Figure 1.--This family snapshot shows a brother and sister with their wonderful little Jack Russell terrier on their friont steps. The children look to be about 10-12 years old. Notice the sleeveless sweter that the boy is wearing. It looks go be home knitted. A sleeveless sweaterwas much easier to knit than a sweater with sleeves. The dealer dates the phototograph to the 1920s, if so it would have been the early-20s. The late 1910s may be more likely. Also note the black long stockings. They were very common in America for boys and girls into the early-1920s.

Another major way of differentiating sweaters are the sleeves. The first sweaters were long sleeve garments. This is understandable given the fact that early sweaters tended to be heavy, cold eater garments like the sweaters we see on the previous page. Obviously as cold weather garments, sleeves were imprtant. They could also be worn instead of suit jackets. This eventually changed although sweatrers with sleeves continued to be most common type. We begin to see lighter-weight sweaters. There were also sweaters with different sleeves. Eventually sleeveless sweaters developed. We have never seen short-sleeved sweaters. We begin to see these sleeveless sweaters (early-20th century). We are not sure if they appeared in the late-1910s or early-20s. For some reason, the sleeveless sweater seems to have been mostly wirn by boys. We susoect the populsrity of th sleeveless sweaters was in opart because they were much easier to knit. Of course as home knitting declined and most sweaters were stire bought, we see this type of sweaer continuing to be popuklar.

Created: 9:12 PM 6/18/2024
Last updated: 9:12 PM 6/18/2024