Two old Swedish tapestry crochet waistcoats

Being a real crochet nerd, I have a habit to search for crochet in museums. I have used the Digitalt museum to find crocheted objects, and in some cases I have then been able to see them IRL! This is the story of two of those crochet objects, two tapestry crochet waistcoats. They are probably from the second half of the 19th century. I say probably, because everything about these objects is very uncertain!

I found the first one in 2022 (picture above). In the Digital museum there was a blurry image, a very bad black and white photo of a waistcoat, but the text said it was crocheted. I sent a question to the museum and asked if this was correct, was the floral patterned vest really crocheted? Yes, it was! And would it be possible to come and see it? Yes to this too!

This garment exists in the real world in Örnsköldsvik, which is about a three hours drive from where I live. I persuaded my husband that we should make a little vacation trip...

The waistcoat is not exhibited in the museum, but is stored. An employee at the museum had to open a locked room where she had put it on a table for us to see. I could take pictures of it. I could count the stitches: 44 stitches/10 centimeters.

This waistcoat has a shawl collar, four buttons, two pockets. Only the front is crocheted, while the back is a woven cotton fabric.

No shaping is done by increasing, decreasing or utilising short rows. No, it is obvious that the two front pieces (and collar and pockets) are cut out from a large flat crocheted fabric and then sewed together. The crocheting is made to imitate a woven fabric. It is crocheted as tight as possible, which has made it really durable. The floral pattern is also very clear and perfect when you work tightly like this.

All cut edges are bound with a brown ribbon.

The technique is the traditional nordic style tapestry crochet, when you work single crochet (double crochet in British terms) in the back loop only.The colour not in use is hidden inside the stitch, so there are no floats on the back (which you always have in multicolour knitting).  Work is never turned; all rows are worked in the same direction. On this waistcoat the rows are horizontal on the finished garment.

It was obvious that the black yarn did not come all fom the same dying batch, as it has bleached differently. And we could see that the garment was sewed with a sewing machine. But all my questions about where did it come from? - who made it? - when was it made? - and all other contexts, those questions were not answered. There were no notes about the origin of the vest. It comes from some place in or around Örnsköldsvik and it has been in the museum for a hundred years, those were the only facts I got.

You can see in the first picture how the two front pieces are mirrored. The pattern i so ingeniously composed and it is a perfectly executed work. Did the maker have a pattern? Was there an instruction in a magazine? Did one person crochet and a tailor sew it, or was it all home-made?

Crochet has a history of  being looked down upon. Textile researcher Anneli Palmsköld has written interestingly about how crochet as craft and art has been purposely excluded by the people that started to collect things for museums in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. I believe this could be the reason that so little crochet can be found in the museums today. So when you find one thing of this quality, it is remarkable. If you find one more, it is doubly  remarkable!

And I did find one more.

 

This happened about a year ago. It popped up in the Digitalt museum. Another crocheted flower-decorated waistcoat! Red flowers on a dark background, but not the same flowers. The overall style of the  waistcoat is a little different with a different type of collar and placing of the buttons.

But still. There are thousands of  preserved waistcoats in the Swedish museums sewed in silk, satin, linen and other textiles . And then there are these two, that have a crocheted front.

I could not immediately ask David to follow me on a new crochet-vacation, as this object is found in the south of Sweden, not three hours from our home, but rather thirteen hours (1170 km)... The opportunity turned up this year. I decided to go to Småland, which is in the south of Sweden, together with my sister. We wanted to see the area where our grandmother was born. And I could make a small detour to Växjö where I thought I would find the crocheted waistcoat. It suited David that I would be away from the house while he worked with our kitchen floor.

Instead of in the museum in Växjö I found out that the waistcoat was in a smaller community called Tingsryd.

The procedure for making this garment seems to be similar to the one in Örnsköldsvik; a piece of textile has been created by crocheting, and then cut and sewed.

The pattern is red flowers on a dark blue background. It looks grey, but we could see the original colour on places that were not exposed to light. The yarn is cotton. I think it was cotton in the Örnsköldsvik vest too, but I can't see any note about that. The technique is the same, single crochet in the back loop only. 

In this object, the Tingsryd waistcoat, the rows run vertically. When you look at the waistcoat from the front, the rows on the left side run from shoulder to waist. On the right side, they run from waist to shoulder.

The two front pieces are mirrored, just as was the case in Örnsköldsvik. But the flower pattern is not quite as ingenious . The crocheter must have had to work half of the total fabric in a mirrored pattern. 

All cut edges are hidden inside the lining. Unlike the Övik vest, this garment is completely handsewn. 

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The number of stitches per 10 centimeters is here 47!

For this object there is at least a little bit of provenance. It has belonged to a family with the name Englander. (The name must originally mean "from England"!) This family lived in Tingsryd for several generations and was important for the community. Among other things, they were the owners of a wine factory. (Unexpected!) The waistcoat is believed to have been crocheted by Mimmi Englander, born in 1856. Why she chose to crochet the fabric instead of buying silk or satin, we don't know. Maybe she was just very interested in needlework?  We also got to see a number of very beautifully knitted socks that she had made.

The questions remain: Is there any sort of connection between the two objects? So far apart, and from a time when travelling was not as easy as it is today. Did one of the two crocheters see the other one and wanted to replicate the idea (without replicating the exact floral pattern obviously)? Or these two objects are perhaps not the only two that have existed, there may have been many more around this long country. Or, again, was there a pattern in a magazine?  And did the crocheter also do the sewing?