Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A designer and knitter renowned for vivid colours and bold patterns, he transformed knitting into art and created some of the world's most expensive knitwear.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony on a French Mountain Air
my father played this great rolling symphony and we danced to it
Growing up in Big Sur, I fell in love with her voice. It personifies that age and it was my first taste of England.
Träumerei (from Scenes of Childhood)
a Schumann piece that I just love every time I hear it.
It was a burst of energy... that energy was so terrific.
Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic
I love listening to swelling incredible music, particularly female voices... this is music from Bulgaria.
MiserereFavourite
pure ecstatic beauty... a beautiful little gorgeous boy's voice.
Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers)
Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra
pure, unadulterated beauty. It's soaring to the heights.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15Kafe, if you'd been told as a young man that you'd make your reputation knitting and stitching, I wonder how you would have reacted.
I think I would have fallen down laughing. I couldn't have imagined it.
Presenter asks
1:52Do you now think that then that that's a misnomer, craft uh for knitting?
I think that if you pour your heart and soul into some colours in any form, why isn't that art? ... And certainly I try to do that in my knitting, you know, pouring hundreds of colors into my fabric so that people can really get a bounce out of looking at a piece of knitting.
Presenter asks
10:36Must have been difficult as a child at school, though, if that was the kind of home life you led.
Yes, it was terribly difficult. I wore my hair like the Beatles, and this was years before the Beatles ever turned up. I mean, like putting a pudding base down my head and cutting right around this great big sort of floppy bangs, you know. And I also wore color. I mean, you remember this was the days of beige and black and grey. And I would go to school in tangerine trousers and I would dye my tennis shoes bright pink and wear Kelly green. I mean, nothing now. I mean, you know, you go to any high school nowadays and the kids are all dressed in these colors. But boy, in those days, I was like, you know, this incredible wild freak.
The keepsakes
The book
Hermann Hesse
Well, I think I'd like something that has beautiful little bits that just remind me of lots of different worlds and are just choice readings, and that's Reflections by Herman Hess, just all of his very wise sayings.
The luxury
Well, I think I'd have to think hard about the paints, but a diary and a pen anyway.
Presenter asks
15:21Who did you find who taught you about England? Because somewhere along the line in all of this you suddenly were desperately keen about coming here, weren't you?
Yeah, it's true. I I I met Christopher Isherwood at a dinner party, and this was the most extraordinary man. I mean, he must have been sixty nine or seventy. And he had the most alert, curious mind. I mean, he was like a teenager, you know, fascinated about everything, just absolutely turned on to the world, to colour, to anything, and such a funny wit as well. I mean, a very different kind of humour from America. So I rushed out and I bought every book that Christopher Eshwood ever wrote, and that gave me such a taste for England, the feeling of I thought I want to know where he comes from that makes him the man that he is.
Presenter asks
29:12You were given not long ago, as I mentioned at the beginning, an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Now how did that come about?
Well, Princess Michael came to buy a jacket from me, and she got very excited when she came to my parents' shop in California and said This is the most amazing knitting. Where is this man? They said he's in London on your doorstep. So anyway, she came to see me when she got back to London, and she said I'd like to buy a jacket. She said, By the way, you know, can I do anything for you? And I said, Well, what's on offer? And she said, Well, I'm a trustee at the Victorian Albert Museum. Would you like an exhibition? I said, Well, I wouldn't mind. You know, that would be sort of fun. And I didn't think it would be that horrendous when I did it. I mean, I didn't realize that it would be such a landmark. But as the time grew closer, they said they had more calls for that exhibition than anything else they had put on there.
“I think that if you pour your heart and soul into some colours in any form, why isn't that art?”
“I grabbed up 20 colors, got on the train on the way back to London, and there was a woman sitting there who was with Billy, and I said, Do you know how to knit? I've just bought some knitting needles and some yarn, and I've got to learn right now. And she taught me how to knit. And that's how it all got started.”
“I used to sit on my bed for 20 years, you know, knitting away, thinking this is the most magical, the most thrilling, the most soothing, the most inspiring thing in the world. Why isn't everyone catching on to it?”
“Every design you do gives birth to five, six, seven, eight, twelve designs.”