Actually, these are Edwardians...but just goes to show, knitting is timeless. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
Has urban pioneer-chic passed you by? Fear not. Once a month for the next year at least, the fine folks at the DeMenil Craft Guild have got you covered. The guild, which is housed in the historic Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion, is bringing in specialists in 19th-century handicrafts to teach all comers the fine forgotten arts of yesteryear.
“Handcrafting is something that is pretty popular right now,” says the board of directors’ Katherine Patterson, who is also the volunteer coordinator at the mansion. “But there’s a lack of diversity” in the crafts people are practicing, she says.
The Craft Guild series kicks off tonight with a fairly familiar craft: knitting. Patterson says that knitting and crocheting are familiar to contemporary folks, but as the series progresses, they’ll explore less well-known types of handmade art and decoration.
Next month, for instance, things get a little funky with hairwork—making decorative items and keepsakes from a loved one’s hair, sometimes after their death. In our time, once someone’s hair is disconnected from their head, it’s considered a nuisance at best. But in the 19th century, Patterson says, “it was a personal connection to a person.” (Don’t worry, and don’t start hoarding hair ahead of time—you can learn the techniques using embroidery floss.)
Other crafts slated for coming months are silhouettes and ribbon cockades, elaborately fashioned knots of ribbon. As a working museum of decorative arts, the museum tends to attract folks who are conversant in slightly more obscure kinds of crafts. And, using a terribly modern way to plunge back through time, Patterson says she did a lot of research using Google Books, finding scanned old instructions online.
A common misconception, says Patterson, is that people in the era of the mansion made things by hand because they had no other choice.
“Mrs. DeMenil could have gone to a department store and bought a dress,” she says. Women of the era made things by hand for the same reasons we do now, more or less. “There’s so much manufactured garbage. You go to Old Navy and you buy this scarf you think is cool, then you go out and see other people with the same thing. Women in the 19th century did it for that reason.”
Tonight’s class, “Knitting a Comfortable,” begins at 6 p.m. with an hour of instruction. (A “comfortable” is just a long scarf.) Knitters can hang out and keep working on their projects, or cruise the mansion until 9. You can bring your own yarn, or buy some there, though the class is free. Crafters are asked to register at demenil.org.
“I know some new knitters are coming,” says Patterson. “It’s an introduction, and they’ll walk out with something. It’s satisfying to walk away with an item.”
As the year continues, expect to see classes in other forms of needlework, tatting and lace-making. “Nineteenth century women, that was what they did to decorate their homes—that was what made it special to them.”
It would appear that hair-work, though, is about as morbid as it will get.
“We probably won’t do taxidermy,” says Patterson.
Pity.
