Caught our Eyes: Knitting Pictures

When Digital Library Specialist Anne Mitchell isn’t wrangling digital files and managing metadata, she can often be seen with her fingers flying as some beautiful new creation emerges from her knitting needles. It’s no wonder that she was particularly adept at finding images of knitters and other practitioners of textile crafts in our collections. Here, with her comments, are some that she found:

Not much information accompanied this photo of children knitting in a Prague classroom. The children appear to be making sweaters.  I like to think that schools were a place where some children were learning how to knit AND were given classroom time to work on their knitting projects!

Vinohrady (Prague) primary school knitting and crocheting for Russian aid, Prague Czecho-Slovak Junior Red Cross. Photo, American National Red Cross Collection, 1922. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/anrc.14803

Grandfather Clark does his bit, presumably in support of World War I, by knitting. This picture, which shows the granddaughter and grandfather engaged in an enjoyable and relaxing moment centered around the grandfather knitting what appears to be a sweater sleeve. Most photographs I have come across show women or girls knitting, so I especially love seeing a man who appears to be enjoying himself knitting.

(America Junior) Grandfather Clark does his bit [knitting]. American National Red Cross Collection, 1919. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/anrc.04746

Bedouin women weaving. Photo by Matson Photo Service, between 1940 and 1946. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/matpc.12968

The American Red Cross collection contains more than 400 pictures documenting their work with “mutiles” (disabled persons) after World War I. This picture of a French farm couple walking “arm-in-arm” across a tilled field caught my eye. It shows the wife multi-tasking (knitting and walking) and keenly focused on her knitting, and the husband, with artificial arms, carrying a basket with contents not easy to identify.

Champcerron [i.e., Champcervon.] Ledrans going to the field, his wife knitting. American National Red Cross Photograph Collection, 1917. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/anrc.10709

Serbian girls walk and knit. Peasant girls in Serbia improve each shining hour by knitting on their way to market... American National Red Cross Photograph Collection, 1920. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/anrc.11811

Whether the results are socks, sweaters, blankets or simply well-occupied hands, we hope Anne’s pictorial finds spur appreciation for these widely-practiced traditional crafts, consideration of the pictorial possibilities photographers saw in them, and, possibly, inspiration for taking up a new hobby!

Learn More

• Perhaps because knitting and other crafts had therapeutic value, even as the resulting textiles could offer comfort to those suffering privation, the American National Red Cross Photograph Collection includes many images of knitting and allied activities–have a look, and read more about the collection.
• Explore the variety of weaving enterprises documented in the G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection and read up on the photographic activities of the American Colony in Jerusalem.
• Examine the variety of people putting needles to work in “The Knitting Craze“–a double-page spread in a 1914 issue of the comic weekly, Puck. Or ponder the ways in which knitting functions as a symbol in this sampling of cartoons.
• Find two references to knitting featured in the online exhibit, World War I: American Artists View the Great War.