Storyteller's Toolbox 3
21cm x 16cm x 13cm
Description
Sewing box, sewing tools (cutting, unpicking), lead buttons
Themes, comments & storylines
One out of three storyteller's toolboxes: the first one to capture the senses, the second one to knit comfort and curiosity, the third to snip, cut and unpick.
"Pick any strand and snip, and history becomes unravelled. This is how Tony begins one of her more convoluted lectures, the one on the dynamics of spontaneous massacres. The metaphor is of weaving or else of knitting, and of sewing scissors. She likes using it: she likes the faint shock on the faces of her listeners. It's the mix of domestic image and mass bloodshed that does it to them…"
Margaret Atwood (1993), The Robber Bride, Virago, London, p.3
“Health officials battling hospital superbugs have taken action to thwart a new peril stalking the hospital wards - knitting. There are fears babies' hats, blankets and bootees, knitted and donated by volunteers, could be spreading infections. Such gifts have been banned from the neonatal unit at the Royal Blackburn Hospital in Lancashire. The hospital was hit by an MRSA outbreak in 2007, that forced it to close its neonatal unit after six babies tested positive. Last year babies were quarantined after traces were found of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase, or ESBL. Every year hundreds of items are donated for the babies, many of whom are too small for manufactured baby clothes." (The Observer, 8.3.2009)
The humble yet powerful tools of textile making give rise to almost infinite ways of creation, but can also inflict great harm. Deirdre Nelson in her work The Dangers of Knitting and Stitching (2005) draws attention to such instances. Searching for stories in museum archives and elsewhere, she makes objects in response, with wit and a twist.
May Schoeser, in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, describes Nelson’s way of working. Nailed, a piece of work that from a distance appears to be delicate piece of jewellery, on closer inspection turns out to be made of false nails pierced with needles, a comment on a report about the high number of compensation claims a clothing company had to deal with before new measures were introduced to protect workers’ fingers from being pierced by the needle of the sewing machine.
An embroidered asbestos mask was inspired by advice Nelson came across in a needlework encyclopaedia published in 1910. “To preserve needles from rust, put a little asbestos powder in the packets. People with damp hands which make needles sticky in usage, will do well to keep a small box of powder by them and dip their fingers occasionally in it.” (Th. de Dillmont 1910, in Nelson:2005)
Nelson, Deirdre (2005), The Dangers of Sewing and Knitting, Exhibition Catalogue, Crawford Arts, St Andrews
Nelson’s exhibition found resonance with many visitors telling her their own stories of injuries and accidents sustained in the far from innocuous pursuit of needlework. I contributed to her story collection one of my own family. My grandmother had the habit to pin her needle onto the top of her apron when her sewing work was interrupted. Much later in life, long after failing eyesight and stiff joints had forced (or allowed) her to give up needlework, during a hospital stay a needle was discovered on an x-ray image, lodged in her body only a slight movement away from piercing her heart. This, if anecdotal evidence can be trusted, was not an exceptional incident. In a more extreme case, twenty-six needles likely to have been inserted purposefully to inflict harm rather than having entered by accident, were discovered on an x-ray embedded in a Chinese woman’s body in 2007.
While the sharp point of the needle can easily draw blood and even enter the body imperceptibly, knitting needles likewise are far from innocuous. Used in the performance of home or back street abortions, not unheard of as murder weapons, knitting needles' potential to cause serious harm has also been recognized by airlines banning passengers from carrying them on board of aircrafts.