Pair of short man’s gloves, 19th c.

Pair of short man’s gloves, 19th century, Dessi Magnetti, I-Cagliari, Sardinia. UK-Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland, 1913.1.15 (MS Inventory 26).

Sea silk, plain right knit, with three patterned rows on the back of the hand to the base of the fingers.

At the 1862 World Fair in London, sea silk products from Italy are shown for the first time. The Official Catalogue of the Industrial Department mentions these gloves from Sardinia: ”Dessi Magnetti Avv. V. Cagliari. – Byssus of the Pinna, with thread, gloves, etc. made of it”.

 The Royal Italian Commission, which had brought these gloves and the tie (MS-Inventory 25) to London, offered them to the then Industrial Museum of Scotland, now the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. According to Simmonds in 1883, one of Magnetti’s pieces also included a tie – this probably refers to MS-Inventory 25, which was originally called a shawl.