When I was in middle school, my grandma signed my sister and me up for a sewing class. We got beginners’ sewing machines, needles, and thread, and we got to choose our own fabric for the dresses we’d be making.
Being at the very beginning of my pre-teen exploratory fashion phase (Seventeen had only just convinced me to buy neon coral lipstick and turquoise eyeliner), my fabric doomed me from the start. It was stiff cotton — desaturated gold with crackly decals and a muddy paisley pattern in deep primary colors. There’s no accounting for taste.
In any case, after several weeks of early mornings spent with my sister in a blank white room filled with sewing tables and around ten other girls who all seemed to know exactly what they were doing, I finally managed to wrangle the fabric into something resembling a dress. No sleeves, a basic crew neckline, a straight waist. I might have worn it to school, if the fabric weren’t an abomination. But instead I hung it in the back of my closet and promptly forgot it as well as I could. I realized that summer that I didn’t much care for the feeling of elaborate, repetitive stitches. And don’t get me started on hemming.
Still, despite my lack of interest or talent, I’ve always admired people who can look at fabric, yarn, or thread — or, for that matter, iron, glass, or wood — and see in it some hidden functionality. It’s almost like magic to watch them create out of unformed material any number of the tools and adornments we use every day without a thought.
And they make them beautiful, too. It’s in these little excesses that the transcendent reality of humanity’s creative capacity truly shines. As a species, we seem to have an endless ability to surprise each other with just how far we’ll go for the utterly unnecessary.
I’ve recently begun a small collection of stranded colorwork sweaters, like the fair isle designs from Shetland or the Marius pattern from Norway. They’re the classic wool sweaters, with decorated collars full of geometric patterns and snowflakes and silhouettes of reindeer or birds.
Though I generally go for a more streamlined look in my wardrobe (Seventeen didn’t hold its vice grip over my closet for long, thankfully), I recently sprung for a vintage, white-and-blue button-down that was handmade in Norway. It’s got a striped pattern of alternating diamonds and selburoser (often called “Scandinavian stars”), and you can see the crazy mess of yarn-work used to create the effect all over the inside.
Though likelihood is my own sweater was made through at least a partially industrialized process, the history of stranded colorwork stretches as far back as ancient times. The fair isle iteration was popularized in the 1920s by the Prince of Wales, who famously wore it while golfing; some believe the residents of the Shetland learned it from Spaniards who washed up on the island; others, that they inherited it from Scandinavians. Though styles from nearby regions have also found popularity, they’re often categorized together under the “fair isle” name.
In any case, my Norwegian sweater has already become a staple of my wardrobe. I get compliments on it regularly, and I’ve come to love the unique bit of color and texture it brings to my outfits. But that’s not why I love it — nor why I think the style has become a timeless staple, weathering over a century of trends unscathed despite its striking appearance. No, I think we’re drawn to fair isle sweaters because they vividly contradict what has become a core assumption in Western thought: the distinction between arts and crafts.
When you think about the development of stranded colorwork, it is, strictly speaking, a needless complication. During the long, cold, wet winters on the British Isles and Scandinavia, fishermen and farmers and tradesmen — and their wives and children — would need a lot of clothing to stay warm. Whenever women weren’t cooking or cleaning or taking care of their kids, they were often making yarn and knitting it to keep up with the endless demands of worn-out, outgrown, over-worn clothing. They would spin the wool themselves, expertly removing debris and winding the strands. They would dye it themselves using natural pigments — and later artificial ones. They would develop the patterns, exploring the ways various techniques would create unique designs.
In the middle of such a busy life, why take the extra time to make these sweaters beautiful? Why get excited over new pigments and patterns, only to uphold the Sisyphean task of keeping their families clothed?
In this little bit of extra effort, I’ve found that fair isle knitting is not so different from what I do in my art — or at least, from the development of the Western artistic tradition. Artists have long experimented with different pigments and binding media (just look at da Vinci’s crumbling Last Supper). Over years of practice, we have developed techniques, such as linear perspective and chiaroscuro, to represent more faithfully the world presented to our eyes on paper or canvas. Sculptors have learned how to “paint with light,” honing their understanding of form and tone.
Both pursuits — knitting and visual arts — can take a lifetime to master, with seemingly endless new techniques and materials to explore. You could say that knitting is more practical than painting or sculpting, but, just as one could argue there is no need for fair isle patterns on sweaters, one could equally argue that, in a pre- or post-literate society, there is a great need for the visual arts, be it to adorn a cathedral in stained glass or to notify window shoppers of an upcoming sale. We as a culture admire the artistry of a fair isle sweater, but we deign not to call it art. Where do we draw the line?
We take for granted nowadays that visual art is “fine art.” Countless artists and museums around the world build their reputations (and attract their funding) by attempting to further the conversation around what art is or is not. The nineteenth-century Decadents were perhaps the most extreme, venerating l’Art pour l’Art, or “art for art’s sake.”
But, if you recall the nine classical muses — epic poetry, lyric poetry, comedy, tragedy, light verse and dance, flute, mime, history, and astronomy — you’ll notice that visual art is conspicuously absent. In fact, none of the muses revolve around physical production at all. They are musical, literary, mathematical. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that painters and sculptors, after centuries of protest, managed to fight their way into the artistic fold.
The arts, in the classical sense, were ways of grasping at ephemeral, abstract truths, which were always just out of reach of human understanding. The emotional resonance of music, the complex realities of emotion, the events of our own jointly remembered (and ever-fading) past. The techniques involved were those not of the hands but of the mind. In many cultures, they were seen as the product of divine inspiration — just consider King David’s psalms or Odin’s great efforts to obtain and bestow the Mead of Poetry.
And if you think about it, this is a far easier intuition to grasp. It’s borne out in our experience every day. Certainly, there are pieces of visual art that can bring a person to tears, the Chartres Cathedrals and Apollo and Daphnes and Calling of Saint Matthews of the world. And yet, many people are skeptical of these experiences. Many people do not have a favorite piece of art, cannot recount a time when a beautiful painting rent their heart. But everyone has a favorite song; everyone has a moment when a quote met them exactly where they were and bolstered them for the future.
What I mean to say but am trying to approach gently is that artists are, in many ways, still craftsmen. While great art can touch the soul, it is different from the way great music or poetry touches it. It is a quieter awe, based as much on the skill of the artist’s hand as on the quality of her geometric composition. The creators of the Book of Kells, for instance, were certainly master artists, but they did not see themselves as such. To illuminate the pages of the Gospel was an integrated part of the process of the book’s creation; the illuminators were on par with the scribes who painstakingly wrote out the text. The two worked in tandem; their techniques were different, but the product was one and the same. Great artists must be great craftsmen.
I don’t mean to say that there wasn’t any merit to painting and sculpture’s elevation above some crafts. While visual art bears some resemblance to craft, it is, in general, significantly less practical. It integrates elements of storytelling and mathematics through subject matter and composition. It feeds on the work of the muses, yet it fails to merit its own. This chimeric combination does seem to explain why “art” is so difficult to define — why we know it when we see it, the same way we know the quality of a sturdy table or a well-forged kitchen knife, but we just can’t seem to figure out what it is or what it’s for.
I do not propose to answer that question, either now or, I hope, at any point in the future. Rather, I prefer to sit on my couch in my Norwegian sweater, simply enjoying the fact that, in addition to being clothed, I am clothed beautifully and well. Is my sweater art? I’d like to think so. Or maybe it’s art that’s more of a craft. These questions are interesting to ponder, but they’re ultimately well above my pay grade.
Art or craft, I fail to see how the distinction brings value to the lives of creators. After all, we are all in our own way simply reflecting a much more perfect Creator, one who formed us out of dust and breathed life into us in almost the same moment. Matter and form, form and function — they’re all just ideas in progress. And even though I can’t sew or crochet (or knit, in case that was difficult to extrapolate) to save my life, I’d rather spend my time in a knitting circle swapping patterns to clothe my children than clawing my way to the top of this imagined heap.
What God has cleansed, we won’t call common: That is the motto of Atinlay. Here, we may suggest that art is craft and craft