DESIGN Digital Prints Charming

Sock Monkeys.

Weird. I've never understood the attraction or cult-like following to these collectables. It seems they've become mainstream in the last 5 years. Everything from the floppy stuffed animal to actual apparel. I've seen stands in the mall with SockMonkey hats and mittens. What a mind-boggling conundrum when you think about it... the idea of an old, dirty sock, to monkey, to hat that no longer is a monkey or a sock but now vaguely reminiscent of both. Strange what people will pay money for.

Where did this fanaticism with sock monkeys come from? Our culture seems lately to be on a rebound for retro things, making them new and trendy. Throw-back to the past but with a twist; the sock, monkey, hat, thing. We see this yearning for handcrafted look everywhere, but with a modern crispy cleanness.

In graphic design, the stamp, letterpress, woodcut look is all the rage. Misregistration, uneven pressure stamping, bleeding linework is all highly trendy yet the majority of it is produced digitally. It can give that much needed human factor to our daily grind. Seeing the posters on lamp posts, the cd covers in Starbucks, greeting cards in boutique shops all have that charm many of us want to relate to. But how odd is it that all of these mass-produced items are still just that, mass-produced with a hand-crafted feel. Something that I do find myself paying premium money for none-the-less. The beauty of the handcrafted art is that it records human error in a charming way. Prints that would have originally been thrown out due to mass misregistration or because the uneven pressure of the press makes them nearly illegible, is now the desired look. Because we can make the most unnatural, crisp line infinite times with our technology, we no longer want to.

Check out this video about the digital letterpress:

All that being said is nothing revolutionary or even that interesting. But when digital handcraft is done poorly, boy is it bad. Will that be the wave of the future? Bad digital representation of ancient handcrafted techniques? Bad fake stamp work is one of the worst visual assaults I can think of, yet it runs rampant in clip art and bad free-fonts. Will clip are one day become... dare I say it.. Charming??

So back to the SockMonkey. Cool because it seems to be the incantation of an endless possibilities? Or gross, because really, its just an old sock in disguise?

A SM Little History: c/o wikipedia

Origins

The sock monkey's most direct predecessors originated in the Victorian era, when the craze for imitation stuffed animals swept from Europe into North America and met the burgeoning Arts and Crafts Movement. Mothers there took to sewing stuffed animals as toys to comfort their children, and, as tales of the Scramble for Africa increased the public's familiarity with exotic species, monkey toys soon became a fixture of American nurseries. However, these early stuffed monkeys were not necessarily made from socks, and also lacked the characteristic red lips of the sock monkeys popular today.

John Nelson, a Swedish immigrant to the United States, patented the sock-knitting machine in 1869, and began manufacturing work socks in Rockford, Illinois in 1890. The iconic sock monkeys made from red-heeled socks emerged at the earliest in 1932, the year the Nelson Knitting Company added the trademarked red heel to its product. In the early years, the red-heeled sock was marketed as "De-Tec-Tip". Nelson Knitting was an innovator in the mass market work sock field, creating a loom that enabled socks to be manufactured without seams in the heel. These seamless work socks were so popular that the market was soon flooded with imitators, and socks of this type were known under the generic term "Rockfords". Nelson Knitting added the red heel "de-tec-tip" to assure its customers that they were buying "original Rockfords". This red heel gave the monkeys their distinctive mouth. During the Great Depression, American mothers first made sock monkeys out of worn-out Rockford Red Heel Socks.

[edit]Developments

Around 1951, the Nelson Knitting company discovered that their socks were being used to make monkey dolls. This company became involved in a dispute over the design patent on the sock monkey pattern. They were awarded the patent in 1955, and began including the pattern with every pair of socks. The sock monkey doll was then used in promotional campaigns celebrating the widespread application of their product by inventive homemakers in the field of monkey manufacturing.

In 1958, the "scrap-craft" magazine Pack-O-Fun published "How to Make Sock Toys", a guide to making different sock animals and dolls with red heeled socks. Frequently cited as being their most popular book ever, this pamphlet went through multiple printings and was being produced in new editions up until the mid-1980s. In the late 1980's the sock monkey was reborn by a company called Marketing Tide of Willouhby Hills, Ohio which sold kits with the original socks and instructions in numerous craft and sewing magazines. Their kit was featured on the ABC-TV Network Home Show in 1992, which put the Sock Monkey firmly back into American Culture.

The Nelson Knitting Company was acquired in 1992 by Fox River Mills, and the original brown heather, Red Heel monkey sock is still in production by Fox River Mills. A distinctive change in the red-heeled sock design distinguishes monkeys made with Fox River Mills socks from Nelson Knitting Company socks. Fox River heels are more uniformly ovular, without the end points that gave Nelson Knitting-made sock monkeys their smiles or frowns.

[edit]Sock monkeys today

Sock monkeys remain a popular toy to this day. Most vintage red-heel sock monkeys found today are no older than the late 1950s, and many date from the 1970s. A number of methods for dating sock monkeys have been debated by collectors, including the shape of the red heel, the tightness of the weave, sock seams, the style of clothing worn, and other features. The term "vintage" red-heel sock monkeys is typically relegated to sock monkeys made from red-heel socks knitted by the Nelson Knitting Company and from similar socks knitted with red-heels by other companies in the same time period. The term "modern" red-heel sock monkeys is normally relegated to sock monkey dolls created after Fox River Mills, Inc. acquired Nelson Knitting Company in 1992. Home made red-heel sock monkey dolls usually have unique faces and body characteristics and are considered one-of-a-kind. Sock monkey dolls are also mass-manufactured in the marketplace. Sock monkey dolls mass-manufactured by a company normally all have the same face and body characteristics. Not all sock monkey dolls are created from red-heel socks. A new trend is growing to create sock monkey dolls from colorful striped or polka dot socks—even mismatched socks.

[edit]Sock Monkey Festivals

The continued popularity of the sock monkey encouraged the city of Rockford, Illinois to embrace the doll as a part of its history. In 2005, Midway Village Center in Rockford held its first "Sock Monkey Madness Festival", while simultaneously opening an exhibit highlighting the industrial, legal, and creative history of the Nelson red heel sock and the sock monkey.

Other festivities have been held in other geographic areas, too, with sock monkeys as the event's main or supporting theme. Sock monkey novelty items are normally available for purchase in gift shops at such events, and also on the web.