Introduction

In the 1920s, during the restoration of Turku Cathedral, several seventeenth-and eighteenth-century coffins were opened, and well-preserved burial clothes belonging to local burgher and noble families were placed in the storage of the Turku Cathedral Museum. Among the items, the conservators found a pair of knitted silk stockings. These were discovered from a storage coffin that had once belonged to Elisabeth Bure (d. 1668), the wife of the Vice President of the Court of Appeals.¹ The stockings were catalogued as male stockings, probably because of their length, and dated to 1650. Their present-day colour is greyish brown, there is a narrow welt at the top of the stocking, a false zig-zag seam in the back, a decorative clock in the ankle and a zig-zag decoration at the edges of the heel gusset (Figure ii.1).

Knitted silk stockings, such as the surviving pair found in Turku, became a desired and widespread product and one of the key fashion innovations among European elites during the early modern period. As Andrea Caracausi and other historians have shown, by the end of the sixteenth century, extensive networks of makers and sellers produced and sold a wide range of knitted garments in a broad spectrum of qualities.²

Archival records confirm the growing presence of knitted stockings in the early modern period, not just among the privileged rich but also at the lower ranks of society. Family probate inventories from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries recorded knitted socks and stockings in a range of qualities and textures and wide variety of designs and colours so that even common artisans, such as barbers, shoemakers and innkeepers, might eventually appear in stockings of silk A Milanese wool merchant complained that, by the late seventeenth century, ‘it seems that even people of the lowest grade, carried by their ambition, take shame in using stockings of stamen or ordinary wool, using instead those made of filusello [spun waste silk thread] or silk made on frame’.³

Figure II.1 Pair of seventeenth-century hand-knitted silk stockings, with a false zig-zag seam in the back and a decorative clock, discovered in a storage coffin that had once belonged to Elisabeth Bure (d. 1668). Turku Cathedral Museum, Finland.

The merchant’s statement is confirmed by the ‘Refashioning’ data of artisan clothing. The database of Italian artisan fashions from 1550 to 1650 includes several pairs of stockings made of filusello and bavella, waste silks typically used for lower-grade knitted silk stockings.⁴ One Venetian paper-maker, Andrea, for example, who died in Venice in 1611, owned a dashing pair of yellow silk stockings of silk bavella, dyed in golden yellow.⁵

But how were the colourful knitted stockings that were described in the documents and depicted in contemporary visual images made, what did they look and feel like, and what level of skill and sophistication was required to knit different types of silk and wool stockings?

In order to understand the materials, techniques, visual look and sensory qualities of early modern knitting, the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project designed a participatory research experiment in order to reconstruct knitted socks and stockings.⁶ Carried out in 2019–22, this project based on citizen science had two aims: first, to generate new knowledge on the materiality and techniques of these popular fashion accessories, and second, to develop a collaborative framework for historical research by engaging the general public – in this case volunteer knitting experts – and museum professionals, in scientific research. To guarantee the success of a project involving volunteers, the project had to be planned well both scientifically and ethically.⁷

The experiment

The project began in 2019, when we placed a call on our website and social media inviting volunteers and collaborators to join our historical participatory research experiment. The call explained the scope of the project and the required skills, and we presented a detailed plan of the project for the volunteer participants during the first meeting. It was important to make sure that all volunteers understood the aims of the project and what they could expect from the collaboration, and that they had the agency to decide how much time and energy they wanted to contribute to the project. This included accepting the possibility that some volunteers might drop out during the project.

Since the early modern stocking industry produced a wide range of stockings of different qualities, we decided to reconstruct three different types of stockings: an artisanal wool sock based on archaeological evidence, a stocking based on the first known knitting instruction The Order How to Knit a Hose (1655), and a fine silk stocking replicating an extant seventeenth-century silk stocking at Turku Cathedral Museum.⁸ The decision to focus on a range of stockings, each of which involved a different skill set and making process, served two purposes. First, it made it possible to bring to life the variety of stockings that were listed in our data of artisan fashions and compare their visual look, sensory qualities and how they were made. Second, the range of experiments allowed the voluntary participants to select a project that suited their skill level and felt meaningful to them.

This meant that, at every stage and action of the project, we had a double aim: to gain new scientific knowledge and to engage and empower the volunteers by inviting them to share their craft expertise. The volunteer knitters participated closely in planning, from designing the workplan to communicating the results, and we kept in regular touch with them both at a group and at an individual level to share knowledge, updates and results.⁹

The process of reconstruction

We started the project with thirty-five volunteer participants. At the beginning of the project, we provided all volunteers with appropriate knitting materials and tools and organised a series of skill-building sessions for the participants where we explored and discussed the cultural meanings of early modern stockings, features of extant historical stockings and technical aspects of early modern knitting. We also explored methods of notetaking and documentation in experimental research and gave the volunteers notetaking templates, advising them to record the knitting process step-by-step, why they made specific decisions, how much time it took them to knit, and what failed or succeeded. We also encouraged the volunteer knitters to take notes on other aspects that contributed to the knitting experience, such as the space they worked in, their experiences and feelings, how hard it was to concentrate, the similarities and differences between modern and historical knitting, the tactile experiences and the effect of the weather or time of day on their knitting. In addition to descriptive data, the notetaking template included smiley-face Likert scales which volunteers could use to record how difficult they found casting on, knitting round, the clock pattern and the heel.¹⁰

During the training sessions, the volunteers tried different yarns and needles and decided which project out of the three options they wanted to pursue. The first option, the recreation of a simple woollen artisanal stocking, was based on surviving material evidence from early modern Denmark and involved a level of the knitters’ own creativity and problem-solving skills.¹¹ The aim of this experiment was to study the process of making a simple artisanal woollen stocking, and to consider role of creativity and personal preferences in the knitting process at a time when simple knitted artisanal socks both for domestic consumption and for the commercial market were typically made in rural homes without instructions to follow.

The second experiment, the reconstruction of a stocking based on the first known knitting pattern The Order How to Knit a Hose (1655), was designed to explore how early modern recipes can be used in reconstruction, how demanding was it was to follow the instructions and what kind of prior knowledge the knitter was expected to have to complete the task.

The final and the most challenging experiment, the replication of the fine seventeenth-century silk stocking from Turku Cathedral Museum, was the most complex of the experiments. We have chosen to describe this process here in more detail.

The reconstruction of the silk stocking

The replication experiment of the silk stocking began with a close technical examination of the original stocking at the Turku Cathedral Museum. The stocking was measured and photographed and, together with the conservator, we were allowed to take a tiny sample of the yarn from one of the unravelled edges of the stocking to carry out analysis of the fibres and dyes.¹² The scientific tests, carried out a few months later, suggested that this was a stocking of a fine calibre. The fibre analysis, conducted with SEM microscope and EDS analysis, demonstrated that the silk thread used for the stocking was made of the finest silk yarn available at this date, prepared from long and very fine slightly twisted Bombyx mori silk filaments (Figure ii.2). The analysis of the organic colourants showed that the stocking had been originally black, the colour of high fashion of the period, dyed using sticky alder bark and possibly mixed with gallnuts.¹³

In parallel with the scientific testing, a small group of experienced knitters began drafting the pattern. The group decided to split in three and each work on a different part of the stocking: the opening and the back seam, the clock and the foot. They relentlessly counted the stitches of the original stocking, knitted test swatches and tried out different techniques to figure out the pattern (Figure ii.3). Their close reading of the stocking revealed important preliminary information about its construction. The stocking was knitted in round from the top down, and all decorative stitches were made with purl stitches. The group also noticed that there is a change in the pattern on the back seam at the height of the clock, indicating that a more experienced knitter might have been responsible for the decorative clock, while the repetitive stitches and rounds were possibly made by their assistant or apprentice. The knitting also included mistakes, suggesting that, although this was a luxurious product, mistakes and slight asymmetry were considered acceptable or even inevitable.

While the pattern was being made by the knitting experts, we began to look for a yarn that would resemble the original Bombyx mori silk as closely as possible. This was important because our aim was not only to replicate the size, shape and texture of the stocking but also to gain access to the visual and sensory properties of such a fine early modern silk stocking.

Figure II.2 SEM microscopic image of the Bombyx mori silk fibres. Aalto University. The sample is taken from a seventeenth-century knitted silk stocking, conserved at Turku Cathedral Museum, Finland.

Figure II.3 Volunteer knitters studied the high-resolution images of the stockings found from the Turku Cathedral and counted every stitch to create the knitting pattern for the reconstruction. Aalto University, Helsinki, 2020.

One of the immediate difficulties was that Bombyx mori silk is not easily available commercially, because the industry was almost completely destroyed in the course of the nineteenth century, due to the Pebrine epidemic that made infected silkworms unable to produce silk thread. In 2019, however, we were fortunate to discover a small co-operative in Calabria, Nido di Seta, which had recently taken an initiative to revive the traditional Bombyx mori silkworm breeding. After visiting the silk farm to study the processes of silk making, we decided to commission yarn samples of varying thickness from the co-operative (Figures ii.4a, ii4b).¹⁴

The volunteers knitted several small swatches, comparing hand- and machine-spun yarns, both to examine the differences and to find out whether it was possible to achieve a similar gauge and appearance as in the original using the Nido di Seta hand-spun yarn. The hand-spun and commercial yarns felt very different. The machine-spun yarns had more twist and the dried sericin made the yarns very stiff, while sericin in the freshly reeled hand-spun silk yarn was much softer, requiring a shorter degumming time. Yet, after the sericin had been removed from the silks during the degumming, we noted that the hand-spun swatches had shrunk much more than the machine-spun samples.

Figure II.4a Bombyx mori silkworms and cocoons at the co-operative Nido di seta, Calabria, Italy.

Figure II.4b Silk cocoons being processed by the ‘Refashioning’ team at Nido di seta, Calabria, Italy.

After several test batches, we selected the yarn that had been made of long silk filaments using 150 cocoons from the 2019 harvest and given a slight twist to reinforce the thread. Unfortunately, the rainy autumn in Calabria prevented the yarns from drying properly, and the sericin glued some of the strands of yarns together into clumpy skeins, which our volunteers lovingly called ‘the tangle yarn’. This yarn was quite stiff and scrunchy, but, once the clumps were opened by reeling the skeins into cones and balls, it was surprisingly easy to knit. This experience made us fully aware of the extent to which weather conditions affected the quality of the silk yarn. Perhaps the ability to work with different qualities of silk thread had been a valuable skill for an early modern knitter.

The volunteers were also given the option to knit the Turku silk stocking using thin wool which matched the gauge of the silk. This allowed us to compare the differences in the process of knitting the same stocking with silk and wool, and to examine differences in the visual and sensory qualities of the finished products. We know from early modern documentary evidence that decorative and fine stockings, such as that from Turku, were made of wool as well as of silk, using the same pattern.¹⁵ Fine worsted wool stockings might have provided a visually attractive alternative to silk stockings for artisan families and others who could not afford silk.

Some of our volunteers, who were uncertain of their skills, chose the more familiar wool yarn. But those who tried both silk and wool reported that they found silk easier to knit, because it was easier to distinguish individual tiny stitches of silk yarn and pick up the dropped stitched with the very thin 1mm needles compared to the fuzzy wool. Yet, whether using wool or sericin-coated silk, working with very fine needles was a different knitting experience from what the volunteers had got used to. Almost everyone found it challenging to cast the stitches, but after a while they found a flowing rhythm and knitting became easier. The clock pattern on the ankle as well as the heel offered variation and satisfaction for the challenge-seeking knitters, although many knitters noted that their purl stitches were looser than the knitted stitches, which made the stocking looser around the ankle. This, however, seems to be a feature in the original stocking too (Figure ii.5).

The experiment showed that making hand-knitted stockings was very time-consuming. The replications of the Turku stocking in silk, made exactly to the measure of the original stocking on 1mm needles, took between 215 and 260 hours to make per stocking, making it up to 520 hours per pair.¹⁶ The same stockings could be made slightly faster using wool, but the volunteers reported that making fine stockings of wool was only slightly less laborious than working with silk. Two stockings reconstructed in fine wool instead of silk took between 42 and 135 hours respectively to knit. Even considering that the early modern professional knitters were probably able to knit faster than our knitters, all of whom were experienced and highly skilled knitters but not professionals or used to knitting fine silk or wool and historical patterns, it is likely that even a skilled hand knitter in the early modern period could not have been able to produce many pairs of fine decorative stockings in a month.

Figure II.5 Reconstruction of seventeenth-century knitted stockings in progress, in linen, wool and silk. Made by volunteer participants at ‘Refashioning’ citizen science knitting project. Aalto University, Helsinki, 2020.

Having worked over two years with our volunteer knitters, it was very exciting to see and feel completed stockings and to try them on. While the wool stockings felt immediately comfortable on the skin, the silk stockings looked initially stiff and dull. However, after the stockings had been degummed, dyed using natural dyes and historical recipes, and stretched on a wooden sock block, the silk stockings transformed into lustrous items that had a beautiful sheen. The biggest surprise was the unprecedented and incomparable bodily sensation of comfort that we all felt upon trying on the degummed silk stocking. The smooth, cool and soft sensation of the stockings next to the skin left us speechless (Figures ii.6a and ii.6b).

While we know that fine hand-knitted silk stockings were considered a luxury product in the early modern period, our experiment left us wondering how early modern consumers might have experienced the sensation of luxury.¹⁷ Already back then contemporaries pondered about the relationship between suffering and luxury, and we know that many early modern stockings were made by poor men, women and children in harsh conditions.¹⁸ For us, the experience of wearing a stocking carefully made by a skilled maker who finds joy in the process was quite different.

Figure II.6a Reconstruction of an extant hand-knitted silk stocking conserved at Turku Cathedral, Finland, being tried on. The stocking fitted a surprising range of feet sizes and the beautiful clock pattern came to life when the stocking was worn compared to lying flat.

Figure II.6b Reconstruction of an extant hand-knitted silk stocking conserved at Turku Cathedral, Finland. Made by Liisa Kylmänen and dyed with fustic by the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project.

Conclusion

What did we learn from the experiments of making different types of early modern hand-knitted stockings? While working with craft experts allowed us to gain a profound understanding of the materials, tools, craft skills and the value of labour associated with making different stockings, the experiments also provided an explanation why the finest knitted stockings, such as the silk stocking from Turku, were still largely beyond the means of non-elite families. Their stunning visual look and the sensory qualities, together with the materials and the time invested in making them, made the stockings knitted from the finest silk an exceptional elite product worn mainly by men and women from the nobility or wealthy burgher class. Those further down the social scale had to be content with ordinary socks or stockings made of waste silk threads or wool, at least until machine-knitted stockings made stockings cheaper and more widely available.¹⁹

At the same time, as we generated new historical knowledge, this project allowed us to explore how to support new, open and socially responsible ways of doing and promoting research. Our experiment offered not only us but also the volunteers a chance to learn about history and to engage with academic researchers through conversations, trainings and workshop sessions. They expressed joy and pride over participating in historical research and having their skills recognised and valued. Many knitters enjoyed the social and collaborative aspect of the project and one even shared how participating in the project gave her solace after a tragedy in her family.

By involving craft experts in our research and creating a collaborative research framework that was designed to meet both the scientific aims and the interest of the volunteers, our project shows how historians can connect with new communities in order to find new ways to understand historical objects, materials and techniques associated with early modern fashion.