History of Knitting Before Mass Production

"The aim of the present book is to fill the gap in the history of the textile industry. The history of English knitting has already been elaborated; in other countries, however, interest has been limited to the production of certain regions only or discussion has centred on particular collections of relics. There has been no research done into the knitting of southern, central and eastern Europe. Therefore, we shall discuss the problem of knitting production, beginning with Coptic and Arabian articles, passing on to the introduction of knitting with five needles instead of two, somewhere around the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, and finally to the blossoming of hand knitting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the invention of the simple knitting machine in 1589. This tool-type frame, the most perfect of all, became very popular in England and France during the seventeenth century and in a majority of European countries between the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. But it was the invention of the circular knitting machine at the beginning of the nineteenth century which led to factory mass production and, in the twentieth century, brought hosiery into serious competition with woven fabrics." The book is the fruit of many years of research into the history of the European textile industry. Its previous, Polish, edition dealt primarily with knitted garments and focused on the territory of Europe. For the present edition, much supplementary research has been done and the area of interest has been considerably widened.