Nalbinding isn’t the only corpus that is spread out across many institutions. Recently a number of museums have added to their online collection databases and we are now able to see quite a few more blue and white knitted artifacts from Egypt.
So in addition to the ones in The Textile Museum that I posted about in 2020: https://nalbound.com/2020/10/06/the-textile-museum/ I wanted to share a few others that I’ve found or had brought to my attention.
Here are three pieces from the Detroit Institute of the Arts:
https://dia.org/collection/knitted-hosiery-simplified-inscriptions-49401
https://dia.org/collection/knitted-hosiery-simplified-inscriptions-11553
https://dia.org/collection/knitted-hosiery-simplified-inscriptions-1789
The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst has four pieces:
https://id.smb.museum/object/1528093/socke-fu%C3%9Fbekleidung
https://id.smb.museum/object/1528094/socke-fu%C3%9Fbekleidung
https://id.smb.museum/object/1528095/socke-fu%C3%9Fbekleidung
https://id.smb.museum/object/1528092/socke-fu%C3%9Fbekleidung
In 2019 I had the opportunity to go to the Museum der Kulturen Basel to study the nalbinding they have in their collection. While there, they shared a few pieces of their blue and white knitting with me as well. As they were putting it away, I got hints that they had an extensive collection. The Museum der Kulturen Basel has just recently put their collection online and there are some amazing pieces. Their database does not have permalinks to individual artifacts, so you will need to search via the Object Number for more details on each piece: https://www.mkb.ch/en/museum/sammlung.html
This bit of blue and white knitting isn’t in an online catalog, but the article in which it was published is online: https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/benaki/article/view/1765/1754
Do you have links to other blue & white knitting from Egypt?
Edit: Thank you Geeske for reminding me of this one in the V&A: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O128882/sock-unknown/
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Wow, what a fabulous collection of designs. I checked a couple of them for dates. Can 11th/12th century be applied to all the samples? How did they date these socks? And is there more specific location information than just “Egypt”?
These socks likely retain their old art historical dating, but we have seen some blue & white knitted socks be radicarbon dated more recently which seems to corroborate 11th-12th century. Unfortunately many of these were collected and sold before modern scientific standards of excavation, so no, we don’t know where exactly they were found.
Do you know any actual knitting patterns for these socks? I’m a knitter and might want to try to knit them at some point.
Cris Laning has charted the patterns for some of this style: Egyptian-Stockings.pdf https://share.google/wm0D0kBN8XiOZVqSL
from Nancy Bush:
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/egyptian-socks-2
Nice! I notice that along with some familiar knitted pieces (and some unfamiliar, goody!) the Benaki paper has some fairly clear photos of the (infamous) pieces sometimes cited as examples of “crochet.” Good to get a better look at those. I and others very much doubt they are crochet, for the record.