Pocket Goods
From Marty, via the comments:
What would they have kept in their knitted pocket? Also, were these pockets made in other ways, such as quilted or of leather?
We surmise that the colonists kept small personal items in their knitted pockets, also coins, although there was little use for coins during Plymouth Colony’s early years. We guess perhaps a comb or a thimble, a handkerchief, a letter, or ? I recall one interpreter who was portraying the mother of a five year old son. She always kept two or three little pebbles in her pocket as if he’d brought them to her. I thought that was kind of weird, this being long before I was the mother of a small son. Years later, I thought of her whenever I emptied my pockets at the end of the day and found pebbles.
Our interpreters keep all of those things in their 17th-century pockets, plus marbles, or a steel striker and flint and tinder (for period fire starting) and reproduction 17th-century coins. I know they also keep bent nails, bits of twine, yarn or rope, books of matches (for non-period fire starting), hard candy/cough drops and cigarette butts. These things I have cleaned out of pockets prior to washing/dry-cleaning.
If you look carefully at 17th-century paintings, especially crowd scenes, you can find many shapes and sizes of personal bag/pouch/pocket. They seem to be made of a variety of materials. Some look sewn of cloth or leather. Of course quite a number of embroidered “sweete bags” survive in modern museums, but these would have been beyond the means of most of the Plymouth residents. The V&A has a book called Bags, written I think by Valerie Cummings. Most of the examples are post-1650 (alas) but it is worth a look.
We have two or three kinds of small-to-medium-sized leather pockets/pouches represented on our sites as well as the knitted ones. There several more kinds I would like to have, but have not yet developed either the methods to make them or sourced all the components we’d need.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Thanks so much for the info. I’ve often seen and read about the small bags or pockets that hung from belts and waists. I guess it’s much like today, you would carry with you those items needed during your daily tasks. Thanks again!