By the end of the 16th century, what was the fashionable trend that drove the demand for knitted items?
1 Answer
Wool had always been one of two main fabrics in European History, but knitted items became more valuable with the start of the 'Mini-Ice Age' of the 16th to 19th Centuries.
Explanation:
Wool and linen had been the main fabrics in European history, clear back to the Bronze Age. Woolen clothing was cheaper and more common. By comparison, cotton and silk were much more expensive and were luxury trade items from Asia for many centuries.
The exact dates are still disputed, but there was an era known as the 'Medieval Warm Period' -- a time when the North Atlantic, Western Europe and much of North America was warmer (by about +1C) from approximately 950 to 1250 AC. The entire world seems to have been about a fraction of a degree warmer on average.
The Medieval Warm Period was followed by a cooling period that seems to have cuminated in an event called the Mini Ice Age, The general consensus is that global temperatures dropped by a fraction of a degree, but the worst effect was again experienced in the North Atlantic, Western Europe and much of North America. A shift of a degree might not sound like much, but the Norse colony on Greenland was wiped out, Iceland barely survived, and crop failures (accompanied by food shortages and epidemics) became more common in Europe, and so far as we can judge, in North America.
Knitting -- as judged from the appearance of knitting needles -- first appears in Ancient Egypt around 1,000 BC. However knitting of wool only appears to have spread to Western Europe at the very end of the Medieval Warm Period -- seemingly through Spain.
Knitted wool (as opposed to woven wool fabrics) has good insulative qualities and the technique of knitting spread to Europe from the 14th Century and became much more common over the next 200 years -- a development clearly supported by archeological finds, depictions in art-work, and in some written records.
