Kaffe Fassett

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 1990

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is the man who can be credited with having made knitting glamorous. Designer and knitter Kaffe Fassett will be talking to Sue Lawley about the inspiration for his extraordinary bold and simple designs which have brought him fame and fortune the world over, and also waxing lyrical over the colours and patterns he uses, which reflect Byzantine carpets, Roman glass or just simple fruit, vegetables and shells. He'll also be talking about his bohemian childhood in California and the route which turned him into an Anglophile and led him to an exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Vespers by Claudio Monteverdi Book: Reflections by Hermann Hesse Luxury: Diary and pen

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1990, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a designer and a knitter. Born and brought up in California, it was in Scotland that he came across the inspiration for his career. There in a woollen mill, he found himself so attracted by the rich colours of the local yarn that on the train home he learned to knit
0:47.0	his needles haven't stopped clicking since.
0:50.0	Famous for his use of rich colours and bold simple designs.
0:53.6	He reflects patterns from the world of art, Roman glass,
0:56.3	Islamic ceramics and Byzantine carpets.
0:59.3	Now the author of several best-selling books and the manufacturer of some of the world's most expensive
1:03.9	knitware, he lectures all over the world and has been honored with an exhibition of his work
1:08.9	at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He's the man who's made knitting glamorous. He is Kafe Fasset.
1:15.0	Kafe, if you've been told as a young man that you'd make your reputation knitting
1:19.7	and stitching, I wonder how you would have reacted.
1:21.7	I think I would have fallen down laughing. I couldn't have imagined it.
1:25.0	Was your mother a knitter? Well actually she was and my sister also is an incredible knitter
1:29.9	I mean she she knits like a banchee but I was interested in it I loved the fact that they were making
1:36.1	garments in one piece of yarn that was being sort of fed into these loops but it never
1:40.8	occurred to me that I was going to do it because of course it's it's a
1:43.7	craft isn't it that's right considered yourself an artist yes we were above
1:47.2	crafts you know I mean you didn't dabble in the crafts if you were going to be a serious painter that was the whole. Do you now think that then that that's a misnomer,
1:55.3	craft finishing? I think that if you pour your heart and soul into some colors in any form. Why isn't that art? I mean if you arrange
2:06.2	pebbles at the beach or if you put together a stunning building or an
2:10.8	incredible tapestry I mean why why isn't that as important?
	...

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