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KNIT ONE... PURL ONE MURIEL BOLGER
Aran sweaters heralded the start of the Irish Knitwear trade and a huge cottage industry, mainly in the West of Ireland, grew up around the cables and diamonds, each stitch telling its own tale. Now knitting has passed on to further and much loftier plains and our garments, both hand and machine made, are to be found in couture houses and department stores everywhere. In the early eighties Irish knitwear enjoyed a boom and Michelina Stacpoole's name was on designers lips everywhere, then the industry was beset by problems. The Irish Knitwear Export Guild has provided a much needed boost to the industry, which was almost obliterated by the many setbacks in the past decade, not least the flooding of world markets with cheap imports and the punitive 21% vat. Fortunately design flames were not extinguished and
have rekindled to proclaim a new golden age which is being described as an overnight success story, but the Lainey Keoghs of this business know that this "overnight success" has taken the best part of a decade to achieve. The Crafts Council of Ireland has been involved in successful training for the craft industry since 1981 and has tried to develop courses to cater for areas where there are known skill shortages. Now happily, the industry is a growing and world respected business. Today's' design graduates and students have been responsible for catapulting it into a class of its own. With their emphasis firmly on design and by using innovation to its full potential they are producing goods that are very much in demand. Undoubtedly computer aided design has made a huge difference and although these knitting machines were introduced initially for speed,
Photograph by Nicola Murray
they are beginning to be exploited to the full in their design capacity. The more unstructured and layered look of today's' creations has given endless scope for experimentation. Mixing yarns to combine textures, qualities, weights and finishes has given individuality to many of the new designs.