MUSEUM PIECES
Penelope Hemingway explores the history of the knitting stick and examines a beautiful carved fish example in the archives of Beamish, the Living Museum of the North
Explore the history of the traditional knitting stick
FROM A list of ‘necessary implements for knitting’:
“...A knitting sheath, &c., to be fastened on the waist of the knitter, towards the right hand, for the purpose of keeping the needle in a steady and proper position…” ‘ LADIES’ HANDBOOK OF KNITTING NETTING AND CROCHET’ BY JANE GAUGAIN, LONDON, 1843
A knitting stick (or ‘sheath’) is a wooden or sometimes leather holder, designed to anchor the knitter’s working needle. The stick was a vital weapon in any professional hand-knitter’s armoury; acting as a fulcrum, they turned the working needle (usually the right-hand needle) into a lever.
They are thought to date from around the 16th century in the UK, but their origins are lost in the mists of time.
Knitting sticks were tucked in the knitter’s waistband or apron, or sometimes secured under the arm.
Using short needles - for example, when knitting a sock - the knitter might move the stick to a place more central on their body. With long needles, knitters needed to move them further to the right.
The more detailed the carving is on a stick, generally, the more valuable to collectors it is. Figurative ones shaped like fish, sinuous sea serpents or comic leg-shaped styles are possibly the most intriguing. They are most commonly carved from fruitwood, but the fish design I examined at the Beamish Museum, appears to be oak, and carvers seem to have used whatever came to hand. Some are more exotic woods, like mahogany. Some are inlaid with other materials like brass or mother of pearl.
Children as young nd as four learned to work with a knitting stick, and by the time they were seven or eight years old would be capable of knitting up to
200 stitches per minute. Some of this incredible speed was facilitated by use of the knitting stick, as the knitter could form and pop the newly formed stitches from the needle, by bracing the working needle inside a hole - usually measuring a few millimetres in depth - inside one end of the stick.
Treasured objects
Beamish Museum has several hundred knitting sticks in its collection, and other museums with large collections include the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes, North Yorkshire, and the Hull Maritime Museum, East Yorkshire. Several knitting sticks can also be found at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, including one marked with the initials ‘M.B’, for the Brontë sisters’ mother, Maria Brontë - I visited and documented them a few years back (more information can be found at www.theknittinggenie.com).
Many knitting sticks were treasured by their owners, and carved by lovers or family members, for a young knitter. In an appendix to their 1951 book The Old
Hand-Knitters of the Dales, Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby discussed different knitting sticks, and how important they were to the Dales knitters: “... When people handle them a far away look comes into their eyes. They remember stories told by their parents of the days long ago. ‘Aye, that was given to my mother by a lad who was drowned,’ said a friend of ours. ‘He was on horseback driving some sheep across the Eden in Mallerstang. The sheep and horse got over safely, but he was swept away by the flooding river.’ Of another we have been told: ‘This belonged to the mother of a dear old friend who gave it to me. She was born in 1823 and died in 1900. She could neither read nor write… Old Nanny was a fine, intelligent character, and in spite of her illiteracy made out her own bills by chalk-marks on her kitchen door…’” ‘ THE OLD HAND KNITTERS OF THE DALES’, 1951
Speedy stitches
Knitting sticks were used all over the UK and in Ireland, and by knitters of all backgrounds - not just professional knitters, but also drawing-room hobby knitters, as is evidenced by the quote at the start of this article from Jane Gaugain’s Victorian knitting manual.
In 1956, a writer for the Dalesman magazine, Freda M. Douglas-Kay, visited a number of old Dales knitters and recorded the sticks she saw: “Miss M. Seddon, living in her modern council bungalow at Sedbergh, began to knit socks when she was a small girl. Her father made her a six inch long stick of apple wood from their own orchard. This beautiful, pink-tinted, gleaming stick is carved in a pointed, waisted shape, to lock the stick firmly in the waistband…” Another knitter, Mrs Capstick, was reported to still use her stick “for speed”.
Freda visited younger Daleswomen who still used knitting sticks: “It was intriguing to find some of the younger generation of daleswomen using knitting sticks. Mrs Elsie Stokes practises the old art in her ‘pre-fab’ home. She was taught by her grandmother, whose carved stick she uses… Mrs Stokes, after a normal day’s work in her home, can easily knit up an ounce of wool in the remainder of the day, and can finish a pair of socks in four days. She attributes this speed to her use of the knitting stick, but like others who use straight needles, tucks it under her arm instead of into a belt…”
Although attempts have been made to identify certain styles of knitting stick with narrow geographical regions of the UK, the reality is that any style of stick might have been found in any area. A more useful way of describing types of stick was made in 1985, in Yorkshire Life magazine, where collector Helen Simon described sticks in five broad categories: goosewing; plain stick/spindle; scroll or fiddle; peg; and miscellaneous one-offs and love tokens. Many were made with skill; all were made with love.
Beamish in Northumberland does have an intriguing quantity of fish-shaped sticks, but then so do a number of Yorkshire Museums. Goosewing-shaped sticks can be found right across Yorkshire and beyond. I found a 19th century newspaper account of a London lady losing her hallmarked silver knitting sheath. They seem to have started dying out in polite society by around the 1870s or ’80s, but professional knitters in remoter areas and places with strong hand-knitting traditions continued using them well into the 20th century.
Today, some knitters use knitting belts - now called Shetland knitting belts, but again, historically, they came from all over the UK, not just one area. This is a leather belt with an oval-shaped pad with holes in. The knitter anchors their working needle in a hole, just the same as using a stick. Shetland knitter and designer Hazel Tindall, uses one.
Beamish Museum has a sizeable collection of knitting sticks, some of which can be browsed in their online collection at www.beamish.org.uk. The use of knitting sticks is demonstrated at least twice a year at Beamish Museum - at the Georgian Fair, and also the Hands on History skills weekend. If you come along to either event, I will be there demonstrating their use.
FURTHER READING
– ‘The Knitting Sheath’ by Peter Brears, Folk Life volume 20, 1981-82
– The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales,
Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, 1951 (reprinted in 2013 by Cooperative Press) – ‘These Daleswomen Still Use Knitting Sticks’ by Freda M. Douglas-Kay,
Dalesman volume 18, November 1956