Week 15 Revolutionary Knitting
- Victoria Wells
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
When I see someone, usually a woman, knitting in public, I do not immediately associated it with a revolutionary act. Watching needles move gently in a rhythm to make a scarf or a beanie or a jumper or a baby outfit, does not bring images of revolution to mind. Dull or bright colours of handmade objects are not brought to mind when thinking about revolutions, but the two are connected.
In her book The Power of Knitting, Loretta Napoleoni describes the women of the French Revolution who knitted at the base of the guillotine while the nobility were being decapitated. She had discovered them in The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, when she was about 10 years old. Dickens claimed they knitted to distract them from their hunger. "All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched." A character, Madam Defarge, knitted the names of nobility into garments, as a code for who should be beheaded next. But as Napoleoni’s grandmother explained to her as they were knitting together, the character is only a symbolisation of the brutality of revolution and Dickens did not tell the whole story of the Tricoteuses. These women, the market women, ran everything for their families; they brought in money, administered their husband’s money, looked after the children and knitted and sewed in their spare time to make more money, so they could live. When, with all this labour, they could not feed their families they marched, in their 1,000s on Versailles demanding bread and the movement of the French capital to Paris. They were given bread and the capital was moved. Working women had never had so much political clout. They became heroes of the Revolution.
The women led by Reine Audu, Agnes Lefevvre, Marie Louise Bouju and Rose Lamcombe set up a faction that was one of the most radical in the revolution. As they walked the streets they would insult those who they thought were wealthy and encouraged revolutionaries to arrest them. They were invited to observe the National Convention. The men who ran the first revolutionary government without a monarch felt threatened by the popularity of these women, they were beginning to play a political role, they had rising power. They were removed from the National Convention and then forbidden to participate in any political assembly. The Revolution was just for the men. But these women wanted to be seen. They moved to the Place de la Revolution where the executions took place, they bought chairs with them and sat around the guillotine watching beheadings. They brought their knitting with them. They did not do this to avoid hunger but because that is what they always did, knitted. The Revolutionary government could not stop them; the square was a public place, they were not told to move on. The entrepreneurial women rented out their chairs to others who wanted to watch, but they also sold the things they made: socks, mittens, and little red hats or bonnets del la Liberte, ‘Liberty caps’ that became the symbol of the revolution. These caps were a copy of an Antolian Phrygian Cap with a rosette attached. A quick Google search will give you a number of patterns as they are still used in protests, and emulated by other protest groups such as Pussy Hat Project knitting pink beanies to be worn at the Women’s March in January 2017 in Washington DC.
Although not as revolutionary as little red hats, yarn bombing is a political statement. It says ‘look at me’ and ‘I am here’ and ‘see what I can do’. Coating trees in colours with patterns or with messages or in the UK marking an event on the top of a post box is a political act that bring attention to a theme, protest or marks an occasion. Done without the need of a license or any other kind of permission, rounding a corner of a street to find a tree, or a bench or a lamppost covered in colour reminds us that we are not alone and they are others out there who want to be seen.
‘A 100 Radical Textiles’ an Adelaide exhibition, among union banners, dresses made of unusual fabrics, a pair of pyjamas made and painted by Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, and Premier Don Dunstan’s shorts, there are some panels knitted by Kate Just. The panels state ‘I Can’t Believe I Still Have to Protest This Shit’ and ‘Feminism: Back By Popular Demand’. In her artist statement on her website Just states,
‘I question hierarchical value systems that place art above craft, and explore feminist issues and ideas: of love, care, repair, gender based violence, protest, and the reclamation of our bodies, lives and artwork for ourselves.’
Just uses knitting to make a living and make a statement, often using her art as an opportunity to bring people together to create and participate. ‘Knit Hope, Knit Safe’ worked with people to create banners and photos to challenge the issue of violence against women. The banners were taken on night walks with the participants. The first work, made in the UK by many, into one uniform banner in fluro yellow that read ‘HOPE’, represents a durable thing with high visibility and authority, intertwining both public and private. The banner made in Melbourne with the word ‘SAFE’ was untaken after the deaths of Jill Meagher, Tracey Connolly and Fiona Warzywoda all high profile violent deaths that captured headlines due to their public nature. All three killed on the streets of Melbourne, Warzywoda outside her solicitor’s office in Sunshine.
Just’s work ‘Anonymous was a Woman’ is a series of 140 panels with the words knitted into them. The repetitive knitting performance done over two years was carried out both in public and private, at home or at work and while out and about. It brings attention to the erasure of work done by woman in the art world over the years but also investigates domestic duties not being highly valued.
In a world that values things especially those traded, making someone else rich, thinking about, making and giving, for nothing, with love, a hand made item is a radical act.
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