I was contacted by Kate in Australia last week. We have since exchanged many emails and are now new friends! She recently acquired three old knitting machines. The oldest dating from 1914. They are a big heap of rust and I have been giving her advice on how to get them up and running and the kind of stitches she might expect to get from them.
She has a Dubied, a Clemency and a Diamant. I have two Dubieds in my studio and l0ve them dearly.
She has made amazing progress and with some advice scrougned from my friend Monika, who in turn scrounged it from a friend of hers, who keeps the knitting machines at St Martin’s School of Art in London, up and running – we have quite detailed instructions on how to fully clean these machines. I am inspired to clean mine too. More on that later…
I was fascinated by the history of these machines and she has a fair amount of information about that. Here are a couple of excerpts from her emails;
“Knitting machines from Italy were brought out to supplement women’s income in a cottage industry. Some Italian women who migrated to Australia had arrived with knitting machine in tow. These women had taken the trouble to bring such a cumbersome piece of equipment such a long way, because the knitting machine represented a traditional source of income. In Italy, home machine knitting was a career rather than a hobby, possibly more in the north than the south. By the quality of Erice’s work, the standard of workmanship was extremely professional. Erice Zilliotto (nee Barrato) was born in Cavaso, Treviso Province, Italy in 1913. Her mother, born in 1893, was a home machine knitter, and Erice, the eldest daughter, had learned the craft from her mother Elvira Baratto and aunty Lina Codemo, by the time she was 11. Her sister Bianca, as the youngest daughter, also learned, but at the local convent, and was more enthusiastic about music than knitting. As an adult, Erice moved to Rome, where she had her own home based machine knitting business, employing 2 to 3 girls. Her clients included the nuns of the Vatican, and there was also reference to biretta for the priests. In 1962 while on a holiday with her sister in Wollongong, Erice met her future husband, also on holiday, from Griffith. Her sister Iva and brother in law Guiseppe Zanotto helped her migrate to Australia in 1961. She shipped her machines and started a knitting business in Balgownie (Wollongong) in the small two bedroom cottage she shared with her sister’s family. Her customers were mainly Italian migrants, some of them already knowing her work since living in Italy.”
…”Story is her brother now 76, seller of the machine last surviving family member remembers when the machine was purchased 1941 a birthday gift for his sisters 15th birthday There was all sort of excitement on it arrival, his mother although Italian by birth, had been raised by another family in Germany and was familiar with these machines, she went back to Italy in 1922 shortly daughter knitted jumpers for the whole village, mother soon purchased a 2nd machine and she also started knitting. They lived in the North of Italy bordering Switzerland. The family migrated to Australia in 1950′s both woman continuing to knit and sew, seems they had their own little label “knitting studio model Australia.”