Patterns & History

On the rugged Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland, women knitted sweaters for the island's fishermen. Each family had its own combination of cables, diamonds and braids — a kind of family crest in wool. The story goes that drowned fishermen were sometimes identified by the pattern of their sweater.

Whether this is literally true, historians doubt — but it shows how deeply the pattern is woven into identity and community. The cable represents the fisherman's rope, the diamond the fishing nets, the zigzag the cliff paths of the island.

The Norwegian knitting pattern is inextricably linked to the Selbu rose — an eight-pointed star originating in the village of Selbu. Around 1850, Marit Emstad was the first to use this pattern on mittens. Within a generation it had conquered all of Norway.

Norwegian patterns are always two-coloured — dark on light or light on dark. The geometric precision and symmetry are characteristic. Each region had its own variations, but the star remained the central motif.

Intarsia is the art of knitting colour blocks — each colour section is knitted with its own ball of yarn, without carrying threads across the back. The result is a flat, pictorial surface that resembles a painting.

From large geometric shapes to realistic images of animals or landscapes — intarsia makes it possible. The technique requires discipline: every colour change must be carefully twisted to prevent holes.