Introduction: Creativity in Knitted Textiles in Historical Context

Abstract

This Introduction frames a curated collection of articles on creativity in the knitwear sector, interrogating some of the ways in which creativity has been inspired, supported and manifested, from the home knitter to the internationally renowned designer, from the craft knitter to the industrial knitwear manufacturer. The contributions provide a diverse understanding of the creative practices of knitting, ranging from the skills of hand knitters to the machine knitting of the 1930s outerwear revolution, and from the investment in design of some of the leading knitwear companies, to the place of repetition in the creative practices of knitters of fair isle and aran knitwear. The collection also includes an interview with Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell of the Scottish knitwear company Di Gilpin whose hand-knitted garments grace the catwalks of top fashion houses, in which they explain how creativity informs both the design and making process. Contributors are drawn from the fields of history, textile studies, fashion and the business sector.

Keywords:

• Creativity
• knitting
• knitwear
• design
• history
• fashion

The focus of this edited collection of specially commissioned articles is the creative processes and practices associated with the production of knitwear. We consider both knitting by hand and machine and knitting undertaken in all contexts from the home to atelier and factory production in historical context. Designing and making a knitted item entails creative labor at all stages of the process, from the initial idea to the choices regarding color, texture, yarn and patterning, and it is intrinsic to the making. Creativity in design, materials and techniques has always been a critical feature of the success of the knitwear sector in the UK. It remains so today. Yet this aspect of knitwear production has received very little attention from historians who tend to focus on technology and market conditions in knitted textiles to the detriment of our understanding of the investment in the creative processes that drive the industry (Gulvin 1984; Butt and Ponting 1987; Chapman 2002). As Phillip Sykas (2019, 73) recently stated referring to textiles more generally: “while the importance of design to success in textile manufacture is commonly acknowledged, its nature is rarely elucidated.”

This curated collection of articles interrogates some of the ways in which creativity in this sector has been inspired, supported and manifested, from the home knitter to the internationally renowned designer, from the craft knitter to the industrial knitwear manufacturer. The contributions provide a diverse understanding of the creative practices of knitting, ranging from the skills of hand knitters to the machine knitting of the 1930s outerwear revolution, and from the investment in design of some of the leading knitwear companies, to the place of repetition in the creative practices of knitters of fair isle and aran knitwear. The collection also includes an interview with Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell of the Scottish knitwear company Di Gilpin whose hand-knitted garments grace the catwalks of top fashion houses, in which they explain how creativity informs both the design and making process. Contributors are drawn from the fields of history, textile studies, fashion and the business sector.

This Special Issue has been edited by members of the “Fleece to Fashion” research team at the University of Glasgow.¹ This project investigates the history of the Scottish knitwear sector, following the production cycle from the raw material to the fashioned garment, and interrogating why and how knitting has adapted to and survived modernization to become a distinctive heritage brand in the modern Scottish economy and culture. Creativity is at the heart of the project. We ask how creative practices are embedded in broader economic systems, including gendered structures of work, skill and leisure and to what extent these creative economies are tied to place of origin? While the project as a whole focuses on Scotland, this collection expands the scope to consider both distinctive practices within Scotland (notably fair isle and the knitwear companies of the Borders) and beyond the borders of Scotland, recognizing that while there is a distinctive story to tell within Scotland, the knitwear industry and community is international.

Creativity, as Bethan Bide (2021) points out, is a relatively modern concept, only widely used from the mid-twentieth century. Traditionally creativity was understood to involve originality and innovation and tended to be ascribed to autonomous individuals and particular forms of labor, especially those associated with art and design (Runco and Jaeger 2012). For Sykas, the originality and innovation that was part and parcel of the twentieth century modernist project “led historians to focus largely on innovators, leaving aside the wider field of design for everyday production.” (2019, 74) However, more recently, in the light of a lack of agreement amongst creative practitioners on a definition of creativity, scholars have broadened its scope to encompass the labor as well as the inspiration involved to transform materials into new or innovative forms (Glück, Ernst, and Unger, 2002, 2). Following Bide, who seeks to collapse the explicit hierarchies associated with conventional definitions of creativity, we embrace her concept of “creative labor” which encompasses a much wider range of roles including makers as well as designers and which regards creativity as much a collective as an individual enterprise (2021, 178). This approach is echoed by contemporary Scottish knitwear designer Kate Davies who asks: “How might creative praxis change if it became more about bringing other people forward than blowing one’s own trumpet?” (Davies 2021)

Histories of knitwear production have tended to say little about the place of creativity and design in the sector as a whole, focusing instead on the organization of labor, technological change and company organization and failing to incorporate creativity into these elements. The exception is Potočić Matković’s (Matković and Marija 2010) survey of the influence of fashion design on knitting technology from the sixteenth century to the 1980s. Where design and creativity are more commonly acknowledged, it tends to be embodied in individuals – the creative genius or professionally trained designer (Taylor 2010; Schoeser and Harley 2022). This discourse, argues Bide, “locates creativity in a narrow range of design roles, rather than something found throughout the various processes through which garments and textiles are produced” (2021, 176). Bide’s research, which eschews the idea of innovation as an individual endeavor and draws attention to the creative labor embedded within the postwar London fashion industry in the processes undertaken by workers – the pattern cutters, machinists and finishers – shifts the focus to a much wider consideration of the interrelationship between designing and making, both in the context of factory and hand knitting (Bide, 2019).

We welcome this broader appreciation of creativity as it offers a more democratic, inclusive and realistic understanding of how design works at all levels of the knitwear sector and reflects the collaborations between design and production that are intrinsic to the knitwear industry today. In our own research on the history of knitting in Scotland we have been conscious of how creative labor is present everywhere: in the work of the amateur knitter, in the home of the outworker, in the workshop of the independent knitwear designer, the technical editor, and on the factory floor as well as in the design studio. We are also aware of how this more inclusive approach takes account of gender inequalities in definitions of design and creativity in the past and how women’s craft labor in particular has been systematically downgraded as unskilled, vocational and thus poorly recognized and rewarded (Adamson 2007; Bide 2021, 183; Buckley, 1986). Even when it is clear that a woman’s design work has been critical to the success of a company or collection, her role can be subsumed within the more recognized brand. In the case of the Bernat Klein ready-to-wear knitwear ranges for example, produced in the 1980s and 1990s, Margaret Klein is nowhere to be seen in the advertising or the labeling yet it was she who designed all the patterns and garments (Abrams and Chapman 2022). The Bernat Klein brand, known for its distinctive color-work and unusual yarns, lent the knitwear range a cachet and a value associated with the recognized creative genius that may not have been leveraged by Margaret’s name alone. Margaret was not a creative genius and nor was she professionally trained. We know that her design influences were eclectic ranging from modern art to the knitting patterns and garments she collected from magazines. And although many of her designs gained their distinctiveness and originality from being knitted in the Bernat Klein range of yarns, she also applied her own innovations to some of the garments.² This example is instructive because it highlights the interconnectivity between the designer and maker, the materials and the production process.

Creativity in the hand knitting sector, whether the knitting is undertaken for personal enjoyment, household necessity or for payment, is especially prone to being undervalued (Adamson, 150–1; Buckley, 4). Knitting is the archetypal woman’s work, with the proficiencies required often linked to women’s so-called “natural” abilities, belying the skills needed to design and execute a garment. This is even more pronounced in places, which possess distinctive knitting traditions such as Shetland and Ireland’s Aran islands. In places like Shetland, known for its fair isle colourwork and lace knitting techniques, there is a tendency to look inwards to the community for the origins of design inspiration and to read authenticity from that, thereby downplaying evidence of interconnectedness, borrowing and “appropriation,” in this case from knitting traditions overseas. Similarly, Siún Carden explains that “distinctiveness and invention [are] attributed to places and their "traditions" rather than people” (Carden 2022). In her article in this Special Issue which examines fair isle and aran knitting “traditions,” the creative process undertaken by both hand knitters and those using hand-operated machines is enabled by both the reproduction of repertoires of stitches, motifs and patterns and the improvizational dynamics that flow from the process of creating garments in the interplay between people, patterns, charts, machines and the raw materials, giving the “creative agency” back to the makers (Lampitt Adey 2018). There is little distinction here between the “creative” designer and the maker, a point also highlighted in Jade Halbert’s discussion of homeworking in the hand-knitting sector in the 1980s and Sandy Black’s personal reflections on the knitwear revolution of that era. Knitwear designers relied on their experienced knitters to realize their creations, a relationship that sometimes required the application of creative agency by the maker and which occasionally tipped over into collaboration, blurring the line between the two. Indeed, in individual biographies such as that of Black and in a related field, that of Marion Donaldson, the Scottish fashion designer, we see the “entanglement” of design and execution (Halbert 2017). The term designer implies that the activity of design can be separated from that of making, and that designs are a product in their own right. Sometimes they are. But within individual biographies, design and making are often intertwined.

Halbert makes the distinction between artistic and productive creativity, but in the context of high-volume, machine-made knitwear production, the distinction is harder to draw. In the inter-war decades, as British knitwear companies began to respond to changes in fashion and shifted production away from hosiery or underwear in favor of knitted outerwear, a co-dependence of design and production occurred. Most hosiery or underwear had been produced in white and in a limited range of designs. Outerwear, on the other hand, required much greater attention to color, yarn quality for the finish and design in respect of shaping, patterning and trimmings (Gulvin, 88–92; Potočić Matković, 135–137). While these developments are poorly documented, what is known is that knitwear companies were slow to employ designers and likely relied upon a combination of sales agents and skilled production workers to respond to changes in the market.

Innes Henderson, a Scottish Borders’ company producing the “Braemar” knitwear brand, employed a part time fashion consultant in London in 1937, but it was reluctant to employ clothing designers, relying instead on “foremen and sales staff” to identify trends (Gulvin, 109). The Borders’ knitwear industry was, however, dominated by women workers, and it is likely that their skills would have been harnessed in this regard. Indeed, in 1938 in the knitwear town of Hawick it was mooted that in order to meet the demands of the “fashioned trade,” girls who were apprenticed in the hosiery machine shops might be trained in “designing, art, color and cutting out of garments” or even to get them to promote original styles. There was thus a recognition that what was needed was not the design of fabric but the “design of garments.”³ To this end, some companies did invest in design, understanding that in order to prosper they needed to understand fashion trends. The Borders company Pringle is usually identified as the leader in this regard. In 1934, Pringle produced its first “styled” collection of knitwear (as opposed to “classic” garments) inspired by the in-house designer, the Austrian Otto Weisz. After the war Pringle maintained its focus on high quality fashionable outerwear, and by the 1960s a team of designers allied with a sophisticated marketing and sales department enabled the company to prosper, becoming the largest employer in Hawick (Gulvin, 125). Information about how other knitwear companies incorporated design into their processes is hard to come by though initial findings suggest few followed Pringle’s lead in bringing in specialists.⁴

It is virtually impossible to discuss the creative process in the garment trades without considering the nature of design and designers, but as this volume will show, there are different ways in which this relationship can be considered. After World War Two design training became increasingly concentrated in art and design schools where creativity was located “exclusively in processes of design rather than manufacture.” (Bide 2021, 186) Increasingly, courses separated design as “art” from the practical skills and knowledge of textile and garment manufacture which meant that designers were dependent on skilled shop-floor workers to translate illustrations into garments that could be manufactured at volume (Bide 2021, 188–189). In the knitwear industry, technology had always been as much the driver of creativity as designers. As Lin Gardner shows in her contribution to this collection, cut-and-sew technology offered versatility and facilitated many different design options based on a common base or structure, something revealed by the design books preserved in the archives which provide an unparalleled insight into the design process at one knitwear company, Peter Scott. And the machines producing fully-fashioned garments were themselves, along with the highly skilled machine operators, important elements of the creative labor process. Design staff and technical staff worked hand-in-hand and sometimes they were the same person. In today’s knitwear environment, in which some solo-designers and high-volume manufacturers utilize digital design applications and computer assisted knitting machines, the collaborative creativity between the designer and the maker is critical to the quality of the final product.

The articles gathered here represent some initial forays into how we might understand creativity in the knitwear industry but there is still much to explore, especially relating to related sectors such as spinners and dyers who were challenged to produce the new colors and yarns with the correct weight, twist and finish.⁵ Even less is known about the relationship between yarn spinners and garment manufacturers in the postwar decades when synthetic fibers came to dominate the mass-market ready-to-wear sector. But expanding the definition of creativity to embrace the making as much as the design inspiration is an important first step in writing an inclusive history that recognizes the range of skills across the industry and which acknowledges the “entanglements of innovation and imitation” (Sykas, 77). Being creative is as much a practice as a way of thinking and in knitwear production where a garment is produced at the same time as a fabric it could hardly be otherwise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynn Abrams

Lynn Abrams is Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow and lead investigator for the ‘Fleece to Fashion’ project. [email protected]

Roslyn Chapman

Roslyn Chapman is a research associate on the Fleece to Fashion Project at the University of Glasgow. Her PhD thesis was on the History of the Shetland lace knitting industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Lin Gardner

Lin Gardner is a research assistant for the Fleece to Fashion research project at the University of Glasgow. Her PhD research was on the development of the sewing machine as a manufacturing tool.

Marina Moskowitz

Marina Moskowitz is the Lynn and Gary Mecklenburg Chair in Textiles, Material Culture, and Design, in the Design Studies Department at the University of Madison-Wisconsin.

Sally Tuckett

Sally Tuckett is senior lecturer in dress and textile history at the University of Glasgow. Her research ranges across the 18th and 19th century with a particular focus on Scotland.

Notes

1 www.fleecetofashion.gla.ac.uk.

2 Collections of Margaret Klein’s knitwear are held at National Museum of Scotland (NMS), Heriot Watt Archive (HW) and Hawick Museum (HM). Examples of her innovative designs include: Style 320 Silk Blouse with 3/4 Sleeve (NMS K.2010.94.1061) in which the purl side is the outside of the garment; Style 971 Crewneck Wool Slub Blob (HW BK/12/2/55) illustrating an over-all bubble effect; Style 591 Jacket in Wool Slub/Mohair (HM HAKMG: 17.0131), with body knit vertically and arms horizontally.

3 Scottish Borders Archive, Hawick Hosiery Manufacturers' Association paper, Box 6421-1934-1939, sub folder 1938-Jan–Jun.

4 One of the exceptions was the Glasgow Company Twomax, which also employed an Austrian designer in the 1930s and 40s.

5 Initial research in the archive of Patons and Baldwins, knitting yarn manufacturers, has identified a significant shift to synthetic yarns for hand and machine manufacture in the late 1950s and 1960s. For example, see Clackmannanshire Archive: PD227/3/5/3/1, Patons and Baldwins Order Book 1958–1961. Helen Taylor identifies the extensive network of suppliers, manufacturers and agents critical to the designer’s working environment in the context of Bernat Klein. Taylor, “Bernat Klein”.