Fife museum launches project celebrating ganseys

The Anstruther museum has secured funding through Fife LEADER and Outer Hebrides LEADER to create a Scottish National Gansey Network, with the museum leading on developing a National Gansey Collection for Scotland.

This project will run from June 2020 to February 28, 2021, although it is anticipated that this will be the pilot for an ongoing project with a strong legacy involving ganseys, in association with knitting experts Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell. This would lead to a proposed ‘Festival of Ganseys’ to celebrate our dynamic and interesting gansey heritage in Scotland.

By creating a gansey collection database and a website to showcase the museum’s collections, photographs and knitting patterns, it will highlight the unique history and purpose of ganseys (knitted sweaters) in fishing communities.

The museum will reach out to its project partners in Fife, the Outer Hebrides and beyond, to gather information on ganseys held in other museum collections or family homes to create the basis for a Scottish online archive of information and skills.

A new yarn will be used to develop a new gansey pattern, in collaboration with Di Gilpin and Uist Wool.

A combination of virtual webinars, knitting demonstrations, gansey storage and preservation methods and interviews will form the event program for Knitting the Herring.

For more information, or if you would like to contribute to the project, please contact: Federica Papiccio, project co-ordinator, at [email protected]; or Carolyn Cluness, project co-ordinator at [email protected].