![]() ![]() They currently straddle the boundary between craft tool and child’s toy, marketed under several designations including “knitting spool” and “knitting Nancy.”Ī larger multi-pronged spool is described and illustrated in a Dutch publication from 1822 that also illustrates a six-pin chain spool, with a peg loom included in the 1823 volume. The 1842 text follows its description of a round loom with one of a cylindrical knitting spool with a smaller number of pins called a, “chain mold…for making neck chains…with middle-sized netting silk, exactly in the manner as that described for a purse on the moule Turc.” Such implements appear elsewhere in the early-19th-century press earmarked for metal chains. Notwithstanding, a circumstantial case has been made for their use a thousand years prior to the appearance of the knitting frame in Europe. Whatever the intervening developments, such looms are not directly attested until the 19th-century documentation. Given that the scope of guild protection was being defined, if knitting was done on smaller handheld looms at that time, we might expect this to have been mentioned. The court decision also discusses contemporaneous hand knitting and explicitly notes that it is done without frames. The stocking makers would have been employing them prior to the lawsuit and it can be assumed that they were in use near the outset of the 16th century. This was just over fifty years before the invention of the mechanized stocking frame and it is safe to regard its unarticulated predecessor as a straight peg loom. However, the legal text makes a comparison with other types of fabric worked on frames that strongly suggests the ones used for knitting to have been stationary. ![]() ![]() The two terms may be alternate names for the same frame, refer to two different types of frames, or designate a frame affixed to a stand. The original German - ramen und gestellen - can be read in different ways. The decision of a court in Strasbourg in May 1535 regarding the proper guild for sock knitters ( Hosenstricker) considers the frames they used for making gloves and socks. However, the same label appears in unrelated printed sources beyond the two just cited, plus contextual remarks about the application of the implement to knitting, clearly indicating that peg looms were in established use for some time before being written about. The name suggests an eastern origin although it may simply be a fanciful coinage. The pegged form is a support for knitting, called a moule Turc (Turkish mold) in the British publication it is taken from and in French instructions from 1826, with little likelihood of the later text having been derived from the earlier one. The drawing of purse molds from 1842 shown in this posts’s banner (and repeated below for safety’s sake) is a good case in point. Although some clues are provided about their histories, little can be deduced about their actual ages and origins. The tools and techniques described in detail in the initial wave of 19th-century publications about diversionary fancywork reflect crafts in practice at that time. ![]()
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