The Shooman
A Pretty Face
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Some awesome argyle intarsias by Ballantyne.
Ballantyne (new old stock)
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vintage 1970's Ballantyne
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vintage 70's Ballantyne.
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I bought about a dozen all up, some new old stock and others vintage. A few were solid colours of bone, black and dark grey, heaps of argyle intarsias and others. Some Ballantyne are thin knit, some are medium knit and others are thick knit (see pic above).
The Ballantyne were known to be called "handmade" because they had hand-framed diamond intarsias, and indeed the intarsia work had hand sewing and hand framing that even the top Italian cashmere houses don't even do apparently.
Check out this link (good article):
http://robbreport.com/Fashion/Style-Knitting-Wits
Top quotes from the link
his coarse, burly fingers prove nimble enough to manipulate individually the finest strands of cashmere around the razor-sharp needles that line the iron base of the frame. Hope, who has plied this craft since the age of 15, is one of the few remaining knitters in Scotland capable of such work.
AND especially this:
The type of loom that he operates became obsolete more than 75 years ago, when most manufacturers abandoned it in favor of automated equipment that can produce in minutes what a knitter such as Hope requires days to make. While Ballantyne utilizes mass-production machinery for many of its knits, it also continues to operate more than two dozen hand looms at its dingy, 85-year-old knitting factory in Innerleithen, Scotland, located a picturesque hour’s drive south of Edinburgh. “Other cashmere companies—such as Malo, Loro Piana, and Brunello Cucinelli—try to duplicate the look of a hand-knit sweater, but they do it with machines because they need the mass quantity to be profitable,” explains Tom Harkness, Ballantyne’s Scotland-based chief operating officer
and,
Unlike many of its competitors, Ballantyne attaches the sweaters’ collars, cuffs, and waistbands by hand. “
and,
Furthermore, Ballantyne uses single-ply cashmere yarns almost exclusively. These are finer than other yarns and therefore are more prone to breaking during the manufacturing process. “We could increase our production by a third if we did more two-ply yarns, because every person in the factory can do two-ply knitting—but not everyone is capable of doing one-ply,” says Harkness, noting that the head of a two-ply knitting needle is larger to accommodate the thicker yarn.
and,
The delicacy and complexity of single-ply knitting account for the relatively high cost of Ballantyne intarsias. Prices start at about $1,100 for simple repeat patterns and can quadruple for more complex designs and custom orders. “Some of our most complicated patterns can take even an accomplished knitter such as Richard Hope as many as two days to make,” says Harkness, “and that is only for the front of the sweater.”
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My basic observations (my opinion)
- lots of obvious handwork in the scottish Ballantyne intarsia jumpers.
- the thinner 1 ply are just as good as the thicker two ply jumpers imo because they are all a solid tight knitted cashmere made with long strand cashmere therefore it makes no sense that they would be inferior if the cashmere length is long for both the 1 and 2 ply jumpers. Why would Ballantyne spend more skill to make an inferior jumper if 2 ply is cheaper and easier to make??? 2 ply may be better for other makers, but my impression is that this is not the case with vintage Ballantyne. We need to be careful of igent waffle and use our own brains and observation and research OUTSIDE of internet forums. I don't like to use the forums for my research, l like to use my own common sense.
- I saw a Hermes' 1 ply job and it looked cheap and awful, but this is not so with Ballantyne vintage.