The Textile Museum in Washington D.C.

The Textile Museum is working to put images of its collection online. Luckily that now includes multiple Islamic Era Egyptian socks. Beautiful photos of the blue and white cotton knitted socks and several compound nalbound socks.

The pilot site does not yet have their complete textile collection, but it does have several stunning examples of blue and white stranded knitting (interlooping) and four nalbound (interconnected looping) socks to add to the list of the Egyptian corpus. There is also one slip-stitch crochet sock that is going to require additional investigation into its provenance.* The catalog data is not necessarily up to date, which is not surprising given the volume and speed with which they are entering the records. They also have several Andean artifacts of interest as well.

Note: The pilot site doesn’t seem to react well to Facebook. So if you are viewing it there, you may get the same sock repeated. Try viewing it via WordPress or a different browser.

Knitted socks: Open loop stranded stockinette

Tube: two blues and white Arabic writing
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/1259

Sock: alternating leaves zigzag. Heel missing and some damage https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/1443

Sock: solidly patterned in a large gauge
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/3360

Sock: zigzag and writing stripes
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/6216

Sock: two blues & white entirely patterned sock, diamonds, triangles, writing, eight pointed star
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/8239/

Tube: vertical stranded stripes with bands of horizontal S and writing
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/9443/

Child’s sock with deer
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/10958

Fragment: white with writing on bands https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/10840

Fragment: white with bands of alternating horizontal hearts and scrolls
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/10885

Sock: bands of multiple diamonds. Missing most of the foot
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/13430

Sock: bands of writing
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/13698

Sock toe: two color bands, both dark blue and white and dark and light blue
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/15064

Tube: Bands of opposing hearts vertical
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/15399

Tube: bands of overlapping circles
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/17230

Nalbound socks: Compound nalbinding

Fragment: Toe and Instep cream colored: https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/21310

Sock: Cream with two stripes of blue near heel, potentially repair? https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/11119

Sock: Cream with brown toe and stripes near heel. Reddish and green? remnants at the cuff. Clear repair with blue fabric at heel partially remaining. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/7021

Sock: Two toes, cream with pink & blue toes and a pink and blue roped edge https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/4595

Crochet sock: Front Loop Only Slip Stitch Crochet

The technique and shaping both belie the listed dating. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/19973
*This would not be the only time that a slip-stitch crochet sock was slipped into a lot as a nalbound object. Such miss-identifications and resultant dating assumptions based on said miss-identification severely complicate research into the history and transmission of both crochet and nalbinding. Further discussions at https://nalbound.com/2019/05/03/nalbindings-myriad-of-variant-possibilities-and-the-dangers-of-insufficient-understanding-of-other-looped-textile-techniques/ and https://loopholes.blog/2019/04/crochetedness-nalboundness/ and https://www.mkb.ch/de/blog/2019/q1/sockenforscher.html

Andean Cross-Knit Looping variant

Nazca fringe band: https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/50046

Nazca Faces:
1. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/49784
2. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/49696
3. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/49611
4. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/49546

Nazca Bird & Flowers:
In the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/47959

Nazca Birds & Beans:
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/48993

Nazca Beans:
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/14862

People with Fans:
1. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/47772
2. https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/48676

Nazca, a really nice small fragment so the photo blows it up really nicely:
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/50471

Sihuas simple looping bag:
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/49780

One of several lovely forgeries: (Clearly crochet)
https://collections-gwu.zetcom.net/en/collection/item/59128

And of course a large number of other fascinating textiles.