“Jean Greenhowe shall grant us a pardon”
– Harsh Times in Umberstone Covert
So… what do we know about Jean Greenhowe?
The A to Z of HMHB
The A to Z of HMHB
“Jean Greenhowe shall grant us a pardon”
– Harsh Times in Umberstone Covert
So… what do we know about Jean Greenhowe?
EXXO
It seems that she’s the only human in the song.
Unless anyone’s seen the chips and wires. And the circuit boards.
30 December 2018
Transit full of keith
A retired knitted toy designer, apparently. A quick shufti at her website (someone had to do it) sheds no light at all on the song, or Geraldine. But intriguingly, she does knit a mean Battenburg. https://www.jeangreenhowe.com/bazaar8.html
30 December 2018
EXXO
Nice one Keith. Greenhowe has been so prolific, as have her devotees, that I had assumed there would be a knitted Battenburg without yet having found it. Haven’t yet found the name of the doll on the back of the album cover in any Greenhowe pattern, but sooner or later we will find her. Probably*. Notice the tartan, the ginger hair, and that Geraldine was a particularly common name in Scotland.
*Although the doll on the album cover seems archetypal Greenhowe, with so many features shared by her other designs, she also seems like a rather superior example in the sheer amount of work in the detail. Obviously the bigger the doll and the finer the wool, the more detail you can put in – there’s far more detail in her tartan skirt than, for example, in the tartan of Greenhowe’s Clan MacScarecrow (which are obviously smaller, cruder dolls), and it may be that the example on the album cover was knitted, based on Greenhowe, by someone who’s so bloody good at it that she can take things to another level.
As I sort of said in the song thread, the Greenhowe “Emily” dolls are very similar to the one on the album cover, and that particular three syllable name has all the Bagpuss associations too. Could the doll in the song have been conceived as Emily before she was renamed Geraldine?
31 December 2018
EXXO
The deeper you go into it all, man, the more you realise that Jean Greenhowe is really the Patti Smith of toy doll knitting, and that ‘orses are equally important in the ouevre of both of these style icons.
As the Jean-Greenie herself puts it “in the 1960s I was completely unaware of these [rules] because no-one told me about the methods or taught me the techniques. Because I didn’t know that these rules existed I unwittingly broke them and began to experiment freely with my doll and toy designs.”
https://www.jeangreenhowe.com/design2.html
The Jean-Greenie has surely retired way too early, and should now be knitting her own versions of great moments in rock.
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Harsh Times in Umberstone covert will one day go back where it came from, by becoming a knitted tableau, a 3-D Bayeux tapestry for its age.
31 December 2018
Phyllis Triggs
Wow, she’s a genius! All the more in awe of those knitted dolls given my failed attempt at embroidering in some socks this Christmas! Yes, you’re right, very Patti Smith. Saw Patti at Manchester Apollo a couple of years ago – what I brought away with me from that gig was: Defy the rules. Deny the rules. Don’t ‘break’ the rules. If you set out to break the rules you’re acknowledging their existence, you’re being shaped by them. Be yourself. Mr Dylan had it right: ‘To live outside the law you must be honest’. And these knitted creations are sublime in their honesty. We’re talkin truth and beauty here I think. Bloody hell I’ve only had a couple of beers!
31 December 2018
Transit full of keith
Of course, when Jean used a Singer 350 sewing machine to hem a bonnet at the 1966 Manchester Free Knitting Festival, the purists shouted ‘Judas’, but she didn’t care. ‘Purl it fucking loud’ she said.
1 January 2019
Phyllis Triggs
Ha Ha! Superb, Keith! Happy New Year!
1 January 2019
facebook mum
Loving this, not much to add to the research already done. I think the doll on the cover must be Morag MacScarecrow of the MacScarecrow Clan as mentioned above. I hear what you’re saying about the tartan apron Exxo but I think the picture is just a bit fuzzy there. I see Jean also has a pattern for Jesus in her Christmas Special booklet and a gherkin in Tea Party Treats. I couldn’t find any capers but there is a half Scotch egg. I got a bit sidetracked reading the blog of someone called Geraldine who used to send her Jean Greenhowe creations for giddy escapades with other bloggers around the world and have them photographed but there wasn’t any bitterness or self-consciousness. I don’t know if “notion” in the song is just a coincidence but it is another knitting term, notions mentioned at the beginning of a pattern are the buttons, ribbons etc you will need.
31 January 2019
EXXO
Nothing to add, you say?? You’ve only gone and found Jean Greenhowe’s gherkins
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/tea-party-treats-part-1—appetisers
and had a vision of that which Emma saw in Dorothy Perkins.
Thus Keith was correct that everything in the song has been patterned by Greenhowe, and others are surely vindicated in seeing her as the all-powerful matriarch and creator of all things.
But it is your insight about ‘notions’ that will surely see oceans of motions for you to receive a hand-knitted gold biscuit medallion (notional, of course).
31 January 2019
transit full of keith
Seconded on the nomination. I don’t think I did say everything in the song has been patterned by Greenhowe, but it is intriguing that so many things in the song seem to have been: battenburgs, gherkins, Christ, stumpy-legged horses that can’t win races.
On the other hand, I bet she hasn’t knitted a Large Hadron Collider. Nor Throbbing Gristle (although her pork pies are quite lifelike).
1 February 2019