It seems logical to assume that crochet has as long a history as knitting, but in fact no one knows exactly how or when crochet came into being. Theories are wide-ranging – some indicate that it came from Arabia and then spread via trade routes to the Mediterranean; some that it was a primitive ceremonial craft used in South America; some that it originated in early China; and others that it developed in the l6th-century Catholic church in Europe.

What is known is that there is no evidence of crochet in Europe before 1800, but that it was probably an offspring from an ancient form of embroidery, called ‘tambour work’, known in China, Turkey, India, Persia and North Africa. In this technique, a background fabric is stretched onto a frame and worked with a hooked needle and thread. In late l8th-century Europe, the stitches came to be worked without a backing, and it was named ‘crochet in the air’, the word ‘crochet’ coming from the old French word croc, meaning ‘hook’.

For many decades, crochet was made using ffne cotton, linen or silk thread in an attempt to replicate expensive lace. It was taught to girls in European
convents (who later took the craft to Britain and America) and for a while, being lavish and time-consuming, it was considered suitable only for the wealthy to practise. An exception, however, was in Ireland, where proceeds from the sale of crochet saved some people from starvation during the terrible potato famine of 1845-7.

Gradually crochet became a more widespread craft, and by the 1850s it had reached England, Wales and the Scottish lowlands, where it was known as’poor man’s lace’. Designs and pattern books proliferated. During Victorian times, its popularity increased, influenced partly by the fashion for covering up almost every item of furniture, and partly by the commonly held belief that Queen Victoria herself was a keen crocheter.

When it was not used to make covers for sugar basins, milk jugs and chair backs, it was employed for babies’ bonnets, edgings for handkerchiefs, pillowcases and tablecloths, collars and purses. But after the First World War, although some patterns for wool crochet started to appear, lack of free time and changes in fashion meant that the craft came to be practised by fewer and fewer people.

Crochet enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1960s and ’70s, when it featured in high-street fashion and was taken up by some makers as an experimental form of textile art, but then almost disappeared until very recently. Crocheters today use the traditional range of stitches but in increasingly exciting ways, perhaps employing intriguing patterning, contrasts of colour and texture, or unusual materials, such as string, raffia or twine, to give a conventional craft
form a desirable contemporary twist.