Table Of ContentThe Knitting Sheath
bj PETER C. D. BREARS
Reprinted from
FOLK LIFE A Journal of Ethnological Studies
Volume Twenty 1981-82
The Knitting Sheath
by PETER C. D. BREARS
INTRODUCTION
In their introduction to European Folk Art, Robert Wildhabcr and Hans Jurgen Hansen
stress the need for further studies into this most significant but neglected subject.1 They
then proceed to reject totally the popular nineteenth-century view of folk art as an
expression of nationalism, arguing that the arts of any region or state all follow great
international stylistic movements, although their detailed application may vary consid
erably even from one village to another. This paper seeks to illustrate and endorse these
concepts through the study of the knitting sheaths of England and Wales, first defining
their use, materials and distribution, and then discussing their significance within a
European context.
The history and development of hand knitting has been described elsewhere.2 In
brief, this technique of making garments had spread through southern Britain by the
late sixteenth century, often being promoted in urban areas where it provided suitable
relief work for the poor. In the eighteenth century the craft was forced out of the towns
by industrial framework knitters, and thus became firmly established in the relatively
poor upland areas of Wales, northern England, the Highlands and Shetland. From the
sixteenth to the early twentieth century, hand knitting organized under the domestic
system provided a major source of income for these areas, its importance being
indicated by the great value of its products, the stockings from Swaledale and
Wensleydale in Yorkshire alone being worth at least £40,000 per annum in the 1820s.3
In Wales too, the knitting of stockings was an important cottage industry.4 Knitting
was also practised around the coast of Britain, but here women tended to knit largely
for the men of their own families.5
By the seventeenth century at the latest, knitting was being carried out on a number
of curved metal needles, one of which was held rigidly between the right hand and a
purposely made support or sheath secured at the side of the body between the waist and
the armpit.* In 1844, William Howitt described the knitters of Dentdale in the West
Riding of Yorkshire:
their knitting goes on with unremitting speed, they sit rocking to and fro like so many weird
wizards. And this rocking motion is connected with a mode of knitting peculiar to the place,
called swaving, which is difficult to describe. Ordinary knitting is performed by a variety of
little motions, but this is a single uniform tossing motion of both the hands at once, and the body
often accompanying it with a sort of sympathetic action. The knitting produced is just the same
as by the ordinary method. They knit with crooked pins called pricks; and use a knitting-sheath
consisting commonly of a hollow piece of wood, as large as the sheath of a dagger, curved to the
side, and fixed by a belt called a cowhand. The women of the north, in fact, often sport very
*Thc term sheath has been preferred to ‘stick1 or ‘needle support’ since it was used almost without exception up to
the early twentieth century; sec Fig. 3, No. 7.
THE KNITTING SHEATH 17
curious knitting sheaths. We have seen a wisp of straw tied up pretty tightly into which they
stick their needles; and sometimes a bunch of quills of at least half-a-hundred in number. These
sheaths and cowhands arc often presents from their lovers to the young women. Upon the band
there is a hook, upon which the long end of the knitting is suspended that it might not dangle.6
This technique survived almost up to the present day, its widespread use probably
originating from the tuition provided at knitting schools such as those founded in York
in 1590, or in Lincoln in 1591,7 At the York Spinning School in 1800, for example, each
girl was allowed to have a ‘knitting sheath ; new set of Knitting Needles’ at Easter.8
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this method gradually fell out
of use, education authorities considering it to be harmful to the posture, producing a
weak chest and rounded shoulders. In its place, children were taught to knit without
the sheath, in the modern manner.9
In preparing this paper, a full bibliographical survey was first completed, followed
by visits to those museums known to hold sheaths within their collections. Museums
either having well established social history collections, or being situated in areas where
knitting formed part of the local economy, were next contacted, and visits made where
appropriate (see Fig. 1). Only soundly provenanced examples were recorded, and from
these a typological classification was established. A full list of the provenanced
examples of each type has now been deposited with each of the museums holding type
specimens. In the following pages, references to particular sheaths are given in the form
of a prefix indicating the individual museum or source followed by the appropriate
accession number (see Appendix).
Great tribute must be paid to the collectors of knitting sheaths, especially Mr O. R.
Whitehead of Bradford, for their scholarship and generosity, which have so enriched
our public collections and made the present paper possible. Through their efforts many
hundreds of sheaths have been preserved together with their detailed provenances, but
thousands more must have lost their provenance or been destroyed prior to the late
nineteenth century. It is probably for this reason that so few sheaths have survived from
lowland Britain, where they were undoubtedly used in earlier times.
MATERIALS
Although a number of sheaths were made by professional woodworkers and turners,
the majority of the finer and decorated sheaths were made by amateurs who might earn
their living as shepherds, farmers, quarrymen or miners. Very few examples are
closely provenanced with regard to their makers, but in some cases it is possible to trace
a continuous tradition of woodcarving throughout several generations of the same
family. In Middleton in Teesdale for example, Thomas Tarn was carving excellent
stay-busks in the 1780s, his descendant Timothy Tarn producing some of the finest
sheaths over a century later, a similar continuity being recorded for the Scott family of
Walker Hill Farm in the same village.10
Usually the sheaths were carved as love tokens for the young man’s intended bride,
but this practice was by no means universal, for men made sheaths for their daughters,
or for other close members of their family.11
THEKNITTINGSHEATH 19
The early sheaths sometimes bear simple incised inscriptions similar to those found
on the slipwarcs and other decorative arts of the period, such as:
BE FRIEND TO FEW BE FO TO NON
BE KIND TO AL AND LOVE BUT ON 1688
The Gift is small But love is all 1728
WORK FROM HEAVEN PERFORMED BELOW
MY FAITH IS GIVEN THIS PLEDGE DOTH SHEW
PAM 1690
or more specifically:
I am of box and brass within
My place is on your apron-string 167912
The later examples range from the simple ‘A Present for a friend’ or ‘Forget me not’ to
the loquacious:
Art thou not dear unto my heart
search that heart and see
and from my bosom tear the part
that beats not true to thee
but to my bosom thou arc dear
mor dear then words can tell
& I but fault be cherished thare
its loving the to well
September th 23 1831 JR13
In contrast to these romantic sentiments, a number of sheaths have moralizing or
religious texts, including:
Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth (1843)
Let virtue be thy guide (1854)
ABSTAIN FROM ALL APPEARANCE OF EVIL.
THESS. V 22 MARY WAITE14
The materials used to form knitting sheaths were of the greatest possible variety, often
being improvised from any available sources, ranging from goose-quills to bundles of
twigs or rolls of straw, but the present article is solely concerned with purposely
manufactured sheaths. In its simplest form, the sheath might be a twig bored out with a
Fig. 1. (opposite) Distribution of the major types ofknitting sheath in England,
Northern England {top) and South Wales {bottom)
a. Airedale Hearts H. South Wales Sheaths o. Essex Sheaths
b. West Cumbrian Hearts I. Eskdale Sheaths s. Stepped Sheaths
c. Clapham Sheaths j. ‘Triangle’Sheaths T. Teesdale Sheaths
d. Durham Sheaths k. Welsh Double-Ended Sheaths \v. Weardale Sheaths
e. Eden Sheaths l. Warwickshire Spindles • Spindle Sheaths
F. West Cumbrian Sheaths m. Cornish Sheaths
G. Dent Sheaths n. North Yorkshire Hearts
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THE KNITTINGSHEATH 21
piece of hot wire, while clothes pegs or pirns, the narrow bobbins used in textile mills,
could also make efficient sheaths (Fig. 2, Nos 1-3).
By far the most common material employed in making knitting sheaths was wood,
virtually every native timber being used for this purpose, although an increasing
number were made from imported woods, such as mahogany, from the early part of
the nineteenth century. The crudest sheaths, roughly cut to shape and totally undeco
rated, were in the minority, for the majority were carefully smoothed and enriched in a
variety of techniques, including carving and inlaying with contrasting wood, bone,
hard wax or pewter. It is suprising to find the latter so proficiently used in the northern
counties, for, with the exception of lace bobbin decoration, its use in this manner is
virtually unknown in either the polite or folk arts of this country (Fig. 2, No. 5). The
surface of the sheaths might also be recessed to receive either small paintings or suitable
inscriptions written by hand, printed, or even composed from individual letters
obtained from newspapers, etc. (Fig. 2, No. 6).
Some sheaths were either wax polished or perhaps varnished, whenever a high finish
was required, although the majority were left quite plain. In exceptional examples,
coloured paints and inks might be introduced to produce a highly decorative effect, this
being seen to advantage when applied to the lighter toned woods (Fig. 2, No. 7), or
when used to pick out the detail of the carving, where it produced an effect very similar
to that of inlay.
In addition to wood, the materials used included bone, leather and horn, the latter
being conveniently shaped by heat and the knife in a similar manner to that employed
to produce shepherds’ crooks. Sheet metal could be cut into small heart-shaped sheaths
which, when sewn back on to a fabric backing, might be pinned, sewn, or placed into a
purposely-made pocket on the dress of the knitter. In Cumbria and parts of North
Yorkshire, these were usually of brass, filed and engraved to a high standard, while in
West Yorkshire they were more crudely made from tinplate. Solid metal sheaths were
also made, cast bronze and wrought iron examples being recorded, although these are
very unusual (Fig. 2, No. 13).
Ceramic knitting sheaths were probably produced more for their novelty value
rather than for any practical use, but at least two of blown glass are known, one other
being of white pottery decorated with blue and red colours, resembling the wares of the
Sunderland potteries.ls
Fig. 2. (opposite) Materials, Techniques and Inscriptions
1 Twig, Devon, 1870 8. Horn, Annficld Plain, 14. Iron, Llanclwedd, Radnor
23.. (PPleirrg n5,, 3 DB4u/r1ra9hd6af8mo)r d(b5 1980/804/2) 190. DGLeluaarsthsh ae(mhr )( k(b) 1968/160/2) 15. (N(ssffo 45rt00h//14 W9502a)/l4e)s? 1690
4. (Icnmla id10 w6/o6o7d/1, 3M 1)iddleton in 1 1. SRiilpk oann d(c sme q1u1i5n6s/ o5n0) wood, 16. U(bnhptr o1v32e2n)anced 1688
65.. TIInnelleaasiiddd agplleeaw s(cst empra 1n0el6,/ 6E7g/g90le)stone, 1123.. (MBbo e1nt9ae8l, 0iMn/5lia0dy8d,/ l1We)toenn silnc yTdeaelscd ale 1178.. C(Uaanhmp 7rb9orv/i1de3gn 5ea)snhciered 117823 81
Teesdale (b) (b 1971/55/O (BMT1323)
7. Painteddecoration(bmt1345)
