Any Danish Dopers willing to help with a translation?

Factual Questions
1

There’s this knitted dress that I’m absolutely fascinated with on the Danish National Museum’s website. The dress’s page is right here. Quite unfortunately for me, everything on the museum site is in Danish. Even more disappointing, every internet translator I’ve run the text through is lacking in fashion and knitting terms, so it comes back as nonsense. In fact, Danish/English dictionaries in general seem lacking in the textile department.

I can begin to parse what everything means, but I’m not certain. Here’s the text. My attempt at translation follows.

In the beginning of the 1800s, knitting was very fashionable. Fashion magazines ???, there were some knitted shirts, and some underskirts/petticoats were knit in wool yarn. (I have no idea what the next sentence means.) This orange wool dress is knit. (Something about the technique and patterns.) This dress is from the Cederfeldt Simonsen family of Erholm.

*Dress in knitting and wool yarn in a spider lace pattern. Dress is ???, with ??? ??? and long sleeves. There is ??? and wool yarn with ???, ???. (Something about the zigzag border at the hem. No idea what that last sentence means.)

Dress, knit, orange wool, museum number W.11.c
Wool yarn. Orange.

No amount.*

As you can see, my grasp of the information is incomplete at the very best. Can anyone help me out?

I’d also like to send a letter to the museum to see if there are English translations of their documentation of the dress, but the language barrier stops me once more. (Even more frustrating is that the one book available that mentions this dress was originally written in Polish, and the English translation is terrible.) Their contact page is here (I think?), but it is returned once more as nonsense. Can anyone help me here, too?

If anyone has any tips for contacting a museum outside of your home country, that would be welcome, too.

Many thanks from the bottom of my woolly heart.

2

I’m not Danish, but I speak fluent written Skandinaviska :slight_smile: I can give a shot at making a general referral (any real Danes can then come and laugh at me.)

Busy hands

In the early 1800’s, knitting was very fashionable. Fashion magazines gave tips on how to knit socks, wallets or larger items like undershirts or dresses in wool. When having portraits painted, well-to-do women would often get themselves portrayed with knitting-related things. In order to be “trendy”, women were expected to be skillful with these kind of handiworks and have some knitting work underway all the time. The orange-yellow wool dress is knit in ajourstrik, which is the name of a certain technique (this is the part where I wish I had listened better to my grandmother when she tried to teach me to knit 15 years ago, but I think it has to do with the relationship between amounts of regular stitching and “purl stitching”, I think it’s called?), which was an alternative to “sewn” lace. The dress is from the Cederfeld de Simonsen family in Erholm.

Details on the outfit

This part gets a little hazy, because my knowledge of Danish terms pertaining to knitting and parts of clothes is extremely limited. I think “spidsrudemønster” is a diamond pattern, though, and the dress has a very short bodice and long arms. There’s woolen pleating around the neck, bodice and wrists. The bottom has a zigzag edge, and all other edges have some kind of tassles (“løkke” literally means “luck”, but I don’t know if there’s a specific tassle type like that?)

Dress, knitted, orange-yellow, then there’s the exhibit number. “Ingen mål” might mean “no measurements”, but that doesn’t really make sense.

If you go to nationalmuseet.dk (which this is a part of) and click the British flag on the top of the page, it gives you a Contact option:

The National Museum of Denmark

Frederiksholms Kanal 12,
DK 1220 Copenhagen K
Tel.: (+45) 3313 4411
Fax.: (+45) 3347 3333
E-mail: nationalmuseet@natmus.dk

3

auRa, all I can say is that your knowledge of textiles is six million times better than any Danish/English dictionary. I was coming up with one word out of like ten.

“Ajourstrik” might be lace knitting, if it’s an alternative to other types of lace. Knit and purl on their own wouldn’t create lace, but a solid fabric. You need to throw the yarn over the needle to get holes, which is what creates the positive and negative space in knitted lace.

I have no idea what kind of tassel a “løkke” could be. I’ve not looked into tassels as I am not a fan.

No measurements would make sense because of the stretchy nature of knitted fabric. The dress has the potential to stretch to fit a pretty wide range of sizes, and it would be difficult to measure flat. It appears to be very delicate. I’d assumed that there was an eyelet in the solid diamond part, but it’s just the knitting deteriorating.

As for missing the British flag – viva American isolation. D’oh!

Thank you so very much!

4

Perhaps “no measurements” simply means that the website doesn’t happen to have on file the dimensions of that item (museum exhibits, catalogues raisonnés, etc. usually list dimensions), rather than referring to the garment size.

5

That’s also a possibility. It’s a little hard to tell, as even the garments with graphed patterns on the site say “Ingen mål.” That’s not right, because they would have had to measure the bejesus out of the garments to graph the patterns.

6

The word “løkke” also means “loop”, which I guess is slightly more knitting-related. Other than that, I think auRa got it right.

BTW, I don’t know if you saw this, but if you click on the smaller images on the right (right above “Forrige | Næste”), you are able to see other pictures of the dress (from left to right it says “Dress, behind”; “Dress, bottom part, detail fabric”; “Zoom” (will open a new window where you can zoom and pan to see details) and “Madam Schmidt”, a painting of a woman with knitting gear). Javascript has to be enabled for this to work.

7

I think auRa nailed it - I’m a born-and-bred Dane, although I do not speak knit.

8

Loop makes much more sense in talking knitting and tassels. Some tassels are made with the ends of the tassel strands in loops and others are cut. Cut ones are fluffier; uncut ones last longer.

I caught the click on little, make big thing. I went mad with clicking.