Jennifer Kent Sanquhar Glove Rug

This striking creation by knitwear designer Jennifer Kent, accompanied an exhibition and collection of accessories celebrating traditional Sanquhar knit patterns. Sanquhar is a historic market town in the River Nith Valley, in Dumfries and Galloway. For a relatively small settlement, it is home to two aspects of global cultural significance: the world’s oldest working Post Office; and the Sanquhar knitting patterns.

Sanquhar knitting patterns are instantly recognisable for their monochromatic geometry, which feel contemporary in their graphic simplicity, but have their origins in the 17th century. The range of patterns was derived from emblems that represented people and objects, events and occurrences that shaped the everyday lives of the knitters such as the Duke, Rose and Trellis, Drum, Midge and Flea, Cornet and the Shepherd. The specificity of the Sanquhar knitting tradition has been its greatest ally of survival. Knitting might not be the common occupation it once was in Sanquhar, never industrialising as it did further east. But the region’s Sanquhar tradition is finding new champions and audiences who recognise and prize it as a vital part of local social and cultural identity, combined.

Jennifer is one such contemporary advocate and amplifier. Following a residency at Cove Park studying the geometry of the Sanquhar patterns, she collaborated with the town’s knitting community to translate the hand knit patterns into electronic machine knit programmes. The Glove Rug was hand-tufted at Turnberry Rug Works on the south west coast of Scotland, to accompany an exhibition that Jennifer held for her collection at The Lighthouse Gallery in Glasgow in 2017. Also for the exhibition, Fiona Jardine wrote a beautiful, evocative text about the historical and cultural associations of Sanquhar, which you can read here.

Jennifer’s Sanquhar Glove Rug is a fully functional floor rug. Such is the power of its symbolism as a work of craft connecting hand and machine, past and future, we have honoured it as a wall-hung work of art at Bard.

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