Sprang - History and Uses

History and Uses

The English word sprang is of Swedish origin. It may have spread southward toward the Mediterranean during the iron age or possibly the late bronze age. The earliest surviving example of sprang is a hair net, c. 1400 B.C., that was recovered from a bog in Denmark. Most archaeological finds of sprang fabric come from the later classical era and early Dark Ages: locations include Norway (third to fifth centuries A.D.), Switzerland, Egypt (possibly twenty-second dynasty, also early Coptic), and various Roman sites. Use of sprang has also been conjectured from archaeological recoveries of ancient looms and from depictions in period artwork.

Sprang is also an indigenous needlework technique among the peoples of South America, with the earliest known examples dating from before 900 A.D. among the Paracas culture and Nazca culture in present-day Peru. Sprang has also been noted in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, and North America. Indigenous North American sprang includes woolen scarves by the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin, and Hopi wedding sashes. The natural elasticity of sprang makes it suitable for stockings, hair nets, sleeves, bags, scarves, and other purposes where pliant material is required. Most sprang needlework is utilitarian and hence was overlooked by scholars until late in its history, according to needlework historian Catherine Amoroso Leslie.

In fact, it was not until the nineteenth century and the discovery of sprang at archaeological sites that it was recognized as a separate and distinct form of needlework. Many museum objects that were wrongly classified as knitting or lace have now been correctly identified as sprang.

Following nearly simultaneous archaeological finds in Denmark and Egypt during the 1870s, an example of Coptic sprang brought to Austria in 1882 inspired the management of a factory near Vienna to manufacture sprang hammocks. The Paris World's Fair of 1889 included an exhibit that duplicated ancient sprang, which led to renewed interest in the technique. Traditionally, cultures that practiced sprang had not produced written records of its manufacture or use. Shortly after the Paris exhibition, living traditions of sprang began to be documented. During the 1890s Ukrainian villagers were identified as practicing sprang in the manufacture of women's caps. Soon afterward, local sprang production for various garments was also documented in parts of Eastern Europe and in Denmark. Local European traditions generally endured until the mid-twentieth century. Sprang is, however, largely a historical technique that has been supplanted for most purposes by the later invention of knitting, whose earliest known example dates from the third century A.D.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a military fashion of decorative sprang sashes in silk known as faja in Spain gained international popularity among generals as a distinguishing ornament of rank. The fashion spread to northern Europe and to North America. George Washington wore a sash made of red silk sprang around the year 1779.