Last Thursday we had a meeting of the Huddersfield KCG branch via Zoom. For the meeting my dear twin-sister had prepared a short slideshow presentation about Mrs Smith, a disabled knitter in Jane Austen’s book, Persuasion. In the book Mrs Smith talks about having learned to knit and using her newfound skills to make and sell knitted goods to raise funds for needy folk in her locale. The list of articles she mentions making includes pincushions, so my sister had found pictures of knitted pincushions from Georgian times to show us. All of them were knitted in stranded colourwork, and some had names and dates on them. That’s how I found out that the knitted letters I associate with Yorkshire Dales gloves were used in a knitting tradition that predates any extant Dales gloves. This was a very exciting discovery for me! The methods used to knit names into Dales gloves were clearly well established from an early period. Does the Dales personalised glove tradition also date back that far?
With this newfound knowledge I have spent the last few days researching Georgian knitted pincushions, thereby discovering a Yorkshire knitting tradition of which I was hitherto unaware. It turns out that over a period of about 50 years from the late 18th century to the early 19th century some folk in Yorkshire were knitting tiny silk pincushions (measurements I’ve seen vary from 4-6cm in diameter). They are beautiful, knitted in fine silk at a tension of approximately 10 to 15 sts per centimetre!
The tradition belongs to a very specific group of Yorkshire folk; members of The Society of Friends, aka Quakers. Many extant Quaker pincushions were made by pupils at the Quaker boarding school at Ackworth, and by patients at The Retreat, a Quaker mental asylum in York. The pincushions feature motifs and messages that also feature in the much more prolific embroidery samplers worked by Quaker children. The Ackworth samplers are famed in the embroidery world as they have a very unique style, entirely comprised of medallions and half medallions. There are several unfinished examples of such samplers in the collection at the Castle Museum in York. I wonder if the purpose of medallion samplers was to equip children with patterns to use in knitted pincushions, these being saleable items that they could use to raise funds? Note the kneeling slave in the second sampler pictured below. This motif was the emblem of the abolitionist movement headed by Quakers. There is a knitted pincushion featuring this motif in the Manchester Art Gallery. Knitted lettering on the reverse says ‘Am I not your Sister’.
Here are the Quaker samplers from the Castle Museum collection (all images courtesy of York Museums Trust :: https://yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk :: CC BY-SA 4.0):
The motifs appear over and over in other Quaker samplers, so it’s clear the children used shared reference material for the samplers, presumably copying from printed patterns or embroidered samples.
And here are the four Quaker pincushions from the Castle museum collection (all images courtesy of York Museums Trust :: https://yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk :: CC BY-SA 4.0). Pincushions from The Retreat have a knitted band around the edge, whereas pincushions from Ackworth have a ribbon sewn around them. Both Retreat pincushions have ‘From The Retreat near York’ knitted in the band. Another Retreat pincushion I’ve found online says ‘A trifle from The Retreat 1819’ on the band.
The samplers and pincushions comprise a wonderful pattern resource for colourwork knitting. Watch this space!
