Book Review
This Golden Fleece:
A Journey Through Britain’s Knitted History, by Esther Rutter
Cathy Koos
Granta Books, London, 2019
Esther Rutter grew up on a Suffolk sheep farm and learned to spin, knit, and weave from her textile artist mother. Following her English studies at Oxford University, she is currently a Writer in Residence at University of St. Andrews.
Ever a curious person, Rutter decided to take a year off and travel Great Britain north to south, east to west, in a personal quest to learn when knitting arose from the ancient technique of nalbinding.
Traveling by train, car, ferry, and plane, she learned that Brits had been working wool at least two millennia before the Romans set foot in English soil. In her broad-ranging travels, she found extant samples of fisherman’s ganseys (sweaters to us), hundred-year-old intricately knitted gloves with the owner’s name and date knitted into the cuffs, Shetland shawls and haps (caps), and even funeral stockings. These specimens inspired Rutter to spin and knit her own reproductions as she traveled to the far corners of her homeland.
Rutter visited museums ranging from one room to large mansions, examining sheaves of patterns, as well as other textiles. She learned that the Cotswold wool is “Britain’s real Golden Fleece” as she had a bag of Cotswold pressed into her hands. “Inside, light turned to fibre.” Rutter also learned how hand knitting gave rise to machine knitting during the Industrial Revolution.
You can find or order your copy of The Golden Fleece at your local bookseller, and you can follow Esther on Instagram @thisgoldenfleece and X (formerly known as Twitter) @rutterwriter.