So many jumpers (sweaters) are massed produced and made of cheap yarns that pill (bobbles), 99.99% are machine knitted. But there was a time when master knitters used to loom some intricate jumpers by hand in the finest cashmere the world had ever seen, and they were masterpieces. You don't see anything like that today. The 1950's heralded in the golden age of knitwear where companies like Ballantyne were making jumpers of impeccable quality made to last a lifetime with little to no pilling, and some jumpers were made by specialists who made the infamous intarsia. The best intarsia were made by a handful of Scottish knitwear companies, but Ballantyne made the best ones; and eventhough many of these intarsia were weird, they were works of art which often took dozens of hours to create. There was no such thing as fast fashion back then, these masterpieces were painstakingly created in a world where time went slower and craftsman made things for the sake of making things, and no so much for the profit motive.
These jumpers were not cheap. They were worth thousands of dollars over 30 years ago in some parts of the world. Why so expensive? Because they were time consuming to create, and they used nothing but the best materials and knitting methods. Even 50 years later some of these jumpers of the golden age (1950's - 1980's, just before the globalisation trend) look brand new with no wear or pilling. Few brand new jumpers by the top brands looks as good after a few wears as these golden age jumpers that are 50 years old. Back then no corners were cut, it was all about making quality and something special.
An example of intricate intarsia knitting on a loom.
Eventhough this intarsia in the video is one of the more simple ones, the intarsia none-the-less is fiddly and time consuming to create. It can take days or weeks to finish the body of a jumper, where-as in contrast, a factory jumper sold in most shops takes perhaps minutes to knit the body area. The video is one of the more simple intarsia jumpers, so just imagine how difficult it must be to knit the more elaborate ones.
Some Ballantyne masterpieces of a bygone age.
My Ballantyne masterpiece.
One of the greatest masterpieces ever made. A rare double sided 4 ply intarsia with extremely intricate hand looming. The price of something like this today would be too cost prohibitive for there to be a market for it, and no maker would dare to create something like this anymore. It was made during a small window in history where small business' in Scotland was able to do it and carve out a market niche', but sadly globalisation has swept all that away and cost cutting in manufacturing has become the mainstay as quality has become largely forgotten.
Nothing comes close to these. The intarsia jumpers these days are mainly machine knitted, and they are greatly inferior for many reasons, but these ones below cut no corners, and there is no chance a company would be able to make anything like this today. Besides, many of these skilled workers who created these have long retired.
