Hand-Me-Downs

Born on the 19^th of June 1931, Heather Halcrow Nicholson was an advocate for, and practitioner of, conventionally ‘domestic’ fibre arts until her passing in 2019. Nicholson would go on to experience more vocational changes than most throughout her life. She began as a geologist - notably the first woman to conduct a field-based geology thesis, part of which required her to map the entirety of Waiheke Island on foot.¹ This was perhaps the first of her professional endeavours which highlighted the status of women during a particular moment in the social history of Aotearoa. Science was not a common profession for women, who had typically been assistants to men, rather than individual researchers.² Later, due to a lack of jobs available for women in geology, Nicholson took up teaching. She progressed to the role of Head of Science at Westlake Girls College, before retiring and redirecting her teaching skills to craft.³ Alongside teaching and exhibiting her work, Nicholson compiled the history of knitting in Aotearoa into the 1998 book, The Loving Stitch: A History of Knitting and Spinning in New Zealand, which won the 1999 Montana Medal for non-fiction.⁴ Nicholson writes about her success in securing a grant from the 1993 Suffrage Centennial Trust, with the aim to research The Loving Stitch. She recalls a group of social studies teachers who were “especially annoyed” that her project had received funding, as well as a “full sneer” from TV3’s Ralston Group.⁵

It is for this publication that Nicholson collected a significant number of knitted and crocheted garments and homewares, works-in-progress, paper patterns, and a multitude of crafting tools. These objects served as physical references for the techniques and styles that she wrote about in The Loving Stitch, and photographs of some are included in the book. These objects make up the Heather Halcrow Nicholson Knitting Collection, which is now held at Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Auckland War Memorial Museum. Given as a gift to the Museum by Nicholson, she intended that the collection would continue to function as a resource for the study of fibre art against the broader context of the history of Aotearoa. Last year, as part of the IDEA (Improved Documentation Enhanced Access) Project, I worked to create detailed records for the three-dimensional objects in the collection. Before the IDEA Project, this collection was uncatalogued, and its contents were therefore not accessible through our online database, Collections Online. Now that work on the collection has concluded, all records can be accessed digitally with high quality images available for a selection of the most significant objects.

^{Baby's pram set, 1995.110.293. © Auckland Museum CC BY NC}

As we progressed through the collection, I was often struck by a parallel between Nicholson’s work and the work that is done here at the Museum. At the core of both is the urge to preserve objects, in a physical sense, from the destructive effects of time. This is a fundamental consideration for museums, and played a key part in the way that the Heather Halcrow Nicholson Knitting Collection was ultimately packaged and stored, with the intention that it would remain so for the foreseeable future. What became clear to me when reading A Loving Stitch was that Heather, too, shared in these concerns. She writes that “there are few samples of everyday garments to show for all those loving stitches of the past” and laments how “moth grubs demolished wool; sunlight and dampness rotted cotton counterpanes”.⁶ Her anecdotes, most likely familiar stories to long-time knitters and crocheters, or inheritors of fibre art from generations before them, tell of the fate which awaits all these lovingly handmade objects in time. By cataloguing, packing, and storing this sample of fibre arts, the Museum can significantly prolong the life of those objects, as a tie that binds previous generations of makers to current and future ones.

The collection is valuable as a technical reference for other knitters, as Nicholson always intended it would be in tandem with her book. But it is also a piece of art history that reflects on gender in Aotearoa. Objects of this nature are vulnerable in terms of their materiality, but also because of how they can, and have previously been, socially disregarded. Nicholson writes “… the homely image of the housewife occupying her spare moments with her knitting needles and wool has often been made an object of fun”, and so the derogatory perception of the housewife transfers onto the objects she creates.⁷ Prior to WWI, knitting was a way for many women to generate a small stream of independent income. This was especially true for those who were widowed or deserted by their husbands, often pressured by charitable aid officials to support themselves despite there being very few paid jobs available to women.⁸ Even if there was no money to be found in it, women would have knitted, crocheted, or sewn all their family’s clothes by hand. Many would have also spun the yarn that these garments were fashioned from, particularly during the Depression of the early 20^th century, where material ingenuity was required.⁹

This was set to change though, when the New Zealand clothing industry began to boom. Protected by high tariffs, clothing factories in the country employed about 80,000 people by the 1950s.¹⁰ Home-knitted and sewn garments became less commonplace, despite them having once been “far cheaper than made-up garments”.¹¹

With its origins in everyday necessity, knitting was historically seen as “a task, not as a recreation”.¹² The validation of knitting and crochet as legitimate forms of art is therefore ongoing. Although there is a growing contemporary interest from institutions, fibre art has previously not been collected with the same enthusiasm as other art forms. Knitting, like many forms of textile craft, has traditionally been regarded as the domain of women. The Heather Halcrow Nicholson Knitting Collection captures a moment in time, which Nicholson places at around the mid-1970s in her book, where fibre arts began to be welcomed into museums and galleries. The pieces in the collection made around and after this time, although still practical, embrace more playful design and technique. This could be the result of makers seeing the work of their peers being accepted into exhibitions and collections, giving them the confidence to put down the pattern and try something new as well. Two pieces stand out to me in the Heather Halcrow Nicholson Knitting Collection, both made after mid-1970, as having particularly bold artistic qualities.

^{Lee Andersen sweater, 1995.110.76, © Auckland Museum CC BY NC}

The first is a Lee Andersen sweater, a revolutionary New Zealand knitwear designer who published the book You Knit Unique in 1985, encouraging imagination and creativity.¹³ The sweater is distinctively 1980s, with bright blue batwing sleeves and an abstract geometric design that repeats on the front and back. Its graphic design stands out against the other garments in the collection, whose makers tended to opt for only one colour of yarn throughout.

 

^{Paper waistcoat. Paper and wool, 1995.110.108}

There is also a unique paper mâché waistcoat in this collection, made by Irene Scarrar as a demonstration of the possibilities when used mixed mediums. It is not meant to be worn but was rather shown at two fibre conventions: Fibre & Fleece Opotiki in 1974, and Fibre Fiesta Timaru in 1994. The paper mâché depicts a garden scene of grass, flowers, and insects on each front panel, with a rainbow variegated yarn forming the back panel.

The Heather Halcrow Nicholson Knitting Collection reveals the layers of pedagogy at play in knitting and crochet, an artform most often passed down through generations of women. Not only does the collection track the material progression of fibre art through a period of Aotearoa’s history, but also innovations in how knowledge is passed between knitters. A variety of handwritten notes, drawings and scribbles immortalise otherwise fleeting reminders for how to improve a garment, giving messages to the next person who will start a similar project. Developments in technology are apparent in the printed patterns of this collection, which go from being hand-drawn and shaded with coloured pencil or typewritten, to machine-printed in vibrant, glossy hues with detailed instructions. The increasing popularity of acrylic yarn around the 1950s is well documented by the collection, given the number of garments made after this period which use it as their primary material. There are also many examples of hand-spun yarn, with insightful labels attached by Nicholson, commenting on the quality of the spin on each hank.

^{Yarn hank samples, 1995.110.153}

One reads “thickly spun and ruined by ignorance”, with the additional note that Nicholson “cannot stand” handling the yarn when it is wet.¹⁴ Her personality comes through in little ways all throughout the collection, on the labels and notes that can now be conceptualised as a part of social history, as well as a practical guide for whether to knit or purl the next stitch.

Fibre art brings together a cyclical network of women, of teachers and their students who will one day teach. The Heather Halcrow Nicholson Knitting Collection visualises this exchange, specifically within the context of the social history of Aotearoa. Now that all the objects in the collection have been inventoried, catalogued and rehoused, we can be sure that the knowledge stored within them can be passed down for many generations to come. As Heather says in the final words of her book, “active hands are in our genes, and must be expressed”. ¹⁵