Handcrafting in the Archives with Knit British
In February this year, I sat in the middle
of a horseshoe of tables in the library at the School of Scottish Studies Archive, exploring with workshop attendees just what
‘cleeking’ may be. Neither knitting nor
crochet or nälebinding,
we were working from letters and magazine articles from the 1950s which – like
us – were focused on saving a handcraft from being lost.
All this began in Spring 2018, when Louise
Scollay of the Knit British podcast, contacted me to ask
if I was interested in drawing on my practice in crochet to help investigate a
mystery… Hooked (ahem), I happily agreed
and opened up a document that had kept us both intrigued since. Louise has a detailed archivist’s and
handcrafter’s insight into the amazing set of papers she came across during her
day job. The story of her discovery of
letters and patterns related to Scottish Home and Country - the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute magazine of the 1950s and the
research journey she has taken since is now the focus of a Knit British podcast
episode. I recommend that you settle
down with a cuppa to listen here.
In a nutshell, Louise found a collection of
letters and cuttings in a box of ephemera in the archives. Dating from the early 1950s, these referred
to a letter published in the SWRI magazine (the original eludes us) asking if other members knew much
of the craft of ‘cleekit’ or ‘cleekwork’ – a craft at risk of becoming lost as
the generations of men who traditionally took on this work were passing. Descriptions of the stitch followed in
respondents’ letters, along with a pattern in the magazine instructing members
how to make a glove.
It was this pattern which I got to
investigate. In its 1950s fashion, this
assumed much tacit knowledge about handcraft in its instructions and was also
without images. Using what I knew of
crochet, I began to experiment with a gesture similar to a crochet slip stitch
or other flatloop handwork: with the yarn and hook both held in the same hand (there is
variation in the letters) the head of the hook slips into a single loop stich,
catches the yarn and is pulled through,
My swatches initially were disastrous –
using 4ply wool, I needed to go up to a hook size of 5.5mm or 6mm to create
loops big enough to work into. I found
myself wishing for a smaller, more pointed hook to work with (more of that
anon) but pressed on. Over a few weeks,
a somewhat misshapen glove emerged (yes, the index finger is too long – don’t @
me).
The fabric which emerged was
fascinating. In working into either the
front or back loops of the cleek stitch, a ‘horizontal’ rib similar to knitted
stocking stitch or a ‘vertical’ knitted garter bump surface was created. Despite it being in lofty Jamieson’s Spindrift 2 ply Jumperweight, this was a dense and incredibly warm fabric –
ideal, in fact, for hard working garments which had to withstand wind and
rain: It had little give on its axes,
but a decent stretch on the bias. The
references in the letters to these being produced by rural village glovemakers
made absolute sense.
Louise spoke about her archive find, what
she had learnt of the handcraft and the making of the glove at the In the Loop conference
in Summer 2018, but the ‘cleekit’ bug had caught us both. Over the next few months, she shared with me new
findings of articles and letters which described a widespread practice of
cleeking from the Scottish Borders to the Western Isles. She discovered images of cleekit hooks -
answering my desire for a narrow hook with a pointed head – and we both
searched archive collection records for references to the craft.
Louise found further SWRI letters and a
photograph from a later issue of the magazine of a member’s delicate
reproduction of the glove pattern; I found a listing in the National Museum of
Scotland which had Cleek or cleekit listed variously as kitchen spit ironwork,
golf clubs and shepherd’s crook, but nothing as small as a hook to hold in the
palm. Coming up with limited results, we
wondered whether artefacts and fabric swatches may be misclassified in archives
around Scotland, considering its visual similarity to knitting once the cleek
fabric had been worked. Certainly the
small hooks – made it seems from repurposed broken materials including combs
and toothbrushes, may have simply been thrown away.
In a wonderful opportunity facilitated
through the University of Edinburgh Festival of Creative Learning, Louise secured funding to run a workshop on cleek
work and celebrating how handcrafting in the archives could bring collections
to life for makers in the 21st century. In a fully booked (yay!) event, attendees
were introduced to the incredible potential that the School of Scottish Studies
Archive holds, had a glimpse of the varied materials on textiles and handcraft
held there, such as songs sung by the women who waulked tweed or composed by spinners working alone at home
and heard about the incredible story of how the discovery of papers in a box
file had developed (listen to Louise’s talk here). I had the delight of teaching attendees how
to ‘cleek’ a sampler wrist warmer.
The intention of bringing the archive to
life through exploring the story of cleekwork and learning the handcraft
technique came to pass in ways that far exceeded our hopes: The group began to
speak through different interpretations of instructions, considering ways to
hold the hook, how that hook may be personalised to fit the maker’s hand … and
excitingly, how to form the stitch in different ways. One attendee in particular experimented by
drawing the stitch down and towards himself rather than pushing into the fabric
(all thanks to a conversation about Japanese philosophy, thanks Stevan!). Experimenting with these ideas created a
different surface fabric – more dense and patterned with slanted, crossed
stitches like herringbone.
Our investigations continue: Participant Stevan
sent us a cleek hook whittled from a piece of firewood at home, along with a
link to a 1981 Crochet World magazine (p.60)
which, like the SWRI in the 1950s, was concerned about the handcraft practice
of what it described as ‘Highlander Crochet’ becoming lost. My fingers are
itching to get into the textile collections of Scottish museums in search of
misattributed cleekwork amongst the archives… for example, might some of the
206 items related to crochet in the National Museum in Edinburgh perhaps be
‘cleekit’ instead? Louise has discovered
more related letters and is hoping that the SWRI may have an accessible archive
to explore. It feels like this work may
be the latest iteration of a determination to find out more about this lesser
known handcraft.
Comments
Post a Comment