn you one shilling for a night’s work, and the work was heavy, difficult, and decidedly unglamorous.
Walking around the coastline in Sussex, it’s easy to see how smugglers had an advantage. The cliffs are steep and the ways down to the sea in places are treacherous. Further along – in Romney, Kent – 100 square miles of flat, bleak, open marshland proved bewildering and unnavigable to all but familiarised and sure-footed locals with an intimate knowledge of the terrain.
Cuckmere Haven, the beach at the mouth of the river Cuckmere provided an ideal spot for smuggling contraband, photo by Felicity Ford
Romney Marshes, photo by Felicity Ford
An account is given in Smuggling in Kent & Sussex* of the quantities of wool legally exported from Sussex ports in 1287:
- Chichester – 104 sacks, 4 cloves, 7,272 fells
- Shoreham – 238 sacks, 31 cloves, 5,476 fells
- Seaford – 113 sacks, 25 cloves, 3,127 fells
(A sack is 364 lbs; a clove is 7lbs; and a fell is a whole skin.) Hufton and Baird go on to speculate that if this was the legal trade, then we must consider that the illegal quantities of wool being shipped out of the country were at least as great again. The ins and outs of different taxations throughout different centuries are complex and difficult, but I am most intrigued – in general – by this association of wool with politics, illegality, villainous behaviours, and hardy Owlers.
The history of wool smuggling is a very different world of wool to that which inhabits Sussex today; when we visited the Seven Sisters Sheep Centre in 2009, the man who owns the place told us that in that year a sheep farmer would pay a jobbing shearer £1.10 to shear his animals, and that the Wool Marketing Board would pay 80p for the resulting fleece. Thus a farmer would lose 30p per animal if he couldn’t shear his sheep himself, and there would certainly be no profit to be had in paying a local lad to get it onto a ship and across the channel to feed a wool-hungry weaving industry there. Furthermore, no British Authority could care less if he did, because there is no longer the same thriving textile industry here to jealously guard and protect that there once was.
Sussex fleeces today; photographed in the Seven Sisters Sheep Centre, photographed by Felicity Ford
The world has changed; wool’s contemporary associations are much cleaner and more wholesome than they were in the 1200s in Sussex; we talk about its sustainable qualities, and its breathe-ability, and UK woollen textile production seems to be smaller, more specialised, and certainly more ethical than it once was with the welcome introduction of the minimum wage; the illegality of child-labour; and the establishment of Animal Welfare Standards.
I am so glad we no longer live in the Middle Ages, and I do not wish in any way to valorise the activity of villains and crooks. However the previous dark associations of wool with smuggling and tax-evasion go hand-in-hand with its place in the world as a serious economic force to be reckoned with. When you read about wool smuggling, you realise you are reading about a time in history when UK wool was economically important enough to lie at the heart of policy-making and export law. It does give one pause for thought to compare the points in history when a sheep’s fleece shorn in Sussex was worth breaking the law for, and the situation today, where the same product costs the farmer more to store in a shed than it does to burn it.
A sack of Sussex fleeces, destined for the WMB at a price of 80p each, photographed by Felicity Ford
*Smuggling in Kent & Sussex, by Geoffrey Hufton & Elaine Baird, Rochester Press, 1983
Deb Robson’s take on endangered sheep breeds
We are absolutely delighted this evening to be featuring Deb Robson as our guest blogger. Deb has been extremely supportive of our WOVEMBER aims, emailing us on the very day that we published this site with warm words of encouragement in spite of having a schedule absolutely full of fibre-related and WOOL-centric classes to teach.
If you follow Deb’s blog, you will know that she has been working extremely hard over several years with Carol Ekarius to compile the definitive text book on different animal fibres and their unique properties. The Fleece and Fibre Sourcebook is an essential tome in the library of anyone with any interest in textiles derived from animal fibres and most especially, the wool produced by different sheep breeds. If you are ever lucky enough to meet Robson, you will be struck by the extent of her knowledge; her passion for preserving rare and endangered breed of sheep; her conscientious, methodical approach to working with animal fibres – especially WOOL -; and her incredibly generous community spirit. The Fleece and Fibre Sourcebook reflects all of these qualities, being thorough, carefully arranged, absolutely chock full of invaluable information about, well, Fleece and Fibres; and a true gift of knowledge to the knitting and spinning world.
All this is a long preamble to saying that we feel very honoured to have Robson AKA WORLD’S No. 1 WOOL EXPERT sharing her words on the Wovember blog. I can also highly recommend the post that she did on the Juniper Moon Farm blog for further sheepy reading.
After bouncing a couple of emails back and forth, we decided to republish Deb’s piece on rare and endangered sheep in the UK, because the continued survival of those breeds is partially contingent on WOOL being once again restored to its might and prowess as THE UR TEXTILE in this country. As long as we buy 100% Polyester coats parading under the monika “WOOL” without developing new textiles which utilise the unique properties of our regional sheep, these breeds will continue to be endangered, and we shall all face the potential loss of our agricultural and textile heritage here in the UK.
Without further ado, here is Deb Robson speaking far more eloquently than I can on the subject of rare and endangered sheep breeds in the UK.
Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s 2011 Watchlist for sheep
The Rare Breeds Survival Trust, which monitors the status of livestock breeds in the British Isles, has published its 2011 Watchlist of breeds that need attention to stay, as they say, off the slippery slope to extinction. From the whole list (a PDF), I’m focusing here on the sheep:
Categories are based on numbers of breeding females.
CRITICAL (category 1)
- Boreray
ENDANGERED (category 2)
- Leicester Longwool
- North Ronaldsay
VULNERABLE (category 3)
- Castlemilk Moorit
- Devon & Cornwall Longwool
- Hill Radnor
- Teeswater
- Whitefaced Woodland
AT RISK (category 4)
- Balwen
- Cotswold
- Lincoln Longwool
- Manx Loaghtan
- Norfolk Horn
- Oxford Down
- Portland
- Soay
- Wensleydale
- Whiteface Dartmoor
MINORITY (category 5)
- Dorset Down
- Dorset Horn
- Greyface Dartmoor
- Shropshire
A few random notes:
The Norfolk Horn is not the original breed, but has been bred back up from near-extinction (just a few sheep), using in part one of the more modern breeds that had previously been developed from a Norfolk Horn foundation, the Suffolk. Called the New Norfolk Horn for a while, the “New” part of the name has now been dropped, even though the successors may only carry part of the genetic heritage of the original breed.
The Isle of Man cares so much about its traditional Manx Loaghtan sheep that during the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 the parliament, known as the Tynwald, cancelled one of the island’s highest-earning tourist events (a massive and famous motorcycle race) in order to reduce the possibility that the sheep would be exposed to the illness.
The Dorset Down and Dorset Horn are not the same as what is often just called the Dorset (also known as the Polled Dorset, which, oddly, originated in two different locations from two different breeding efforts). (The Dorset Down is one of the six basic Down breeds. The Dorset Horn and the Polled Dorset, while they have Down-like wool, are not on that short list.)
The Southdown is not on the RBST list, but is on the similar list prepared by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC). The two organizations have different criteria for evaluating populations.
The information released with the new edition of the watchlist notes that some livestock breeds have recently become more vulnerable because of world economic conditions. People who could previously have kept a small flock have had to sell their animals.
I like the format of the new list. It also notes that, over time, the following sheep breeds have progressed from category 1 (critical) to category 5 (minority) and currently have large enough populations to have been discharged from the equivalent of the breed ICU (intensive care unit), at least for now:
- Black Welsh Mountain
- Hebridean
- Jacob
- Kerry Hill
- Lleyn
- Llanwenog
- Ryeland
- Shetland
- Southdown
- South Wales Mountain
- Wiltshire Horn (a hair sheep)
A separate section of the RBST site tracks breeds of sheep that are vulnerable because their populations are concentrated in very limited geographic areas. The categories are based on how small an area contains 75 percent of the breed’s population. Breeds at risk for this reason include:
CRITICAL (category 1)
- Exmoor Horn
- Whiteface Dartmoor
ENDANGERED (category 2)
- Rough Fell
VULNERABLE (category 3)
- Herdwick
AT RISK (category 4)
- Devon Closewool
MINORITY (category 5)
- Devon & Cornwall Longwool
You’ll note that the Whiteface Dartmoor and the Devon & Cornwall Longwool face the double whammy of limited overall numbers and high geographic concentration.
Changes among the sheep from the previous list
I need to keep and archive copies of the official lists, marked by the year (the RBST PDF for this year is clearly labeled, but I think that’s new). I do have extensive notes, and copies of web pages, and (somewhere) dog-eared copies of pages pulled from old copies of RBST and ALBC publications.
Breeds don’t tend to move quickly up or down on either the ALBC or RBST lists: conservation is a slow process. For The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, co-author Carol Ekarius (the livestock person, to my fiber side of the equation) wisely suggested that we provide a label for “conservation breeds” instead of listing specific categories for the individual breeds. That overall status isn’t going to change quickly, whereas the breeds’ specific locations within the population assessments do move over broad swaths of time.
Handfuls of individuals can make a major difference in a breed’s prospects—in either direction. Any shift in status, either up or down, is worth remarking on.
According to my notes, there were two shifts among the sheep from 2010 to 2011.
- Cotswold moved to category 4 (at risk) from category 5 (minority)
- Whitefaced Woodland moved to category 3 (vulnerable) from category 4 (at risk)
These breeds have both moved in the more vulnerable direction, toward lower populations. They are breeds with very deep histories, each located with a specific landscape.
Cotswold
Cotswold, one of the luster longwools, comes from the Cotswold Hills, on the western and southern edge of central England (how’s that for a confusing description? check the map for the area I’m talking about). The breed once was a major support of the British economy.
It is a lovely handspinning wool, excellent for knitting and crocheting and exquisite for weaving. The breed contains genetics for a range of shiny fleece colors from black through a variety of grays to glistening whites.
Whitefaced Woodland
Whitefaced Woodland, from sheep with durable constitutions that originated in the southern part of the Pennine mountain range, produces fiber that is quite variable from animal to animal, with some coarser and some relatively finer (although none gets past “medium” in feel). The wool, like their faces, is white.
I knitted the swatch with Aran-weight Whitefaced Woodland yarn from Garthenor (spun at Sue Blacker‘s mill). The pattern is #107 from Knitting Patterns Book 250 by Hitomi Shida.
P.S.
Sheepwatching notes: Even though its breed is not labeled, and I am (as noted above) a fiber rather than a livestock person, and I’m open to information that might correct my notes, if I had to say what breed is in the photo at the top of the RBST’s list I’d sure pick Oxford.
The sheep in the photo is undoubtedly one of the six core Down breeds, because of its colored face and white wool—well, and the general shape of the face. Three of the six core Down breeds are on the current Watchlist (Dorset Down, Oxford Down, Shropshire; a fourth, Southdown, is on the ALBC rare breeds list; Hampshire Down and Suffolk are not on either list). There are other breeds that have colored faces and white wool, but the Down breeds have a kind of characteristic “puffy” look (that’s a highly scientific descriptor that I just made up).
It isn’t a Dorset Down, because they have lighter colored (generally brownish) faces. (It’s not a Dorset Horn, because they have white faces and they also have distinctive horns on both rams and ewes!)
Shropshire is another possibility, and Shropshires’ faces are darker than those of Dorset Downs, but they have a somewhat differently shaped profile and growth pattern of wool on the face.
Although not all Oxfords have as much wool on their faces as the sheep in the picture, many do (and some have even more). Plus the face shape is Oxford-y, if I dare say such a thing. Oxfords are sturdy sheep, and they are exceptionally large. Size isn’t something we can gauge from that head shot, but we can get hints of posture. And that sheep looks like it’s standing in an Oxford pose: sort of upright and staunch. I vote for Oxford.
An Snag Breac
Following the Prick Your Finger post, we thought it would be interesting to feature work by artists and makers who use WOOL in their practice. It is hoped that this series exploring imaginative uses of WOOL will shed more light on what WOOL means.
Today I want to introduce you to Irish artist Caroline Walshe, – whose 100% WOOL felted tooth and 100% WOOL barbed wire featured in recent contemporary Irish art shows in Galway and Roscommon. Caroline teaches a variety of wool-related crafts, including felt-making and rug-making, and she uses WOOL to develop felt-making kits and knitting patterns. Caroline also provides interesting insights into the WOOL industry in Ireland, and about learning to spin. An Snag Breac is Irish for magpie, and Caroline began her knitting career (like most skint artists) using found yarn from charity shop bargain-bins. However as time has passed, her appreciation for more sustainably produced yarns and in particular for Irish WOOL has grown, and she has sent in this essay – What I love about Wool – for your delight this Wovember. All text and images © Caroline.
What I love about Wool
Sheepythings. Clockwise from top left: Making hay ropes for sheep at the Roscommon Lamb Festival, Shearing by hand, Co. Longford, Sheep in Achill Island, Potato and stick drop spindle at the National Museum of Country Life, Castlebar.
I could mention all sorts of amazing properties about wool that I love – its ability to hold its shape in knitting, its thermal properties, its lack of static, its elasticity and its ability to felt and magically change from being a heap of loose individual fibres into a sculptural object, a thick flat blanket, or a vessel. However there is a certain something about wool for me that goes beyond all of these individual qualities that I cannot seem to describe, but which I know when I hold it in my hands; working with wool also includes a larger sense for me of caring about material in general.
I realized the importance of material to me when in college, studying sculpture. The materials I used were and still are important to me not just within art but within all areas of my life – be that my studio practice, my craft business, making furniture for my house, knitting clothes for myself, making puppetry or making dinner.
Material means something to me beyond the way something looks and behaves; it is connected to wider meanings concerning resource management and sustainability. For example, when I look at an acrylic blanket, I know the yarn used in it came from a chemical factory, extruding polymers extracted from non-renewable fossil fuels through a highly specialized process which I could never repeat at home. I am aware it cannot be thrown on the compost and is highly unlikely to ever rot. This quality of “lasting a lot longer than we do” is often cited as a good reason to buy acrylic yarn; to me the exact opposite is true; I am not going to fool myself into thinking all my knitted projects have a timeless beauty that will last forever; bloody hell, LET IT ROT! Additionally, man-made fibres are extracted using high amounts of energy – As much as 3 times that of wool.*
In contrast, when I see a wool blanket, I know where it too has come from – and I know this in a much more personal way, through my own experiences of being a spinner and working every day with wool. The path from sheep to blanket is much more transparent, much more tangible, and less abhorrent to me. Solar energy converted into pasture-land, in turn converted into protein fibres by sheep, then cleaned, carded and spun into yarn by a factory is a process which I can understand; a process that is renewable, sustainable and bio-degradable. Furthermore, this wool blanket can be put onto my compost heap at the end of its useful life, and its protein fibres will add fertility to my garden.
Shetlands. Clockwise from top left: Shetland lamb, Fleece, Drawing, Finished yarn
Amongst natural fibres, wool is the closest to my heart. Perhaps the reason for this is partially cultural. In Ireland the word ‘wool’ is synonymous with the word ‘yarn’ meaning the substance you knit with. The dominance of sheep’s wool amongst Irish textiles meant that separate terms for ‘yarn’ and ‘wool’ weren’t necessary for the larger part of history; if you were knitting with yarn, it was made from sheep’s wool.
Sheep do well here, and the tradition of working with their wool is part of our heritage in a way that working with other animal fibres from alpacas and silkworms are not. So yes, it feels local, sustainable and environmentally sound to buy Irish wool – well, it would do, if there were more Irish wools to be had. Of the three mills producing yarn for hand-knitting in Ireland, there is only one producing yarn made from 100% Irish wool. Sadly, the others are blends.
I am not against all man-made fibres; these things have a place. They just don’t have much of a place on my yarn shelves anymore. It’s been years since I bought a ball of acrylic yarn, but I’m still using them up – mainly in knitting things for people whom I know will not hand-wash garments! It is comparatively expensive to choose wool – in my craft kit business I make some hard choices (money-wise anyway), opting for 100% wool felt and wool stuffing – but it pleases me a lot to build a business which is basically bio-degradable! The wool I use in my kits I buy in the UK, and is sourced from the UK, Scandinavia and South America. Sadly it is not possible to get the range of colours and quality fibres any closer to home.
The universe in felt – needle-felting kits. Clockwise from top left: Vegetables and Toadstools Kits, Acorns, Scale model of the Solar System Kit
For my knitting projects and patterns I have good sources of affordable wool and am lucky enough to live near a small producer of very lovely grey and white Jacob yarn. I also live close enough to travel up to Studio Donegal occasionally for some of their 2kg cones.
All the knitted weaponry we need. Clockwise from top left: Felt tooth, Bomb, Felt barbed wire, Molotov Cocktail
All this can be difficult to explain to people. It involves seeing the consequences that result from the manufacture of an object, and the full story behind it when you look at it, which includes situating it in its cultural, environmental and historical context. Seeing objects in this way means seeing the factory behind a ball of acrylic yarn or the beautiful Shetland sheep belonging to your neighbour who gave you the wool to produce your own yarn. You can’t fit all that on a ball-band. There is a rich depth to using wool when you begin to see it this way.
I see myself taking more and more steps towards sustainability – I am by no means a bastion of sustainable living, but little by little I make more changes towards having a smaller footprint on this planet. And in this country, part of that plan means buying more wool, supporting more small producers, and spinners of Irish wools.
More felt. Clockwise from top left: Felt sculpture & Fox, Nest and Sheep Kits.
In conjunction with this post, Caroline will be hosting a WOVEMBER GIVEAWAY on her own blog, over at ansnagbreac.blogspot.com. Head over there right now for a chance to win one of her 100% WOOL needlefelting kits.
*Ref: LCA: New Zealand Merino Wool Total Energy Use, Andrew Barber and Glenys Pellow
January 2010 “snowcase” revisited
You are amazing. Thank you for your interest in Wovember, for your thoughtful comments on product descriptions and fibre content, and for publishing your own thoughts on the Wovember issues elsewhere on the Internet.
It is really encouraging to see the response to Wovember and a real pleasure to upload your photos whenever we can to the Gallery. Clearly our sentiments re: product description and the use of the word WOOL resonate with many of you. If you’ve been following Kate on Twitter @wazzag, you will have seen that our collective online petitioning (and Kate’s focussed establishment of The Hall of Shame) has already resulted in change:
@wazzag
River Island have now responded re: the 0%wool shorts displayed in hall of shame & have made ASOS change the product description #wovember
8 Nov
To quote Kate’s following Tweet, Well Done River Island. Here’s hoping there’ll be more removal of the word “WOOL” from product descriptions for 100% viscose garments in coming weeks.
Some especially lovely blogs which mentioned Wovember this week include this one which features gorgeous textile photos throughout and is in Estonian; we now know that Wovember in that language is Villavember. Colleen wrote some great posts this week on the theme of tweed jackets and trees, and a talk with the knit designer, Debbie Bliss. (That second post features a beautiful painting called The Wool Shop.) The Twisted Rib blog is also full of WOOL content this month, including an actual ballad for the lover of pure wool. Huzzah!
We were also delighted that our campaign got an honorary mention in Brenda Dayne’s latest episode of Cast-On. Thank you one and all for spreading the woolly word.
In terms of WOOL-wearing this month – which is another way of showing your appreciation for that material – Twitter and Ravelry and the wovember[at]gmail inbox are full of descriptions of warming outfits featuring large percentages of WOOL.
In case some of you are lost for ideas re: extremely WOOLLY ensembles, I thought I would dig out some photos from the vaults…
…When I was particularly cold in January 2010 – the heating wasn’t working well and it had snowed – I instigated a competition which unintentially involved my donning an almost 100% WOOL outfit:
1. Cairn tea-cosy (100% WOOL – handspun Romney and Poll Dorset)
2. Feather and fan scarf (100% WOOL – Bluefaced Leicester, purchased from texere yarns and dyed by me using plants)
3. Guinness Shrug (not 100% WOOL – contains quite a lot of Alpaca yarn)
4. Fyberspates fingerless gloves (not 100% WOOL – contains Bluefaced Leicester DK yarn dyed by Fyberspates held together with some very finely spun Mohair from the Angora goat)
5. Layter (100% WOOL from different UK Sheep breeds)
That blue thing underneath is a semi-felted 90% lambswool and polyester tunic which I bought from PRIMARK of all places, but the slacks and the skirt contain NO WOOL WHATSOEVER. I don’t know about the socks…
Following the launch of the January Snowcase contest (in which the idea was to show off as much of your handknitting as possible) there were 2 entries from my knitting compadres Ellen and Liz, which also contain very high percentages of WOOL.
Ellen very conscientiously pointed out today on Twitter that this largely handknitted selection of clothes is not 100% WOOL, and offered the following breakdown on fibre content:
Flicca is 70%acrylic /30%wool
the blue vest is 30%wool / 30%cotton /35%acrylic;
everything else is close to 100%;
In the interests of full-fibre-content-disclosure (which is what Wovember is all about) I reckon that string bag is made of 100% cotton too.
Liz was at WOOLFEST in 2009 where a small, jolly group of us were inspired by seeing sheep, farmers and WOOL together. Compared to the genteel cleanliness of urban yarn-shops, WOOLFEST was a blast of agricultural vim, and it was enormously exciting to see the relationships – so tangibly – between people, animals, and textiles. We left filled with new passion for our indigenous Sheep and the people who work with them. We also were all impressed by the skill that is required to shear a sheep. As Liz writes in her lovely account of that time;
I have big plans, not only for the Garthenor yarn that I bought, but for future purchases. I really want to encourage the farmers of British sheep breeds in the only ways that I can, through buying their wool and (hopefully) designing patterns their feature their yarn. There’s nothing wrong per se with alpaca and merino but I would hate for their success in the handknitting market to be at the expense of our indigenous sheep breeds.
Aside from talking to the sheep breeders my favourite part of Woolfest was the sheep clipping demonstration given by Cathy Wainwright. It was amazing to see the dexterity with which she clipped and turned the Kendal Rough Fell sheep which were about the same size as she was. The sheep were so docile under her hands but their strength and weight were apparent as soon as she let go of them and it took two men to shepherd them out of the ring.
Given Liz’s sentiments, it’s no surprise to discover that her Snowcase outfit featured a lot of WOOL!
One other WOOLLY outfit which deserves a mention here belongs to My Pops, who donned a lot of WOOL last weekend and even blagged a badge off me to show his appreciation of WOOL.
If you have been doing something WOVEMBERY and would like us to know about it, send a link to wovember[at]gmail[dot]com with a subject heading “WOOLLY ROUNDUP”. We love your stories and would love to share your WOOLLY OUTFITS here if you have photos of them!
Have a lovely weekend, xF
some sheep and wool numbers
Herdwick Sheep at the Royal Berkshire County Show, photographed by Felicity Ford
As some of you have requested further information on the situation of WOOL today, I decided to consult Alan Butler’s SHEEP book* and round up some of the facts he cites concerning the global situation re: sheep & WOOL. I have interspersed these facts with quotes from the book, and photographs taken at the Royal Berkshire County Show by me, earlier this Summer.
Did you know…
- There are presently just over 1,000,000,000,000 sheep in the world, which represents 1 sheep per 6 people
- The world’s sheep population – put nose-to-tail in a continuous line – would encircle the Earth 25 times
Greyface Dartmoor Sheep, photographed by Felicity Ford
WOOL: the ultimate sustainable textile
Despite the fact that woollen textile production has been hit hard by the creation of manmade fibres, such as nylon, rayon and the like, wool remains extremely important as a renewable and natural resource. The production of manmade fibres constantly depletes our store of oil and coal reserves and their production adds significantly to greenhouse gases and ultimately to global warming. The same is not true in the case of wool.
- Alan Butler, SHEEP – the remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world
shorn Sheep at the Royal Berkshire County Show, photographed by Felicity Ford
Sheep populations the world over
I would be extremely grateful if anyone reading this has numbers for any of the countries which Alan Butler left out of his round-up chapter. If you leave the number of sheep in your country plus a link to your info source in the comments, I will add them to the list for a fully global perspective.
- Global sheep population: 1,000,000,000,000 or approx 1 sheep per 6 people
- Chinese sheep population: 139,200,000
- Australian sheep population: 98,000,000
- Iranian sheep population: 53,000,000
- States of the former Soviet Union sheep population: 51,900,000
- Indian sheep population: 42,000,000
- New Zealand sheep population: 46,000,000
- United Kingdom sheep population: 25,000,000
Sheep at the Royal Berkshire County Show, photographed by Felicity Ford
The world’s top wool-producing countries
- Chinese WOOL: 302,000 tonnes
- Australian WOOL: 302,000 tonnes
- New Zealand WOOL: 200,000 tonnes
Galway Sheep at the Royal Berkshire County Show, photographed by Felicity Ford
The UK sheep:people ratio
With a population of 59,600,000, the UK maintains a sheep to people ratio of one sheep for every 2.3 people. At present the vast majority of British Wool, in fact around 70%, does not find its way into clothing.
- Alan Butler, SHEEP – the remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world
Sheep at the Royal Berkshire County Show, photographed by Felicity Ford
The intelligence of sheep is scientifically proven
My favourite sheep fact of the day (italics mine):
As far as their reputation for stupidity is concerned it turns out that sheep are not half so dumb as we have always assumed. Recent experiments have shown that sheep are really quite bright. They have the ability to recognise their shepherds and each other. Nor do sheep have a short attention span. It was proved that sheep could remember the faces of their shepherds and other sheep amongst whom they had lived for up to two years. Some sheep have also learned to roll across cattle grids on their backs and new measures may have to be taken in order to keep them penned in because it has also been shown that they can teach each other this naughty trick.
- Alan Butler, SHEEP – the remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world
Jacob Sheep at the Royal Berkshire County Show, photographed by Felicity Ford
*all quotes and factoids here taken from SHEEP, The remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world by Alan Butler, 2006, O Books
The Sheep Yoke
This evening’s sheep-related tale comes from Richard Martin at Filkin’s Mill in the Cotswolds. According to Alan Butler*, “the name Cotswold is a combination of ‘Cot’ from the cots or enclosures where the sheep were kept, and ‘wolds’, which is a descriptive word for open, hilly ground.”
In Filkin’s Mill, Richard has collected a vast number of sheep-related materials; a library of things, if you will, to do with the history of sheep and shepherding. One of the items in his collection is a sheep yoke. I recorded Richard discussing this object for one of my Knit Weekly radio features, produced for BBC Oxford. You can listen to that interview here: below is a transcription of the interview.
Cotswold sheep were known as the Cotswold lions; and they used to paint the sheep with ochre, so that – in the market – they would stand out as being these sort of orange/yellow/ochre-coloured lions. And I have a yoke downstairs – because Cotswold sheep are so big, you can’t turn them on their backs very easily to cut their feet – so they used to let them stand on four-square, and they used to put their head inside a sort of wooden yoke, and then a rod across the top of the back of their head, to hold them while they tended their feet. Now the interesting thing about this yoke is it was owned by a man called Garn, of Aldsworth just in Gloucestershire, and his flock (the Garnes were keeping Cotswold sheep for hundreds of years) – HIS flock – was the last flock of Cotswold sheep. And in the late ’60s, there were about 60 sheep left, they were sold at this auction, and from that flock, pretty much all the Cotswold sheep come. If that flock had been lost, and had gone to the abattoir, and not been saved by a group of well-intentioned people, then the Cotswold sheep would have gone. But here’s the interesting thing; if you look on this yoke, you can see – still – traces of yellow ochre, which were put onto the sheep probably at the end of the 18th century. In other words this yoke dates back to the end of the absolute heyday of the Cotswold sheep, when the Cotswold still sheep ruled the countryside. And yet, in 1960, this was at that sale, and – I’m reliably informed – had the sign on it which said “To the TEA-TENT”. In other words this thing links the heyday of the Cotswold sheep at the end of the 18th century with its complete and utter annihiliation (almost) at the end of the ’60s, when the last flock is sold and it’s “To the TEA-TENT”, at the sale. And from that sale, come all the Cotswold sheep that we have left.
Richard Martin – Filkin’s Woollen Mill
I would absolutely love further information on this story; did Cotswold sheep really get down to such incredibly low numbers in the 1960s? Finally, does anyone have a fine photo of a Cotswold sheep so that folk can see what Richard was on about re: their impressive, lion-like size and “Golden Fleece?”
*SHEEP – The remarkable story of the humble animal that built the modern world, by Alan Butler
Prick Your Finger
In a world where widespread knowledge of where and how clothes are made exists, it would be unthinkable to describe a pair of viscose shorts as “woollen” because everybody would know at once that this was nonsense. Yet as long as there are enormous gaps between producers and consumers of clothes on the High Street, it is easy for misleading advertising campaigns to take hold in the public imagination.
Everyone interested in raising public awareness about WOOL as a product is therefore working in some way to close the gap between its production and its consumers. Strategies for doing this range from yarn businesses providing detailed information about where and how their yarns are produced, (like Blacker designs) through to companies who are building the traceability and sustainability of their products into the heart of their brand (like Finisterre). Also, an increasing number of innovative business models such as the CSA initiative at Juniper Moon Farm are emerging, where consumers are given a stake in the whole enterprise of fiber production, and and are involved in the life of the farm (through the amazing blog and sheep day events) as well as getting some yarn from the farm at the end of the year.
This evening I want to talk specifically about Rachael Matthews and Louise Harries at Prick Your Finger, and how they are closing the gap by contextualising their activities as a haberdashery within an active cultural programme which includes exhibitions, workshops, and large-scale artworks in which the public are nearly always encouraged to participate. The Prick Your Finger approach links WOOL with Art and with Culture, and many exhibitions and artworks instigated by Matthews and Harries underscore the power that we have to support WOOL in our actions and in the decisions we make each day.
Check out their Manifesto; it is both exuberant and uncompromising in its in-your-face assertion that knitting and making your own clothes are linked to far wider issues such as the future of the planet, the responsible use of resources, and the need for creativity and imagination in daily life and objects.
Manifesto
We Believe …
In making your own reality.
In making your own clothes.
In making sure earth’s resources aren’t squandered today, leaving nothing for our futures.
In making our own yarns.
In making old skills and new technologies work together in harmony.
In making for the love of creation.
In making instead of throwing away.
In making it possible to live a thoughtful and creative life, even when it seems impossible.
In making chaos.
In making love not war.
In making a stand.- Rachael and Louise, Prick Your Finger
Prick Your Finger is not too shy to make a strong statement; it’s the only shop I know of where you can buy yarn-on-the-bone, for instance. This yarn hails from the Lake District (where Rachael is from) and is handspun from the fleeces of the Herdwick Sheep who live there. Yarn-on-the-bone celebrates the animal origins of WOOL and highlights its relationship to a living landscape in which death and regrowth are an integral part. You can literally walk into Prick Your Finger and talk to Rachael about the Herdwicks whose WOOL now covers these sheep bones.
Yarn-on-the-bone possibly doesn’t have a great future as a Big Seller for knitters; I don’t know what I would do with all the sheep bones once I had finished knitting from them, and the macabre aspect of working with yarn in this way might put some people off. However as a cultural statement, I think yarn-on-the-bone is a cheeky V-sign to the slick, non-traceable homogeneity of most of the textiles available on the High Street today. This is the point of many of the things for sale in, and projects purveyed by, Prick Your Finger; they act simultaneously as cultural statements and practical items which may be purchased and put to use, emphasising the idea that the meaning of our lives lies in our actions and in our labours.
Yarn-on-the-bone, photo by Rachael Matthews and used here with the permission of Prick Your Finger
The Prick Your Finger yarn range has expanded over time to include some Swaledale worsted-spun in Diamond Fibres Mill in Sussex, and also some Teeswater. The shop also stocks yarns from a huge variety of other small, UK yarn-producers, whose ethos towards the sustainable production of yarn aligns with the unique perspectives of Louise and Rachael and the Prick Your Finger manifesto. In this way, Harries and Matthews support and promote British Wool – 70% of which does not currently end up in garments, but rather in carpets. They also spin with the fleeces from rare-breed sheep and sell the resulting yarns in their shop at a rate which is commensurate with the quantity of labour involved in producing handspun. Such skeins hanging in Prick Your Finger cost more to produce than imported, millspun yarn, and for me this particular Prick Your Finger range is both a practical way of making some of the rarer breed’s fleeces available to knit with, and also an implicit, cultural criticism of the monoculture of Merino and the mass-importing of WOOL which make High Street prices a possibility. Sitting in the shop for any length of time, you overhear the daily conversations had with customers about their pricing structure and the situation for UK WOOL, and other matters not necessarily associated with polite, “knitterly” conversation; the ideas being shared in these exchanges are an important part of the cultural aspect of life in the shop.
When Rachael and Louise launch their own-brand, small batches of breed-specific yarns, the occasion is often accompanied by a blog-post celebrating the history of the breed involved, and making creative suggestions about what it might be used to knit. I have learnt alot about what can be done with yarn made from some of the sheep with rougher fleeces – such as the Rough Fell – through reading the Prick Your Finger blog.
Rachael’s posts about the Rough Fell breed of sheep and the use of its yarn to produce signage for the shop suggested new uses for fleeces which farmers might otherwise only be paid pennies for by the Wool Marketing Board;
‘Prick Your Finger’ aims to offer knitters the chance to make ANYTHING, which is why we are learning about sheep breads. Each sheep grows a different type of yarn. The letters on the front of our shop are knitted in one of the toughest, most weather proof wools, the ROUGH FELL.
Rachael Matthews, Prick Your Finger
ROUGH FELL sign-age, photo by Rachael Matthews and used here with the permission of Prick Your Finger
This sign-age was described by Susanna Edwards in ‘Design Week’ magazine as follows;
“an example in the whispering category of typography, Prick Your Finger is a contemporary haberdashery in Bethnal Green……It’s signage is innovative, yet quiet in its content, process and display. Hand-spun typography has been made from the wool of Rough Fell sheep, the sturdiest mountain breed in Britain. Too rough a material to wear, it has been spun un-washed to produce typography that is full of lanolin that makes it waterproof. It is homemade: only a spinning wheel and a crochet hook was required, and no sign writer or manufacturer was required. Even the name “Prick Your Finger” pertains Sleeping Beauty falling asleep.”
Susanna Edwards has clearly picked up on the strong themes of place which run through the branding and impetus of Prick Your Finger. When entering the shop, I always find myself thinking of the Lake District and the sheep breeds historically associated with that region – the Swaledale, the Herdwick and the Rough Fell. This association is not accidental; it has been forged through the frequent references to the area which appear on the Prick Your Finger blog. In terms of closing the gap, Rachael’s posts about the places where the stuff in her shop comes from give me the sense of being involved somehow in the future of those places and the importance of keeping the regional sheep breeds going, and of finding new, innovative markets for their unique, breed-specific WOOLS. I love how in posts like Swaledale Man, Rachael links the weather in the Lake district with life in the shop, building a fun snowman out of white balls of wool, and sharing her mother’s views on the snow up North; it seems a clever and imaginative way of reminding us where the WOOL comes from.
SWALEDALE MAN, photo by Rachael Matthews and used here with the permission of Prick Your Finger
The idea that we are all stakeholders in The Wool Industry was emphasised by the show put on by Rachael and Louise in the Stanley Picker Gallery in London last year, in which visitors could physically become part of a WOOL Mill for a day. http://www.stanleypickergallery.org/exhibitions/murder-at-the-wool-hall/
Murder at the Wool Hall provided gallery goers with an opportunity to engage in the idea of Wool Production in an innovative, participatory way.
FLEECE ORBIT yarn from within the M25, packaged in handprinted sacks made by Louise and Rachael, photographed by Felicity Ford
WOOL from within the ring of the M25 was bought into the exhibition space in specially designed hessian sacks, and participants could card that wool and/or spin with it.
50g wool from within the M25, carded and photographed by Felicity Ford
The issue of the energy expended in spinning yarn was explored through a contraption in which a bike was connected to a generator which was connected to an electronic spinning wheel. This meant that two people – the person cycling on the bike and the person spinning yarn at the wheel – could explore together the energy required to add a twist to WOOL and to turn it into yarn. Exuberantly designed sheets were available for noting ideas or impressions from participating within the temporary Wool Mill, and Rachael and Louise wore aprons emblazoned with an image of a historic carding machine from 1790, as if to identify their wearers as machines within the temporary wool mill.
Aprons for “Murder at the Wool Hall” handprinted by Prick Your Finger
Explaining the entire process of Wool Production to everyone who came into the Stanley Picker Gallery and introducing people who had never used a spinning wheel or carded wool to the yarn-making process turned the installation into an experimental learning space for folk to explore questions surrounding production and consumption. It also linked up the physical landscape of London and its detested encircling Motorway with WOOL, which is almost exclusively presented as being from the countryside. This presentation of rarebreed sheep WOOL (the WOOL from inside the M25 is from Whitefaced Woodland sheep, grown at Mudchute Farm in London) as an urban material – to spin by cycling on a bike and listening to KRAFTWERK – is utterly unique amongst representations of the sheep-to-shawl idea. It fuses the energy and coolness of PUNK with the agricultural heritage of the UK – much in the same way that Rachael often posts about punk bands, right beside her posts about WOOL and art projects on the Prick Your Finger blog.
One might argue that the many things on offer at the Stanley Picker Gallery to a visiting public were not materially much different to what can be found at any of the local guild meetings dotted around the countryside, but such a comparison overlooks the massive power for change and inspiration possessed by the impressive Prick Your Finger aesthetic – a flavour of which I hope to have conveyed in this post. Yarn-on-the-bone, handknitted ROUGH FELL TYPOGRAPHY, Snowmen made from balls of Swaledale yarn, and a bicycle-powered-electric spinning wheel etc. present WOOL in new and imaginative ways, which bring ideas about the imaginative possibilities of its potential use – and its value – to new audiences.
The aesthetic of Rachael and Louise and Prick Your Finger make the ideas they are purveying palatable to folk who might resent the decree from on high that they ought to wear more WOOL, and – crucially – makes wool relevant to the people who might not know that guild meetings and agricultural rare-breed shows exist. Prick Your Finger offers an alternative perspective on WOOL to its rural associations with Tweedy britches and green pastures and suggests that we can keep traditions alive without being traditional.
As with the importance of keeping all our diverse, individual sheep breeds alive, so is it necessary to have a culture of WOOL which is rich and multi-faceted. Prick Your Finger and all of the labours of Rachael Matthews and Louise Harries give us new ideas about what we can do with WOOL and bring the debate about its production and consumption into unexpected places.
I absolutely do not have it in my being to knock endeavours focussed around promoting WOOL for what it is in any sense at all. However I can’t help wondering just a little bit whether the Prince of Wales knows about Prick Your Finger, and about the reply sent from Buckingham Palace to Rachael Matthews when she wrote to tell the Queen about the Cast Off Knitting Club, instigated in Central London in 2000.
Would the Palace be able to suggest a place for knitting meetings now that HRH is behind the Campaign for WOOL?
I HOPE SO!
On ‘Artificial Wool’
From your wonderful comments on the Wovember petition it is obvious that incorrect and confusing descriptions of textiles are abundant. But how has the confusion surrounding the word “WOOL” arisen? Throughout the month we will explore that question in different ways.
This evening we shall hear from Ethel Mairet’s wonderful book published in 1939 and entitled Hand-Weaving To-day, Traditions and changes. Mairet (1872 – 1952) was a teacher, dyer, and weaver and this lovely wooden sign is from the natural dye studio which she ran in Ditchling, Sussex, during the 1920s and 30s.
This is what Ethel Mairet wrote about Synthetic Yarns in 1939;
There are various types of synthetic fibres, differing in their composition and properties. Their general basis is cellulose, derived mostly from cotton, wood, and a few other materials. Rayon, the English name for these fibres, is capable of infinite variety, and is certain of a great future in spite of the many mistakes which have been made in its manufacture. The chief error was the close copying of natural fibres – and the names ‘artifical silk’, ‘artifical wool’, etc., which suggested to the mind materials of very secondary quality. Instead of creating a quality of its own, a new fabric entirely unknown and unforeseen – a new art of the textile world – so far, all it has done is to copy silk, to copy tweeds, velvets and other materials. The new industry has gone the safe way…
Cellophone as used by great textile artists such as Otti Berger, or Rodier, or some of the Finnish weavers, become textiles of rare beauty, holding their place with the greatest textiles of the world. Such artists as these start new ideas for the textile fabrics of the future, eventually to influence the trade because they understand the special qualities inherent in synthetic materials – qualities not found in any of the natural raw materials, and of great creative importance…
What use can the hand-weaver make of rayon or staple fibre? What qualities has it for the textiles of the new architecture and life of the future? What place has cellophane – and the new yarns already invented and those that are still being invented – in the expression of civilisation that is starting? These are the questions for all textile artists to consider. Not by overthrowing all traditional materials and techniques, or by imitating the old textures and yarns, but by the creation, through them, of a new expression in textile.
Given our focus during Wovember on differentiating WOOL from other fibres and textiles, it seems interesting that in Mairet’s time the inventors of new textiles were trying to make them sound like WOOL, such as in the example of ‘artificial wool’ which Mairet cites. Surely these historic developments contributed to today’s situation, where the word WOOL is sometimes used descriptively in situations where no actual WOOL is concerned? Additionally, surely another negative consequence of ‘artificial wool’ is that – in trying to copy WOOL or silk – the inherent creative potentials of synthetic materials may not perhaps have been fully explored.
If polyester is busy trying to be WOOL, then it will always fail at it, in the same way that WOOL would be a terrible substitute for polyester!
The terms of the debate today are slightly different than in Mairet’s time; polyester was patented in 1941 and many subsequent textiles derived from the petrochemical industry raise questions of sustainability and environmental impact not mentioned in Mairet’s discussion of Synthetic Yarns.
However, Mairet’s point about needing to distinguish clearly between different textiles and their unique qualities is still relevant, and the more that we make such distinctions, the more likely it is that we shall have clearer product descriptions on garments in the future.
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