Silk Sion Purse

Hand Knitted Reliquary Purse Documentation and Pattern

By Sof’ia Serafimskaia (Susan Saladini)

May 2007

Included in the treasury of an ancient cathedral in Sion, Switzerland are several knitted purses circa fourteenth century that had been designed to withhold the revered relics of saints. The gauge of the knitting is approximately 16 stitches to the inch. The bags are of a rectangular form, in which they are about from 8 1/8 to 13 3/8 inches in height and 6 ¼ to 10 3/8 inches in width, and are lined with nine to fourteen tassels along the bottom seam. The designs themselves on the purses are very intricate where the varied motifs combine to fashion complex horizontal patterns. Through a combination of red, green, blue, violet, beige, and white colored silks, the purses are fabricated with such patterns as repeating checkers, flowers, chevrons, and heraldic devices. Woven through the topmost band of the pattern, each purse is fitted with two fingerloop braided drawstrings to assure the safety of the contents.

Extant Examples

Method

I attempted to replicate the Sion purses as closely as possible.  My purse is knitted with a gauge of 16 stitches per inch using size 0000 needles.  There are 200 stitches in each round.  The dimensions of my bag are 6 ¼ by 8 7/8 inches which fits in the range of the original bags. 

I used various colors of Gudebrod Bros Champion Silk Tread on spools size FF.  I selected red, green, blue, beige and purple to approximate the colors used in the original bags. 

I choose to design my own pattern taking inspiration form the extant pieces.  All the motifs used to design my bag can be found on the originals, I just reconfigured and consolidated various elements form several of the Sion purses. 

Fingerloop braided handle and drawstring cord using the “Round Lave of 5 Loops” pattern found on page 40 of Tak V Departed.  This pattern was often used on Medieval purses. 

I took special care to replicate the tassels as close to the extant pieces as possible.  I see on many of the bags that the tassel was wrapped with silk thread at the top to keep the tassel together rather than knotted so that is what I did.

Patterns

Option 1 (which I used to create my purse)