A Shallow Beret

I recently came across an article in Piecework magazine called "The History of the Beret."

The Piecework article may be read here.

The article, unsurprisingly, is short, which is fine. But the article is also shallow. The author claims that "The beret-style hat has its roots in the Basque region straddling the French-Spanish border." I have not yet explored the articles she cites in support of this statement (though that would be easy to do as all appear on the Internet and the URLs are given). But the Basque country is not the only place where beret-shaped hats have been worn, and may not be the place where they were worn first. Wikipedia has a short article about a cap called a kausia, which supposedly worn by the kings of Macedonia in antiquity "as part of the royal costume", and supposedly was worn by Alexander the Great and his Companions. I blogged about this hat, which may or may not date to antiquity, here.

Kudos to the author of the Piecework article for attempting to pin down some of the latter-day history of the beret, though! It's hard to document when a garment or other artifact originated or how long it's been around, as anyone aware of the "history" of a cord-making device called a lucet can tell you.

An Excellent Lucet Article

Common modern lucet.

"Lucet" (or "lucette") is the name given, at least in English-language sources, to a type of device used to turn yarn into cord.  The photograph to the right, from Wikipedia, shows a type of lucet that is common nowadays, but other forms have been proposed.

10th c. "lucet" find.

I became interested in lucets because it has been often proposed (though not proven) that the Viking cultures used them to make cord.  While fork-shaped finds of bone have been made in Viking contexts, none have been, to my knowledge, associated with cord production.  The only type of device arguably linked to cord-making is a small tube with posts or prongs at the top (such as the second image from Wikipedia, a 10th century find from northern France). 

Today, I found a long article about lucets that was written by an archaeologist. The article is called "Brief History of the Lucet Braiding Tool." It can be found on the "LRCrafts website and read here.  It systematically discusses the evidence for lucets, complete with numerous photographs, some I have not seen before (including some from Southern Europe).  It even includes an instructional video on how to use the fork-shaped lucet shown above!

 

I am looking forward to reading this article in full, and I suggest that readers interested in the lucet, as well as in Viking and medieval clothing history read it as well.

Knitted Cord, Revisited

Years ago, I wrote more than one post on the subject of lucets, specifically oriented toward discussing the subject of whether the Vikings used lucets, or a similar knitting technology.   

This month, Piecework magazine has published an article on "knitting nancies," or knitting spools, spool knitters, or corkers, or any one of more than half-a-dozen other names for a simple device that makes square cord that is similar in appearance and structure to luceted cord.  The Piecework article can be read here. 

The author of the Piecework article,  Mary Polityka Bush, does not discuss the Victorian lucet, or the controversy about whether the Vikings used lucets (and if so, what they might have looked like).  She merely discusses what she was able to discover about the device from early modern times (i.e., late 16th century and later) onward.  

What Ms. Bush found isn't much!  She found a suggestion that a kind of "knitting frame" might have been in use as early as 1535 and that such a device was permitted to be used by professional knitters.  She also discusses modern variants of the two-peg knitter, and that such "spool" knitters could come with different (even) numbers of pegs.  But most of her article is anecdotal evidence of the use of spool knitters by 20th century fiber artists, and lovely, full-color photographs of different modern spool knitters.  

So the evidence for the invention and development of modern "spool knitters," like the evidence for Viking-era lucets, is similarly anecdotal and inconclusive.  It is even possible that the Vikings or another early people invented the "lucet" but that the invention was lost, and later reinvented--possibly more than once.   That's one reason I keep posting my little articles on the subject of knitted cord.  Maybe through collecting such snippets I may eventually locate enough information to make an attempt at solving the mystery.

An Aside on Viking Lucets, Courtesy of Pinterest

Photo of cord from Petterson article.

Followers of this blog may know that over the past few months I have become an active user of Pinterest, the on-line picture collection service. (A link to my Pinterest boards is available on my sidebar.)

I didn't start pinning because I enjoy looking at pictures of interesting costumes and artifacts--though I enjoy eye candy as much as anyone. Instead, I began pinning pictures of the costumes and artifacts in which I am interested to see whether I can discern any useful trends or similarities when all of the images are on the same "page", so to speak, and can be examined together.

One of my Pinterest boards is "Viking Lucets", a collection of images of items believed by some to have been used by Vikings to make lucetted cord. Very recently, I found (and promptly pinned) two images on Pinterest that suggested to me new hypotheses about that subject.

Gina B's chart (used with permission).

The first of these images (see above) is a good close-up picture of a fragment of cord, found in one of the Barshalder graves, that many people believe to have been made with a lucet or an analogous device. Because it's not possible to adequately explain my insight without the photograph, I have included it here; it is from an article by Kristen Petterson in TOR magazine.

The other image (also above) is a chart showing cords made from the same type of string by three different methods: lucetting, 5-strand fingerloop braiding, and 8-strand plait. It was created by Gina B of Soper Lane, a site which addresses the making of laces and ribbons and other "small" wares during the Middle Ages. Although I had visited the Soper Lane site before, I might never have found this chart if someone hadn't pinned it, since it was buried in a blog entry posted in 2002, long before I became aware of the "Viking lucets" controversy.

In that blog post, Gina summarized the results of her research into the hypothesis that the lucet was used in Europe in the 15th century. She said, on the subject of using the appearance of any surviving laces to deduce the means of construction:

My own observations into the structure of the lucet cord and other forms of braiding have shown various similarities between cords made using different techniques. Many of these similarities would make identifying a technique superficially quite difficult.

Visually, the lucet cord, 5-loop round fingerloop braid, and 8-strand plait all resemble each other. When making a single colour lace by each of these methods using the same material, very slight differences are seen in the structure

The lucet cord, being made of one element and by forming knots, tends to be tighter and smaller in its cross section than the other two laces.

The 8 strand plait tends to appear somewhat rounder than the other two.

All are square laces.

(emphasis mine). Gina went on to say that it is very difficult to tell what technique was used to make a particular lace if you don't have a starting end to examine. Just as thought-provoking were Gina's comments about the ease of making laces by each of these three techniques:

Of the three, the 8-strand plait is the most time consuming for an individual to make, whilst the fingerloop braid is probably the quickest. Both the 8-strand and the fingerloop braid have limitations in the length which can be easily obtained. For a long lace, the 8-strand would require the use of bobbins, whilst the fingerloop requires a second person to maintain the tension. Both of these also require careful pre-measuring of the warp to achieve any particularly long lace; this in itself creates its own problems. The lucet cord, on the other hand, is the easiest method by which to create a very long lace, without pre-measuring, and without help.

(emphasis mine).  Now consider the following:

• Although the Barshalder lace is a "square lace", lucets are not the only way to make square laces, as Gina's chart shows.
• Lucets are the easiest way to make a very long lace, and could be made for that purpose by a person working alone.
• All the evidence we have indicates that the Vikings did not use laces as a method of clothing closure.  The uses they may have had for laces--suspending pendants or beads, hair ties, or fastening parcels--would not require very long laces, unlike laced garments such as dress bodices.

Moreover, in my opinion the lace remnant found at Barshalder looks more like the 5-loop fingerloop braid specimen from Gina's chart than it does like a lucet cord, but my biases might be coloring my perceptions.

Even without comparing Gina's lace illustration and the Barshalder specimen, the fact that 5-loop fingerloop braiding also generates square laces provides a good reason to reconsider the "evidence" that lucets were used by the Vikings.  The squareness of the Barshalder lace has been cited in discussions on the Norsefolk_2 list at least, as evidence that the lace was made with a lucet.  The Barshalder cord could have been made by the fingerloop braiding process, which would be even less likely than lucet cord to leave evidence in the archaeological record.*   In my opinion, the fact that square laces can be made by other means, coupled with the lack of evidence linking actual specimens of appropriately-shaped cord to any of the devices presumed to be lucets, greatly weakens the case for the use of lucets by the Vikings.

In addition, I am pleased to have found this insight through the use of Pinterest, which is often dismissed as a "scrapbooking" site or a sales tool.  The Interest is not indexed, but Pinterest makes it possible for individual researchers to collect, and label, images in ways that make new insights possible, and hopefully people deciding whether to use Pinterest will keep that possibility in mind.

*   Cords shaped like lucets can, as I have discussed in a prior post, be made with knitting needles or with the tube-shaped pronged device now usually called a "knitting nancy." However, there is no real evidence that knitting was known in Northern Europe before the late Middle Ages, and so far as I know, the Viking era artifacts shaped somewhat like modern knitting nancies were not found in conjunction with surviving fragments of cord.

Another Reflection on Viking Age Lucets

Over the last few days, another discussion about Viking era lucets has erupted on the Norsefolk_2 mailing list. Though I'm taking a backseat in the current discussion, some of the posts in the discussion--particularly the posts containing links to putative lucets--have reminded me of something interesting I've noticed about the "lucets" identified to date.  I'd like to write about that something here, where it's relatively peaceful.

The thing I've noticed is how different in shape all of the putative lucets are. Although all of them have at least two prongs, there is little other similarity between them. Some are decorated, most are not. Some (particularly the bone "lucets" at Coppergate) have pointed ends and sharp-looking edges; other have rounded ends and edges. Some have deep prongs; others do not. Some have a wide distance between the tines while others do not. A few even appear to be shaped a bit like a modern "knitting nancy".

This diversity of form in "lucets" contrasts sharply with the finds of other Viking era textile tools. It doesn't seem terribly significant, to me, that the "lucets" are not decorated. A lot of Viking textile tools (unlike, say, Viking jewelry) are undecorated, or are minimally decorated, such as most spindle whorls and needlecases. But there isn't so much difference in shape among the different classes of textile tools. A needlecase, for example, may be made from bone, or bronze, or even silver, but it will typically be shaped like a long tube, with a hole in one side of the tube so the case can be suspended from a tortoise brooch. Tablets for tablet weaving, to the extent they have been found, are square with a hole in each of the four corners. Spindle whorls are usually some variation on a disk shape with a hole in the center for a spindle stick. Even the boards believed to have been used for smoothing linen are similar to each other, about the same size with two horses' heads on the top.

Despite their simplicity of function, this similarity of form is not true of the so-called "lucets".  The various artifacts termed lucets resemble each other only in that they have two prongs, and a few have more than that. Why all this diversity of form for a simple textile tool?

It might, I suppose, be argued that some of the putative lucets are temporary cord making devices, just as many cords could have been made with a simple forked branch that would have been quickly discarded and not become part of the archaeological record. But if the Vikings were making reusable lucets--i.e., if at least some of the artifacts said to be lucets really were used for cord-making by the Vikings--then there would be little need for lucets of the impromptu kind. On the other hand, if lucets were routinely used by the Vikings, one would expect a uniformity, or at least, a similarity, of form to develop.  Neither statement is characteristic of the actual "evidence" of lucets. 

In addition, if the Vikings truly did use lucets on a routine basis, one would also expect to see more finds of defensibly lucetted cord. Yes, there is the one Barshalder grave with the cord that looks to be structured like a lucetted cord. But even if it is indisputable that the Barshalder cord was made with a lucet, that fact does not mean the cord was made by Vikings  (as opposed, for example, to the possibility that the Barshalder example was imported). Nor can we say that it's been proven that the Barshalder cord was made with any of the artifacts said to be lucets.  Moreover, if the Vikings routinely made lucetted cord, they likely would have come up with a standard form for a cord maker, instead of opportunistically using any and every object with two available prongs.  If the Vikings commonly made lucetted cord, there would be more "lucets" in the archaeological record, and something closer to uniformity among the "lucets" actually found.

The more I look at the evidence that the Vikings made lucetted cord, the more troublesome and less persuasive it appears. I don't think I'm simply refusing to believe the obvious, or seeing obstacles where there are none.  If any of my readers have any other evidence (that hasn't been discussed on the Norsefolk_2 list) I'd appreciate hearing about it.

More on Lucets

In my long essay on lucets, I mentioned the "crudely shaped pieces of bone" found in the Viking levels of Coppergate that some people believe were used as lucets. 

Penelope Walton Rogers briefly discusses these finds in Textile Production at Coppergate. Having looked at them and observed that the narrow, sharp-pointed ones resemble the nose bones of cattle, she expresses the opinion that those artifacts likely were not used as lucets.  She particularly notes that these finds bear no signs of wear from the rubbing of string, as one would expect from a cord-making device (especially one with thin bone prongs such as most of the Coppergate "lucet" finds):

There are fourteen two-pronged bone objects of the type sometimes identified as lucets for braid-making from Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval levels at Coppergate (A.G. MacGregor et al: AY 17 in prep.). These are the nasal bones of cattle, which have been chopped or broken from the skull (S. O’Connor, pers. comm.). They have little sign of any modification and there is no wear around the prongs to suggest use in braid-making. (p. 1790)

On the other hand, there are two other "lucet" shaped objects at Coppergate; a "Y-shaped tine" which I'm not familiar with, and one which has decorative carving on it, which I think I've seen but cannot find an image of (I'll add a link once I find one).  Ms. Rogers observes that the function of these items, which, unlike the pointed bones, were clearly fashioned for some purpose, is unclear. However, she also notes that despite the obvious existence of two-pronged devices that can be used to make cord, there have been no such cord finds in Anglo-Scandinavian graves. and "the use of any of these tools in the textile crafts is far from proven." (Id.)

Although Ms. Rogers herself may be wrong, I am pleased to learn that a scholar who has looked at the so-called Coppergate lucets has presented reasonable arguments against the proposition that the flimsy, sharp bone objects found at Coppergate are lucets.  As I've said before,  I believe there is a much better case for the tube-shaped two-pronged devices, such as the one found at Barshalder, being a Viking equivalent of a "lucet", but apparently no such items turned up at Coppergate.  I wish they had--it would be interesting to see what Ms. Rogers made of them. 

Viking Lucets

A few months ago, I got involved in a discussion on the Norsefolk2 list about whether Scandinavians used lucets to make cord during the Viking era. A lucet is a two (or sometimes four) pronged tool used to fashion a continuous piece of string into a cord. The form of lucet that is commonly used and sold today only goes back to the Victorian era, but some people believe that certain finds of two-pronged objects were used as lucets. The Norsefolk2 discussion starts here.

Before that discussion, I had been aware that there have been heated discussions among reenactors and historical costumers about whether the Vikings used lucets or not, but I didn't really know what support existed for the hypothesis that they used such devices. It turns out that the most solid piece of evidence for the use of lucets in the Viking era comes from a grave find at Barshalder, in Sweden, which was the subject of an article by Kerstin Pettersson. Here's the full citation of her article, for the curious:

Kerstin Pettersson, "En gotländsk kvinnas dräkt. Kring ett textilfynd från vikingatiden," Tor 12, 1967-1968. Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, Uppsala, pp. 174 - 200.

Ms. Pettersson's article (of which I have obtained the gist primarily from the English-captions on the accompanying photographs, since the text itself is in Swedish) discusses two pieces of cord found in the grave, one of which apparently held beads, and the other of which appeared to be fastened to one of the tortoise brooches in the grave in a position that suggested a shoulder strap. Whether such cords were used for straps on apron dresses, however, is not the part of the discussion I'm focusing on right now. What I'm interested in is the evidence for the use of lucets in the Viking era, and what a "Viking lucet" might have looked like.

The Barshalder cords have a square cross-section, like the cord made by lucets, according to Sandy Sempel of Frojel Gotlandica, who has had an opportunity to see them in person. Like lucet cord and unlike cords made by fingerlooping, the Barshalder cords appear to be made from one continuous length of string. It seems likely that, if cord with the physical properties of lucet cord (shape, made from a continuous piece of yarn, etc.) is found in a Viking era grave, that the Vikings had a device that could make such a cord.

There are an astounding variety of different objects from Viking period digs that have been labeled as lucets. They range from elegant, highly carved and decorated two-pronged objects, to elegantly shaped but rather plain tubes with prongs, to pointed and crudely shaped pieces of bone. I am far from convinced that all of these items were used for the making of cords of any kind. Any two-pronged object can be used in the same manner as a lucet to make cord; I've even seen a picture of an upside-down chair being used to twine a rope. It's even possible, I'm told, to use two outstretched fingers for the purpose in the same manner as a lucet. If two prongs are all one needs to have a lucet, then all of the above objects can certainly be used as lucets. But that fact alone does not prove that Vikings actually used all, or any, of those objects that way.

One might argue that Vikings typically ornamented their textile tools, so the plain pieces of double-pointed bone were unlikely to be cord-making devices. On the other hand: 1) some needlecases, for example, are unornamented; 2) some of the deeply carved "lucet" examples would be difficult to use for the purpose, because the string would be likely to snag on the carving; and 3) plenty of reenactors have successfully made cord with bone or wood models of just about all of these devices--even the "rough" or "pointy" ones--making it difficult to exclude any of the proposed "lucet" finds on the grounds of impracticality.

To my knowledge, Ms. Pettersson has not opined about whether two-pronged pieces of bone were used to make cord in Viking era Scandinavia. She does, however, provide a sketch of the type of device she thinks may have been used to make the type of cord found at Barshalder. I've provided a copy of that sketch (shown on the right) as part of this entry.

This type of device will probably be familiar to those of my female readers (at least) who may have received one as a "craft" type of gift in childhood. Even now, this type of device is commonly made in bright primary colors and/or fashioned to look like an animal or doll figure. They are often marketed as toys for children. The term that most reliably tracks down such devices on Google is "knitting nancy". They are also called "spool knitters". The British sometimes call them "corkers". I've seen them called Bizzy Lizzies, and models made by various companies probably have different brand names. These "knitters" typically have varying even numbers of pegs, mostly either 4 or 6, but I owned one when I was a child that had at least 18 pegs and could be used to make a fairly wide knitted tube all by itself. And as the pictures I've located of Viking finds suggest, at least some of them look like two-peg spool knitters.

While I was looking for examples of spool knitters, I ran across this blog entry in which the blogger, inspired by an old book called "Spool Knitting" by Mary McCormack, experiments with making cord using a device she calls a "Cordelia cordmaker" that is not shaped like a lucet or a knitting nancy but, like them, has two pegs. She describes using the cordmaker using the same type of technique followed by McCormick with her two-peg knitting nancies:

McCormack does all her spool knitting on 2 peg spool knitters using the figure ‘8′ wrap. She doesn’t start with a slip knot, just by taking the yarn around the right hand peg. She uses a dowel with a center hole that she drops the yarn down, but since I am using a Cordelia cordmaker that doesn’t have a hole, I just hold the tail in front of the cordmaker. ...

So, you take the yarn around the right hand peg, between the pegs, and around the left hand peg, then back between the pegs……and around the right hand peg again. Then, you lift the lower wrap of yarn over the upper wrap…. of course, I had to take the picture, so I left the loop lifter dangling in space, but you’re not going to do that…

McCormack has the reader take the yarn around each peg, always following a figure ‘8′, and lifting the lower loop over the upper loop.

This creates a cord that is actually closer to being square than round (emphasis mine).

The McCormick method of cordmaking appears to be the same technique typically used today with spool knitters--i.e., it involves making a figure-eight type of wrap around each of the pegs. Judging by her sketch, that is also the technique, and the type of device, that Ms. Pettersson suggests may have been used to make the Barshalder cords. This suggests that a two-peg spool knitter and a lucet both make cord that is similarly square in cross section, from a single unbroken piece of string.

So here's the question. Do a two-pronged spool knitter and a lucet make structually identical cord? I think so, but I'd need to obtain a lucet and a suitable spool knitter, learn how to use a lucet, relearn how to use a spool knitter, and make a test cord with each device to confirm that theory. If both cords are identical, that likely means that a lucet is functionally equivalent to a two-peg spool knitter.

Unfortunately, my proposed experiment still won't prove which, if any, of the two-pronged bones from Jorvik, the ornately carved two-pronged bone devices from Scandinavia, or any other potential "lucets" from digs were actually used for cord-making. But it may suggest that the "spool knitter" is an older device than most people assume it is.

EDIT: The gentleman who wrote this site apparently believes that I have the causation backwards in my last remark. He states that the various versions of spool knitters "all owe their existence to the medieval lucet." It may well be the case that the lucet came first, and the spool knitter is a later improvement upon it. All the same, I wish he had reported the source of the information upon which he based that statement.

SECOND EDIT: Apparently the name "knitter" for the spool knitters is not misplaced. It is possible to "knit" a similar cord just using ordinary knitting needles. This blogger writes about doing so; she calls the end product "I-cord." This page describes how to do the technique.