Grace with Yarn

 The next set of gloves I examined is Italian, documented as early 17th century.  This set is 11 1/4 inches by 5 1/2 inches. This set is made with green silk and gilt thread.  I’m not sure what was used to dye the silk green, but it’s a striking change from the typical ivory/gilt gloves. On both gloves in this set, there’s a specific seam closing up the outside of the hand, hand sewn with linen thread instead of being knit in the round.   For construction, the fingertips ended with a small decrease in the last half inch of the finger.  It looks like the tips themselves were sewn closed with the same linen thread.  Or possibly the tips were reinforced with the linen thread to handle wear and tear. The thumb construction is fascinating to me.  Instead of typical (modern) glove construction which has a hole and stitches are picked up around the whole to create the thumb, this shows a distinct gusset for the base of the thumb, increasing in a wedge sh...

 I know that I've only talked about one set of gloves so far.  More are coming, I promise! In the meantime, I've started my submission project for St. Eligius. My goal is to see if I can spin fine enough to get to the same gauge as the funeral pillow and ecclesicastical gloves- 26 stitches to the inch with size 0000 needles. To accomplish that, I'm working on the science side of Arts and Sciences. I've got two sets each of drop spindles, one each of wood and metal (tahkli)- and each drop spindle weighs either 15 or 19 grams. I have 3 sets of fiber: 100% merino, a 50/50 merino/silk blend, and 100% silk. There will be a total of 6 "sets"- showing the unspun fiber, spun fiber, two strand plied yarn and a small swatch knit on size 0000. I want to see if the type/weight of drop spindle is a factor for each type of fiber. I've started with the 50/50 and my 19 gram tahkli drop spindle.  This fiber is lovely and is spinning up great. There is some apprehension abo...

 The first set of gloves I examined at the MFA is the pair from 16th century Spain.      They are a fairly large pair, measuring 11 inches by 5 1/inches. There is a large medallion design on the back of each hand with the letters IHS- a Jesuit symbol. The fingers and thumb are unadorned with a fairly simple offset striping pattern repeated on the cuff. One interesting design aspect of this set is that it is seamed up the outside edge and the seam is covered up with a twisted ribbon edging.  By looking at the inside of the glove, it appears that the edging and the seams are sewn together with a linen thread. The bottom edge of the gloves are finished with a metallic trim, folded in half and sewn down, again with the linen thread.  There are also large tassels that came with this set- one attached via silk ribbon and one detached. The gloves are fully lined in silk- originally white, I would surmise, but now age-faded to an ivory/taupe color. The body of the ...

 This past Friday, I had an appointment at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass.  It was an amazing experience. The MFA has four sets of ecclesiastical gloves from the 15th-17th centuries from Spain and Italy.  I had the opportunity to examine them up close and take many pictures. I’m going to go through each set of gloves in separate posts, but wanted to put in some teasers. 16th century Spain Dimensions: 11 inches by 5 1/2 inches 17th century Spain Dimensions: 9 by 4 inches Early 17th century Italy Dimensions: 11 1/4 inches by 5 1/2 inches 15th-16th century Spain, approximately 1520 Dimensions: 11 13/16th inches by 5 3/4 inches Each of these sets were done in silk and gilt-silver threads, hand knit. I’ve got some fantastic pictures including close ups of the threads which show the number of threads per stitch- typically 3 strands of silk vs 2 strands of the gilt-silver. I can’t wait to do a deep dive into each of these sets, the meanings of the symbols and the variou...