Mysterious Mittens

October 22nd, 2014 |

Hello readers!

Well we are very busy in the Curatorial department of HBMS.  We moved over several boxes of artifacts from the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem into the climate and humidity controlled vault, we’ve received a couple of new objects and we have a very edgy and different program coming up on November 6th.

Currently I am in the midst of planning for one of our upcoming exhibitions, A Winter’s Tale and I came across a pair of mittens that I am very excited to use.

According to our records these mittens were made for Abraham Shimer (Annie Kemerer’s grandfather) by his wife, Margaret (Leidy) Shimer around 1800.  However, having worked with textiles at my previous post my gut said that this date was not correct.  Sometimes family legends have to be taken with a grain of salt because stories often change over time.

The knitting tradition has been around for centuries with patterned mittens originating out of Latvia around 1000 A.D. [1] While several other cultures also have their roots in knitting; Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and Denmark, this pair of mittens reflects the Pennsylvania German heritage of the region.  The star motif is often found on both woven coverlets and embroidered samplers.

Now the number one reason why I questioned the date of this pair is that fun, multicolored wool pile cuff, which completely harks of the second half of the nineteenth century.  With the discovery of aniline (or synthetic) dyes in 1856 by an English chemist named William Perkin, new color combinations were explored.  [Side note if you want to learn more about the infinite number of color combinations you should visit the Colors exhibit at the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem.] Some dyes also became more dye fast (fibers absorbed the dye better and colors would not fade as easily) which would have created a much more saturated color.  So I started doing some research on our mittens and found that the Philadelphia Museum of Art has an almost identical pair!

Our Pair, K1961.K.837.01-.02 From the Collection of the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s pair, 1964-121-1a,b Photo courtesy of The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I contacted a wonderful friend of mine that works in the Costumes and Textiles department at the PMA and she shared some very interesting information.  First, the pair at the PMA are indeed dated 1850-1870 and secondly, scientific analysis confirmed that the wool was dyed with aniline dyes. Interestingly, the PMA’s pair of mittens were also made in the Lehigh Valley, but much closer to the Trexlertown or Alburts area. Plus, the pattern and color choices are almost mirrored.  If there was time, perhaps I could find a knitting pattern in one of the popular ladies periodicals of the time; Godey’s or Peterson’s. This might shed some light on how women of the Lehigh Valley obtained artistic inspiration….or wouldn’t it have been quite the story if the two maker’s knew each other and shared patterns like we share recipes.

This is a fine example of how object history can spark a whole slew of questions and possibly sparked interest in the upcoming exhibit!  Hope to see you all there!

[1] Ida Tomshinsky. Gloves: History and Present.(Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2011), pg. 7

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