walking in Philadelphia: 2

(William Birch, Views of Philadelphia, 1800).

This is an account of a walk covering eight miles over one day in Philadelphia. Warning! This post is long, and chock-full of personal nostalgia and eighteenth-century references!

I started by strolling up Broad Street, past City Hall, and turned East on Arch, where I stopped at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, which I had not previously visited. In their ‘New American Voices’ exhibition, I was singularly underwhelmed by the work of Robert Chambers (large egg, swirling ribbons, John Deere Tractor) but enjoyed Bill Smith’s pieces a little more — felt that he evidently had a scientist’s feel for the aesthetic, and thought that his work had a sort of internal mobility to it which rendered its interactive bells and whistles a bit superfluous — not to mention potentially self-destructive (while I was there, one of his “metamorphic complex interaction models” threatened to set fire to itself.) In the museum shop, I bought myself one of these brooches, left, and continued along Arch Street.

Further along Arch, I was completely baffled to see the focus of the new exhibition at the National Constitution Centre: Diana, A Celebration. Di’s giant, winsome phizog smiled down from every lampost on a three block radius. The irony of celebrating an icon of British aristocratic privilege in the birthplace of American democracy had clearly been lost on the show’s curators. I did not go inside.

I went to visit some old friends in Christ Church burial ground. The worn grave of Francis Hopkinson is deeply moving. Those of Deborah Reed and Ben Franklin are close to the churchyard entrance, and the street. Passers-by throw coins through the churchyard railings at Franklin’s grave, in the manner of a wishing well.

This act of coin-throwing (for luck?) seems to me symptomatic of the almost universal warmth with which Franklin is popularly regarded. It is noticeable that, while the plaques one sees about Philadelphia of Franklin’s face are worn smooth and shiny by the weight of many children’s hands, those of William Penn are not.

In an eighteenth-century mood, I continued to the Friends meeting house at Fourth and Arch . This is the home of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and the largest Quaker meeting house in the world. It is an early nineteenth-century building, and Charles Brockden Brown is buried in its grounds. Now, I am a person of no faith at all, but the space which once held the separate women’s meeting draws from me profound affection and respect. Among these bare boards and benches, with the good smell of wood and the sunlight flickering in through the windows, sat many wonderful Quaker women writers, intellectuals, philanthropists.

I like the graffiti, too.

While I was sitting there having my moment, a woman came in looking for Franklin’s pew. The mild octogenarian at the entrance reminded her of Ben’s religious affiliations. Discovering that she had mistakenly wandered into a Quaker meeting house, the woman started up a rabid harangue about the death penalty, that “turn the other cheek crap” and how America had “gone too soft.” I rose to leave and, on my way out, couldn’t resist saying that I found her comments rather disrespectful, “I can say what I like where I like,” she shouted after me, “this is America. We’re free here . . unlike other countries.”

A Union Jack flew proudly from one of the houses on Elfreth’s Alley. This amused me, but not as much as the lone coat hanger I found swinging from a holly bush. Had someone hung something there to air? In the past, I’ve found Elfreth’s Alley a discomfiting kind of place — a tiny, tourist-packed thoroughfare sandwiched stoically between the Delaware Expressway and several parking garages — but today it seemed a haven. There was no one about but me, and I spent a happy half hour examining the brickwork and the fire-insurance marks.

On Second Street, I stopped at a picket line to chat to some carpenters who were protesting about their contracts which had been summarily cancelled. Then, with some excitement, I turned onto Market Street, and walked West for a block: to the location of Hannah Griffitts’ apocalyptic dream (which formed the focus of my lecture at PSU). Appropriately, at the intersection, I found a man in eighteenth-century costume. He seemed a little lost.

But he could count himself lucky he wasn’t a figure in Hannah Griffitt’s subconscious on 18th April, 1775. “There appear’d a most extraordinary phenomenon—a ball of fire in ye air, ye houses all ready to take fire in flames, & ye people fainting & dying in ye streets. . . ” No fireball today, thankfully. In fact, the only thing vaguely apocalyptic about the intersection of Third and Market was SUIT CORNER at its South and East.

(compare the south / east corner of third and market to William Birch’s depiction of 1800, at the top left of this post).

Thinking about Hannah Griffitts, I continued down Second to the place where her small house had once stood. It was Norris Alley then. Now it is Sansom Street. Her house was located where the blue car is parked.

By now I was thirsty and a little overwrought, so I popped into the famous revolutionary drinking hole on Second — the city tavern. There were no radicals there now, however: indeed in the tavern foyer, I spotted a framed copy of the Princess Diana commemorative issue of Hello! magazine. Had Di somehow taken possession of the soul of Philadelphia?

Against my better judgment (and certainly my eighteenth-century political inclinations) I tried a glass of Alexander Hamilton’s federalist ale. The chap in breeches behind the bar insisted that I also have a small taste of the George Washington Porter (very good) and Ben Franklin’s Spruce Ale (not so good. I like my hops). I didn’t realise quite how strong these ales were (over 8%, apparently), and confess that they left me feeling a little worse for wear. I departed swiftly when a bloke of Irish extraction joined me at the bar, and, upon hearing my accent, seemed desperate to establish some sort of connection with the old country. As I left, I may have also stolen a beer mat bearing the (to me) appealing slogan: “Ales of the Revolution.” On leaving the tavern, I had a sudden desire to see the face of Elbridge Gerry (perhaps as a corrective to the federalist ale) so I popped up to the Second Bank of the United States to say hello.

This impressive building now houses some great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portraits. But like Susan Stabile, when I see the Bank, I think of the childhood home of Deborah Norris Logan that once stood here. South, on Walnut Street, there is a small “eighteenth-century garden”. I am fond of box, but confess my my taste in eighteenth-century gardening is a little wilder than this.

I bought a bottle of water, walked past Washington Square, and turned South on Ninth Street, West on South Street, then North on eleventh, and loitered around Spruce and Pine. This was my old neighborhood.

I recalled a lovely evening, eating supper with a friend in the garden room at Effies, with the snow falling quietly outside. By now I was hungry. I walked up Quince, turned West on Locust, North on Broad, and West again on Walnut Street. I popped into a bakery off Rittenhouse square to buy myself a couple of snacks. Then I walked past Anthropologie, and up Nineteenth Street (no, I did not enter the hallowed mammon-temple of Anthropologie. Rather, I muttered darkly as I passed its open door, holding my breath to avoid the migraine-inducing fug of scented candles. That’s right, ladies: I do not like Anthropologie. One day I may elaborate further . . . ).

Moving at my top walking pace, I strode up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (bah), heading for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. By this point I was on a personal pilgrimage: to see Cy Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam. The first time I stood before the Achilles canvases, I felt faint and had to sit down. It is a work I often think about. I wanted to see it again.

I sat with the Fifty Days for a while, and then some ten year olds appeared in the antechamber, in which is displayed the Shield of Achilles (which prefaces the nine giant canvases of the Fifty Days). I listened in on their class discussion and they were truly brilliant — not only did they seem to know an awful lot about the Trojan War, but they got the rage, energy, intellect, and emotion of Twombly right away. I left them to it. Outside, it was Autumn.

. . . and it was time to go home.

experiments

#1. Jam. I blame Sarah. She brought a jar of her homemade jam round for lunch, and it was so damn fine I had to try my hand. These jars combine the last of our allotment raspberries with some extra from the farmer’s market. Jamtastic! It set, and everything. We have already guzzled our way through one of the six jars.

#2. Baking. I blame Felix. She turned up here a few weeks ago with a jar full of sourdough starter, and her characteristic culinary enthusiasm. Since, then, I’ve not been able to stop baking. I’ve made several loaves, flatbread, a victoria sandwich, scones, a marmalade cake, and, um, buns . . . with varying degrees of success. The less said about these buns, the better.

#3. Technique. I am researching knitting accessories, and since acquiring one of these am keen to discover exactly what using it involves. As my own experiments have been rather clumsy, I defer to someone with superlative expertise, who is here pictured mastering the makkin, and knitting with two strands in the right hand, Shetland style.

#4. Colour. I am completely obsessed with colourwork, and blame the current depth of my obsession on Alice Starmore’s Hebridean 2ply, with which I knit this experimental hat a few weeks ago. My experiment was not entirely successful, but it has certainly whet my appetite for further experimental forays with this yarn. To make the hat, I simply selected four colours that I liked, measured my head and my gauge swatch, picked out a few 10 stitch peerie patterns, and cast on. (I didn’t cast on in icord — but found that I had to add some later — I just couldn’t stop myself . . .). Now, while the palette I chose is perhaps too muted to be successful, and while the crown shaping is certainly not quite right, I really learnt a lot when knitting this hat: about colour behaviour and placement, and about the relationship between colour and pattern. I also finished knitting it with a confirmed sense of Starmore’s genius. Her colourways really are amazing. For example, ‘pebble beach’ – the pale colour that I tried to make pop out of the centre of the first few sets of peeries — is a truly gorgeous mercurial shade. It looks greenish here, but its colour dominance shifts dramatically depending on its placement. I’ve tried it in other combinations since, and against different colours it can look fawn or mauve, gold or pink (much like the pebble beach behind me, in fact). These shifting tones are apparently produced by a blend of more than thirty shades. The funny thing about this hat is that, despite the fact that it is a sort of large swatch with several design deficiencies, I have developed a deep fondness for it. I brought it to Islay, and I barely took it off my head. I think the precise and thoughtful relationship of Starmore’s palete to the Hebridean landscape has a lot to do with my affection. Anyway, my peerie-sampler-hat-experiment is ravelled here, and the colours I used were capercaillie, fulmar, pebble beach, and driftwood.

I am now knitting experimentally with an allotment-inspired colour pallette. I also find Felix’s wise words about knitted vegetables very inspiring. More soon!

tea and knitting

For many of us, tea and knitting go together like . . . well, like tea and knitting. Personally, I can think of no better beverage to accompany the activity of knitting than what Dr Johnson (a great tea drinker) would have referred to as a dish of fine bohea, (or in my case, Yorkshire). Knitters love tea. Like many other shops, my local yarn store also serves tasty pots of tea, and does what can only be described as a roaring trade in tea cosies. This connection between teapot, yarn, and needles seems so self-evident to knitters that it has even inspired a recently published book of patterns (which I have not seen, so can make no remarks upon).

But I’ve been pondering the connection between tea and knitting in a rather different context of late, while reading about the knitters of nineteenth-century Shetland. We have all probably absorbed one stereotype of such women, from these frequently reproduced images of creel-laden figures, knitting while walking, and gathering fuel.

(postcard, c. 1910).

Through the second half of the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth, such postcards lent Shetland workers the status of picturesque curiosities (in a manner not dissimilar to those depicting Welsh women with spinning wheels and stove-pipe hats). Yet despite the novelty-value of such images, they reflected a certain reality, while also suggesting a (largely positive) notion of the women of Shetland as models of virtue, industry, and physical capability. This image of the Shetland knitter as an indomitable multi-tasker perhaps still persists, but far less familiar today is another stereotype — just as persuasive and pervasive in depictions of Shetland — of the women of those islands as inveterate addicts of tea.

In 1840, Edinburgh children’s author, Catherine Sinclair wrote about the “marvellous excess” of the tea drinking she had encountered on Shetland. Sinclair’s writing was generally lively and emotive, but on the subject of tea-imbibing working women particularly so: “the indulgence amounts to an absolute vice!” she remarked. Sinclair followed up these histrionics with a few examples of Shetland’s purported tea excess, including the story of “a poor man in the parish of Bressay, who had the expensive affliction of a tea-drinking wife, and was cheated by her secretly selling his goods to obtain tea.” For several decades after her book appeared, Sinclair was cited as the principal source of evidence for many other publications making similarly misguided claims about the crazed-tea-dependent women of Shetland. For example, her “poor man of Bressay” appears in Chambers’ 1854 Compendium, his story embellished as follows:

“Although intemperance in the use of intoxicating liquors could be cited as an unfortunate feature in some departments of the population, Shetland is still more remarkable for the ineconomic use of a beverage which is ordinarily considered the antagonist of intemperance -– I allude to tea. No kind of beverage is so much relished by the female peasantry of Shetland as tea. To get tea they will venture as great and unprincipled lengths as any dramdrinker will go for his favourite liquor.”

A couple of years later, Sinclair was cited again, backing up the claims of the Statistical, Topographical and Historical Gazetteer of Scotland that: “A passion for tea, to the extent of feeling the narcotic influence of the herb, seems so strong and general as to threaten that country [Shetland] with serious disaster.” In Sinclair’s tour, and in the host of other publications that followed her lead, the working women of Shetland were described as obsessed with, addicted to, and ruined by tea. Women had, in fact, made tea “the curse of Shetland.”

Tea was indeed the curse of Shetland, but not as Catherine Sinclair would have it. It was at the heart of the islands’ pernicious truck system, a legacy of the Dutch fishing trade, in which labour and goods were bartered rather than paid in cash. The merchants and shopkeepers of nineteenth-century Shetland had transformed tea into specie: the currency which women received in payment for their hard work — and that hard work was, of course, knitting. The fine hosiery and shawls that Shetland knitters produced were valued in tea, and paid in tea. Thus the claims of Sinclair and others that, “excessive indulgence [in tea] keeps the Shetland peasant lower in the scale of poverty,” completely missed the point. In fact, what reinforced the poverty of Shetland knitters was not tea-addiction or indulgence, but the fact that they received no other form of payment for their work. In the words of Lynn Abrams (to whom my discussion here is indebted): “The consequence of this system of payment was that hand knitters were forced to spend much time and energy turning the payment they received for their hosiery into items they needed, or into cash – – a family could not live on tea alone.”

Image courtesy of Shetland Museum and Archives, © R03026.

Truck had been illegal in Britain since 1831, but the law had proved notoriously difficult to enforce. In 1872, the UK truck commission visited Shetland, and their report makes sobering reading. Shetland women spoke articulately of the tyranny of knitting, and the baleful economic effects of payment in tea. Despite the findings of the commission, truck persisted in various forms on Shetland for several decades, and women continued to receive no other remuneration than undrinkable quantities of tea that they were forced to sell on to their neighbours at a loss. No wonder then that, in the words of Lynn Abrams again: “knitting evokes little sentimentality among Shetland women for they are conscious of its alternative symbolism — of the exploitation of women’s labour and skills by merchants.” Tea and knitting are one of today’s happy luxuries. But I’ll remember before I stick the kettle on that they were, in living memory, also the agents of women’s economic oppression.

Further reading / viewing:
I strongly urge anyone with an interest in Shetland knitting to read the chapter on ‘work’ in Lynn Abrams incisive and insightful Myth and Materiality in a Woman’s World: Shetland 1800-2000. (Manchester University Press, 2005). You can ask your library to order it, or acquire it on interlibrary loan if it isn’t locally available.
Alice Starmore, Book of Fairisle Knitting (1988). Happily for everyone, soon to be reprinted.
Catherine Sinclair, Shetland and the Shetlanders, or, the Northern Circuit (1840).

Also see:
Rosie Gibson, “The Work they Say is Mine” (1986). Award-winning documentary about Shetland working women.
Jenny Brown (Gilbertson), “Rugged Island,” (1934). Both films are available through the BFI.

my kind of day

Familiar paths. An archive within walking distance.

Happy hours spent researching old things.

Food for thought.

me news

Some of you may be interested to know that I’ve a feature in the new Rowan Magazine (no.46), which is out today. The piece is about British industrial textile history, and the past and future of two important mills — Cold Harbour, and New Lanark.* I really enjoyed writing this feature, as I’m sure you can imagine. In other me-related news, I have finally found some time to finish off not one, but two patterns, which I will be able to ‘release’ in a few days. The first is, at long last, the cloud (about which some of you have been asking) – hurrah! The second is what I am knitting here, on this Jura beach, several weeks ago.

More about this garment very shortly.

Thanks for your thoughts on the last post. I now find myself able to step back and ponder my own cashmere-antipathy, which — legitimate and important objections to a particular global economic model and and its environmental impact notwithstanding — I fear may also be tinged with a (perhaps suspect) aversion to cashmere’s (incidental?) associations with empire, excess, and a certain kind of femininity. Should one really condemn a fibre and an entire fibre industry because of the way its symbolic connotations feed into a particular (gendered) debate about luxury and the mass market? Because I feel that cashmere-as-commodity somehow offends my version of feminism? I feel much the same way about cupcakes, for example, but that doesn’t stop me enjoying them. And, as Colleen points out, pleasure is not an insignificant component of one’s relationship to ‘luxury’ textiles which can be consumed and enjoyed in thoughtful (and sustainable) ways. Heather also neatly puts her finger on my capacity for self-delusion. While I am a complete sucker for a certain kind of nationalistic marketing (the kind that involves sheep and rolling hills, roaming free and Yorkshire Tea, ahem) I sneer at another which (to me) unfortunately suggests lounge or leisure wear, golf**, and Ronnie Corbett (cue ‘sorry‘ theme tune). Show me a coachload of cashmere-clad English golfbuddies heading for the House of Bruar and I will run a mile. On the other hand, wave 100g of sludge coloured yarn under my nose that smells vaguely of the farmyard, with an ovine phizog depicted upon it, and I’ll have shown you the colour of my money before you can say “British Sheep Breeds.”

I also wanted to say how much I always enjoy your book recommendations, and to thank you for two recent ones in particular: Sigrun for Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local and Kate M for the poetry of Sorley MacClean, which I am really enjoying, and wishing I could read in Gaelic.

*special thanks to Felix and the Felix-mobile
**apologies to Fiona

golden fleece?

Warning: long and ranty post.

(view across the water from Shilasdair)

While we were on Skye last weekend, I (of course) found time to visit Shilasdair. I was last at this naturally-dyed-yarn-mecca in 2007, when I bought Shetland aran in two wonderful muted shades, and made this sweater (rav link), a garment of which I am inordinately fond. The yarn knit up like a dream and then bloomed and softened beautifully. The marvellous dusky colours have stayed true and softly luminous. The sweater is tough and hard-wearing, and yet cosy and warm. I love the sweater and the yarn of which it is fashioned. And so I went to Shilasdair to get me some more. Now, Eva Lambert is a brilliant and inspirational craftswoman, and none of what follows is meant as a direct criticism either of her or her business. . . but. . . I was very disappointed to discover that Shilasdair is in the process of discontinuing the glorious shetland (with which I am clearly obsessed), replacing it with a range of “luxury” yarns: merino, angora — and, of course, cashmere. Only sad bin-ends of the shetland remained, so I bought some of the luxury DK (20% cashmere, 20% angora, 40% merino) with a small degree of regret, and a much larger one of ambivalence. And I’ve spent much of the past few days thinking about about ‘luxury’ yarns, their history, their meaning as commodities, and my attitude to them.

(Shilasdair ‘luxury’ DK. Skye tansy overdyed with indigo).

Cashmere is, of course, deliciously soft and takes colour beautifully. It is wildly popular both with the discerning knitter who enjoys feeding its gorgeous buttery-ness through her hands, as well as with the general consumer, who snaps up cashmere bargains of dubious ethics and standards at Tesco or Primark, or lives for Locharron and Johnston’s famous annual sales. In Scotland particularly, the market for cashmere — both as yarn and finished garment — is buoyant and lucrative. And, as with much of the rest of the country, Skye receives an awful lot of visitors who associate cashmere with Scotland, and expect to be able to buy it here. Many visitors, I suspect, would regard cashmere as Scotland’s second national product (after whisky). So this new Shilasdair range is clearly speaking to a market through a commodity with which Scotland’s national identity is inextricably bound up. To give another example, here in Edinburgh, there is a yarn store (of which I am a good friend and patron) that is conveniently situated off the cashmere-and-visitor lined Royal Mile. In response to market demand, the store has developed a yarn-line of incredible expense and (to my mind) rather questionable quality, containing a small percentage of cashmere.

(“not all cashmere is created equal”. Images and tagline from the Scottish Cashmere Club)

Like other commodities, Scottish cashmere has its own nationalist discourse. Central to this discourse are the familiar refrains of national quality, exclusivity, and luxury under threat. By the British and Scottish governments, as well as by its various agencies and trade associations, Scottish cashmere is represented as perpetually threatened by the inferior products and processing techniques that emerged in China after economic liberalisation. During the 1990s, the Scottish cashmere industry was certainly significantly affected by limited supplies of quality base materials as Chinese manufacturers rushed to cash in on a lucrative market with their cheap alternatives to the luxe sweaters of Bonnie Scotland. Scottish cashmere — our national textile that is raised on the undersides of Mongolian goats and shipped half way across the world before being processed, and shipped out to global markets from our quality Scottish mills — must be protected from the competition of the country that raises the animals who provide most of the industry’s base materials. Of course, the different stages of processing involved in the production of any modern textile mean that, to one extent or another, it will always be an international rather than a national commodity, but the different ways in which textiles are claimed as national are always very interesting — and in cashmere’s case, particularly so. You may remember, for example, that the so-called banana wars that disrupted EU / US trade relations in 1999 and 2000 turned on Scottish cashmere. How so? Well, the inclusion of cashmere on a list of commodities earmarked for punitive US import duties prompted an intriguing personal exchange between Blair and Clinton, in which the former agreed to use his influence to sort out the EU’s banana subsidy dispute in return for the latter lifting the impending cashmere tariff. (Clinton was later attacked in both US houses for removing Scottish cashmere from the tariff schedule). Ironically, the threat that the banana wars posed to Scottish cashmere raised market awareness, and apparently boosted the industry.

(bananas)

I am pleased that the Scottish cashmere industry is buoyant, not least for the thousand or so Scots it employs. But as the labour of this workforce remains largely hidden in cashmere’s nationalist discourse, so too does the question of the impact and ethics of increased production of this ‘luxury’ product. Concerns about the fibre’s environmental impact never feature in the discourse of Scottish national protection. Knitters, spinners, and raisers of wool-producing animals will know that cashmere goats produce just a few ounces of quality down per year, but are, like all goats, voracious consumers. They will also have heard about how, in response to Western market demand for more and cheaper cashmere, goat numbers have increased dramatically during the last decade, resulting in the deforestation and desertification of some grazing lands in the far east.

(goats)

And the ultimate irony about Scottish cashmere — an exclusive, luxury product reputedly threatened by mass-market demand and mass-market production — is that it was itself first developed in response to the mass market. (Warning: I’m putting my historian’s hat on now). Cashmere first rose to prominence in Europe during the Napoleonic wars. In 1798, there was no more desirable, expensive, or exclusive garment for the fashionable women of Paris than a hand-made cashmere shawl sent home by their male relatives who were then fighting in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. The original Kashmir shawls (which often took their peasant artisans several years to make) were sold in pairs, were handwoven, and were of incredible fineness, softness — and, of course, cost. In the portrait you see below, Josephine, empress of France, drapes one cashmere shawl about her shoulders, and in the ultimate fashionable-imperialist swagger, has incorporated a second into the lower panel of her dress.

Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Josephine, Empress of France (c.1808) (Musee d’Art et d’Histoire, Palais Massena, Nice).

In her extraordinarily pricey and exotic drapery, Josephine is a sort of exotic commodity herself: the feminine objective of the empire; an emblem of the gigantic imperial ambitions of the nation at whose helm she stood. If one is not aware of the cachet of these first handwoven cashmere shawls, it is perhaps hard to see what Josephine is wearing here in terms of its truly outlandish luxuriance. And perhaps the design of such shawls is also so familiar to us now that we no longer read them — as they would have been read in the early nineteenth century — as signs of the exclusive, the oriental, and the exotic. In fact, the first word that springs to our minds when we look at Josephine’s gorgeous cashmere could well be Paisley (of which more in a moment)

(Cashmere shawls in fashion plates from Costumes Parisiennes, 1801-1811).

In the first convolute of his Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin writes of the “cashmere fever” that gripped France during the Nineteenth Century: “it began to spread during the Consulate, grew greater under the Empire, became gigantic during the Restoration, reached colossal size under the July Monarchy, and has finally assumed Sphinx-like dimensions since the February Revolution of 1848.” Cashmere shawls appear on a number of occasions in this early convolute, and Benjamin’s fascination with them is clearly about the way they typify the transition from exclusivity and luxury to the mass-market (there are several remarks about their depreciating value over the course of the century). The same process that Benjamin found interesting in France was happening across the channel too: Britain was experiencing its own “cashmere fever” and demand for quality shawls far outstripped supply. After an innovative method of spinning cashmere yarn was pioneered at Barège in France, a premium was offered by the Board for the for Encouragement of Manufactures to introduce similar techniques to Scotland, in order to produce cashmere yarn and cloth of a quality that was deemed to surpass that of the French. In 1833, Houldsworth and Sons of Glasgow were awarded the premium and then the looms of nearby Paisley — a manufacturing centre already well-known for its fine silks and muslins — began to reproduce (and, indeed, to creatively transform) the textile patterns and effects formerly achieved in the earlier, Kashmir hand-woven shawls.

(Kashmir / Paisley motifs)

Spun and woven cashmere was certainly big business in Britain by the mid nineteenth century. The Catalogue of the 1851 Great Exhibition features an incredible number of cashmere shawls, as well as the fibre of the cashmere goats that Prince Albert was then attempting to raise at Windsor Palace. And I must say that what first sprung to my mind when I started thinking about cashmere a few days ago, was the striking and handsome figure cut by Margaret Hale in the opening pages of Gaskell’s North and South (1855). With her tall frame and (convenient) mourning dress, Margaret forms the ideal draping-model to set off “the long beautiful folds” of the soft, colourful cashmere shawls acquired by her uncle in India, which were to form the luxuriant centrepiece of spoilt cousin Edith’s marital trousseau.

I have come a long way from where I began, but my point is that the nineteenth century origin of Scottish cashmere is precisely as a mass-market product, that was developed in order to compete with the exclusive hand-woven shawls of the peasant crafstmen and women of the east. Yet now the Scottish cashmere industry has lent itself a certain kind of artisanal status (or at least claims a national(ist) heritage that overlaps with the artisanal), and is threatened by eastern responses to the demands of the mass market. So where does this leave me and my skeins of 20% cashmere Shilasdair yarn? Well, I’m still pondering the significance and symbolism of Scottish cashmere (an historical matter of a particular method of yarn-processing), and I will confess to a certain amount of Benjamin-like distaste about the contemporary fashionable rhetoric of cashmere as an Affordable Luxury to which Every Woman Deserves to Treat Herself. According to Jennifer Sanders in the closing paragraphs of an utterly pointless piece of self-help froth entitled Buy More Cashmere (2005):

“Cashmere is a wonderful metaphor for whatever it is that we seem to deny ourselves. “Oh no” you say, as someone offers you a treat, “I really shouldn’t . . .” Yes, you really should. Why pour yourself and your energies into others on an endless basis? Please, save some of you for you. And I’ll see you at the cashmere counter!”

This consumerist rubbish — in which the purchase of a mass-produced woollen product somehow compensates for the deficiencies of a self-abnegating femininity — really makes me lose the will to live. I’d like to say to Jennifer — and to my yarn-consuming self as well: don’t buy more cashmere. Those whose business it is to reflect critically on the economics of global textile production have raised serious concerns about the environmental impact of producing and processing the fibre.* And at a moment when a British sheep can be bought for under ten pounds, when British wool is being burnt rather than spun, and when a quality fleece can cost less than the price of the shearing, there are probably better ways in which to spend your money. I’m of course aware that my knitting is in itself a luxury, and that, in pursuit of it, I deploy many of my own ideological / national delusions — perhaps particularly in relation to my love of Shetland wool. I’m also aware that there are many great small cashmere producers, spinning gorgeous yarn, with a careful eye to the ethics and impact of what they are doing. The same can be said of the many wonderful independent dyers, on Skye, or elsewhere, who produce beautiful cashmere yarns. But I still wish I could have bought that Shetland.

As always, your thoughts and comments on this issue will be much appreciated.

* “The challenge to supply the markets with cashmere wool serves as a significant economic struggle to meet increasing demand and maximise profits. One must look beyond [the] fashion and luxury of cashmere garments to the possible detrimental effects on the environment.” Robert Franck, Silk, Mohair, Cashmere and Other Luxury Fibres (Textile Institute of Manchester, 2001), 223.

Further reading:
Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project (Eiland and McLaughlin, trans) (Belknap Presss, 1999), Convolute A: Arcades, Magasins de Nouveates, Sales Clerks, 32-61.
Linda Cortwright, “The Cashmere Complex“, Wild Fibers Magazine, Spring 2007, vol. 4, issue 2
John Irwin, The Kashmir Shawl (Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973).
Valerie Reilly, The Paisley Pattern (Richard Drew, 1987)

just a couple of things

I’ve been meaning to mention:

After writing about station bars a few weeks ago, I felt compelled to visit the one at Manchester Victoria for old times sake. The view above eye level was just how I remembered it. Below, though, I encountered the evil Pumpkin. When I asked the barman if he had any ale on draught, he rolled his eyes and pointed to the bottles of Newky Brown in the fridge. Oh dear. The Centurion this was not. Thankyou, Lisa, for the link to this article, which sums up the sad situation in this beautiful space.

Also, following on from my chat with the marvelous Mrs Sew and Sew, I had to show you this fabric design I discovered in Drucilla Cole’s 1000 Patterns book. Look closely: those ’66’s refer to the annual ration allowance of clothing coupons, and the numbers beside each garment (ostensibly) refer to their respective coupon-cost. If the design is from the ’40s (as a reference in Cole’s book suggests) then this jolly fabric would itself have carried a cost in coupons . . . Cole doesn’t say much about it (her very good book is mostly an exposition of pattern design) and I am very intrigued by this fabric. If anyone knows anything at all about it, I’d be very interested to hear.

Thanks for all your entries in the bee-bag giveaway — I was particularly excited to see the comments of those who actually keep bees. How I wish they allowed hives on the allotment . . .

Mrs Sew and Sew interview

Since my sister bought me this book a while ago, I have taken all my darning advice from Mrs Sew and Sew — the fictional character invented by the British Board of Trade to promote practices of mending and making do. When considering war-time rations, we perhaps first think of food and fuel, but clothes and textiles rationing was introduced in 1941 and continued until 1949. The clothing allowance, which enabled each person to acquire what was thought of as the equivalent of one full outfit, began at sixty-six coupons per year, and was later cut as low as twenty. Children’s clothes carried a lower coupon value (to allow for fast-growing kids), and rations covered fabric and notions as well as finished garments. All garments were carefully itemised and valued. For example:
“Bolero, short jacket, short cape. If woollen or leather and with sleeves of not less than elbow length — 5 coupons. If not woollen or leather and with no sleeves or with sleeves of less than elbow length — 2 coupons” (Clothing Coupon Quiz (British Board of Trade, 1941)

(emergency clothing coupons like these were issued in special circumstances — such as when property had been destroyed by bombing).

At a time when a couple of yards of elastic might cost you a valuable coupon, the care and repair of clothes became paramount, and to encourage such thrifty practices, the Board of Trade and Ministry of Information invented the persona of Mrs Sew and Sew. In a series of pithy pamphlets (which you can still read today) Mrs Sew and Sew issued clear and constructive advice on all textile-related matters, from dressmaking with parachute nylon to recycling a worn rug into a pair of warm slippers. I love Mrs Sew and Sew’s pamphlets and often make use of them: her instructions on how to darn a sock really are the best and clearest I’ve read anywhere.

(Make do and Mend, 1943)

I was intrigued to discover that, with the support of the lovely people at the Imperial War Museum, Mrs Sew and Sew was, through the wonder of Twitter, once again dispensing her words of thrifty wisdom to the nation. In her witty missives, the home-front has been speaking to the twenty-first century in a variety of very interesting ways. I recommend signing up to follow her tweets and those of the IWM right away! While much has been made by other crafty commentators of how the 1940s dictum of “make do and mend” speaks to that discourse of thrift that has such a particular national currency right now, I would like to stress that Mrs Sew and Sew and her tweets are entirely free from political bias (by which I mean that she has in no way associated herself with the new-tory language of thrift or (God forbid) that of the Conservative Party’s celebrity housing advisor). In 1943, fuel rationing would not allow for a gigantic 4 x 4 in which to carry home your skip-pilfered furniture; nor would a jolly team of builders be available to renovate your derelict Devon home. And while I can’t speak for her, I’m pretty sure that Mrs Sew and Sew would not recommend doing the decorating in your best Cath Kidston frock. Do bear that in mind, Kirstie.

Anyway, its time for me to stop wittering on, and bring you a treat: yes, its Mrs Sew and Sew herself! I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Mrs Sew and Sew agreed to this interview, and would like to thank her (and the IWMs Sarah Gardiner, for kindly acting as her intermediary).

In what ways has your life changed since war began? Are any of these changes welcome?
The negative aspects of war are well known. Obviously having family abroad fighting on our behalf is incredibly difficult to cope with, while rationing and bombing has a huge effect on us back home. But in a positive light, the war has helped bring communities together to help one another. There are so many on my street that I didn’t know before the war that I know now. It’s a source of tremendous strength to know that you’re not suffering alone.

Do you think that managing on rations is easier in London than in the rest of mainland Britain?
I imagine it’s roughly the same. Rations are the same throughout the country, but of course in rural areas you have easier access to locally grown produce that might find its way to your plate without entering the ration system. And this is probably offset by the fact that produce from abroad often comes through London docks – and sometimes finds its way onto the black market.

I understand that the German magazine Frauen Warte is incorporating propaganda into its knitting patterns. What are your views on this?
Well, it’s not surprising really. They’re doing everything they can to win the war. I’m surprised we haven’t started doing it too!

Did you hear about the recent abuse of fuel rationing in Barrow in Furness? How can we discourage such things from happening?
I haven’t heard about the problems in Barrow in Furness, but I do think we need to keep reminding people why rationing is so important. We need to do everything we can to support the war effort, and these rations support this.

Will I manage to clothe myself and my family on the new reduced ration of clothing coupons? What are your top tips for coping on coupons?
It’s going to be difficult keeping everyone clothed on the rations. But there are lots of things you can do to make this easier. The most important thing to do is to really look after your current clothes to make them last as long as possible; repair holes as soon as they appear, shake out clothes before putting them on hangers, check stored clothes for moth eggs frequently and so on. And when clothes are really beyond repair, think about how they can be used in other ways…old sheets can be turned into handkerchiefs and thick material can be used to patch elbows and knees on children’s clothes.

Is knitting wool subject to rationing?
I’m afraid so. But have you got any old woollen items that you’re not wearing any more? It’s possible to unravel the wool from old clothes back into a ball – it’ll be thinner than it was before, but it should still be usable.

Should I just throw away my old, worn winter coat?
Oh, definitely not! Don’t forget that we’re all in the same position trying to make ends meet. Other people on the street are patching up their old clothes and it’s not embarrassing at all that you can do the same.

Help! I’ve found moths in my knitting basket. What can I do?
Oh no! Well the one thing moths hate is fresh air. Take the whole basket outside, empty it out and give everything a good shake. You might need to unravel the wool to get rid of all the moth eggs. They’re a real pest, and you should definitely give stored clothes a good shake outside too to get rid of the eggs (they’re often found under the collar).

Which women from the past do you most admire?
Oh, Marie Curie is top of the list without a doubt. An incredibly intelligent woman, and it’s so rare for a woman to succeed in such a male dominated profession. Did you know she was the first female professor at the University of Paris?
I also admire Madge Watt. She was the driving force behind getting the Women’s Institute in the UK, and this organisation has helped look after evacuees during WWII.

And who inspires you today?
It’s so difficult to just list one person. There are so many women pulling together to get us through the war, many of whom are only known on their street, that it would be unfair to name someone who’s famous. My answer is therefore that unsung heroes throughout the country are the source of my inspiration today.

Please tell us the name of your favourite film.
I love Gone With The Wind! It’s such a wonderful, stirring story. And Clark Gable is a real dish!

Thankyou, so much, Mrs Sew and Sew!

Links and further reading:
Imperial War Museum
Mass Observation Archive
Helen Reynolds, ’Your Clothes are Materials of War: The British Government Promotion of Home Sewing during the Second World War’, in The Culture of Sewing; Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking (Berg, Oxford, 1999), pp. 327-339.
C. Buckley, ‘On the margins: theorizing the history and significance of making and designing clothes at home’, Journal of Design History, volume 11, no 2 (1998), pp. 157-172

unpicking

When thinking about process, there is nothing more instructive than unpicking someone else’s stitches.

I found a beautiful hand-embroidered cloth on ebay. I have plans for it. The plans involve deconstructing and transforming it into something else. I began by undoing the slip stitches of its heavy, worn cord edging.

Then I started to unpick the tiny stitches which attach the embroidered front to the cloth’s very fine silk back. The silk is faded but luminous, alive with copper and green.

The secrets written in the cloth began to reveal themselves. Neatly folded hems. Pale green silk thread that moved through the cloth like clockwork. An outer layer of heavy cotton satteen. An inner layer of lining satteen, fresh and bright because unseen for decades. Embroidery worked through both layers. Each thread end carefully woven and hidden. The back of the work faultless in its steady execution.

. . .and just as mesmerising as the front.

It was then that my fascination with the little mysteries of this cloth changed into a something else. I felt a sense of privilege and respect — in unpicking the stitches I was re-living the work of their making, admiring the skill of a talented needlewoman. But my act was also one of trespass: me and my snipping embroidery scissors were destroying a once-whole thing. And as I, blithe, curious, surgeon-like, began to examine the cloth’s insides, I uncovered the truth of its age: the satteen was of a certain kind, and a little older than I’d imagined. I was an historical vandal, cutting through the threads of time.

In cutting someone else’s threads, as in wearing someone else’s clothes, there is the frisson of encounter. We don’t know and will never know the person who made or wore the thing, but they are speaking to us nonethless, in the movement of their hand through the stitches, or in the the shape of their body left in the garment. There is something deeply uncanny in the silence of cloth and clothes: the trace of an unknown and never-to-be-known physical presence. (One does not buy second hand shoes, because one shies away from the ghost of the foot inside.) As I unpicked the stitches, then, a simple encounter between me and the cloth changed into a more complex one between me and its maker. Because I was un-making a made thing my act seemed an intimate one, but it was an empty intimacy, an intimacy with no content. The embroidered cloth was both speaking and not speaking: of a someone living in those stitches and of the silence of the grave.

Wallace Stevens’ brilliant poem, The Emperor of Ice Cream, (1922) has much to say about the dumb intimacy of embroidery — and of death. Stevens describes the covering of a woman’s corpse with a cloth she embroidered when alive.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam
(lines 9 – 15)

Here the corpse is, like the cloth she embroidered, an everyday material object. She reminds us of death’s easy finality. Yet she also suggests the mute compassion of the world of things. We feel the weight of her hands on the lost knobs of the well-worn dresser; her fingers quick movement through the stitches of the cloth that decorates her dead countenance. She does not speak, all we can know is her corpse and her cloth. And it is in the relationship between these two material objects that the essence of the poem (perhaps another object in itself) lies. Gaudy embroidered fantails will never cover death, but each small act of making is an end in itself, capturing the (perhaps pointless) vitality of the human. Now get back in the kitchen (says Stevens) and enjoy your ice-cream.

Having unpicked my thoughts I will get on with the uncanny work of unpicking.

seeing the light in a station bar*

(Newcastle Central)

Tom and I were talking about station bars the other day and discovered that as teenagers, living many miles apart in Stretford and Rochdale, we both liked to hang around the one at Manchester Victoria. This had, before it fell victim to nailed-down chairs and the homogenising effects of Travellers Fayre (shudder), a marvellous, atmospheric and (to our teenage selves) immensely exotic interior: all stucco, coloured glass, and plush upholstery. (I’ve not been there for quite some time, so have no idea of its more recent fate). Anyway, our conversation turned on how station bars form a particular genre of British pub: how they are purportedly spaces of transition, of waiting, and therefore never a destination in themselves. But then we changed our minds and decided, that precisely because of their liminal status (being the place you go to before you get to where you were going; neither one place or another) station bars really are distinct destinations: in-between spaces, half-way places, purgatories of refreshment.

(Halfway hoose)

It then occurred to me that, largely because of my own transitional existence between two cities, I am a regular in two great examples of the genre: The Centurion in Newcastle Central and The Halfway House, just a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Waverley. Both serve a good range of ales (always a bonus); both are superlative station bars, and they both celebrate their particular in-between-ness in very different ways. The Centurion does so in a manner entirely in keeping with its surroundings in the grand Victorian sweep of John Dobson’s Newcastle Central station.

(The bar at The Centurion)

The bar pumps, which happily dispense a swift half of Rivet Catcher or Old Kiln Ale to me after a long day’s teaching, nestle behind glorious late nineteenth-century columns decorated in this stately and very excessive manner. Some of the tiles are exuberantly suggestive of fin-de-siecle train travel along the East Coast mainline: of steam, sunrise, and the view crossing the Tweed near Berwick:

The Centurion sits in what was, in the 1890s, the station’s first-class lounge. But, by the 1960s, it was frequented not by well-heeled passengers but disgruntled prisoners, after it was transformed into holding cells for the British Transport Police. British Rail then apparently did their best to destroy the tiles with a bucketload of paint, before the interior was finally restored to its former glory in 2000. Now The Centurion’s fabulous interior and fine ales can once again be enjoyed by travellers through the station, as well as all the good folk of the toon, (including a well-known group of knitters).

(Dear man who also likes The Centurion’s interior: thankyou for being in my picture)

The Centurion’s real showpiece has to be this mural which displays for North-bound travellers their promised destination: all dappled braes and rocky shores, green and gold and . . . rhododendrons. After looking at it many times, I think the landscape must be meant to suggest a view across Loch Lomond from the East shore (which of course became a popular tourist destination in the 1800s, largely because of train travel). It’s such a luridly late-Victorian highland fantasy, and I absolutely love it.

The interior of The Halfway House (HWH) also celebrates trains and transition, but in a rather different way.

While The Centurion is the epitome of opulence, with its high ceilings, elaborate decor, and luxurious surroundings, the Halfway House is all about being snug. This is the smallest and cosiest pub in Edinburgh. Within seconds of your train arriving, you can step out of Waverley Station, walk a few steps up Fleshmarket Close, and be in the welcoming interior of the HWH, enjoying a very reasonably priced lunch of hot stovies or cullen skink, and (oh joy of joys) a well-kept pint of Bitter and Twisted.

(HWH bar)

The pub is stuffed with railway paraphernalia, chief among which are posters and postcards celebrating the destinations one might reach on the old LNER.

Though the HWH is meant to be a stop-off point, a waiting room, a resting place between places, I am most fond of it because for me it is my final destination (and not purgatorial at all). I frequently meet Tom in there for a pint at the end of the working week, and I look forward to that pint immensely. Cheers.

Where are your favourite station bars?

*apologies to Nick Drake