The Danish writer and cultural critic Anne Sophia Hermansen has written the foreword to the new book The Art of Glovemaking since 1684. Discover how the history of Denmark can be read through a glove in Anne Sophia’s personal and uniquely witty account.
Can you read the history of Denmark through a glove? Yes, you can – provided, of course, that it is a RHANDERS glove.
The origins of the RHANDERS glove can be traced all the way back to the fifteenth century, when a finely hand-sewn leather glove was lost one day in Trangstræde, in the heart of Randers, only to resurface 600 years later during an archaeological excavation. Only true quality could survive that long and still bear witness to such exquisite hand-sewing.
The RHANDERS glove is the story of a craft that has kept us warm for centuries. But the history of the glove is also the story of how Denmark itself has changed since the Middle Ages.
And it is also something of a commercial fairytale. Did you know, for instance, that by the middle of the eighteenth century, gloves were considered Denmark’s most important export? Before there was such a thing as Mærsk, Novo, Carlsberg or Vestas, Denmark was, first and foremost, a nation of glovemakers, producing more than 600,000 pairs a year. Three quarters of them were exported, and in Randers alone, some 500–600 of the town’s 2,500–3,000 inhabitants were employed in glove-making when the trade was at its height.
RHANDERS earned its craftsmanship seal in 1684, while the company was officially founded in 1811, when the merchant O.C. Kellermann received royal permission and support to establish a glove manufactory. By then, the golden age of glove-making in Randers had passed, but Kellermann brought experience from France and quickly found a way to marry the local craft traditions with French finesse.
It certainly did no harm to his business that gloves were needed for the Danish army during the Napoleonic Wars.
Denmark, as it happened, had backed the losing side in the Napoleonic Wars, and in 1813 the state went bankrupt. The glove, however, survived on the strength of its reputation and, in the decades that followed, was exported to France, Russia, Germany and later to America. A new commercial fairytale had begun, and by 1816 more than 35,000 pairs of gloves were being produced and 10,000 skins prepared in Randers.
But why did the town of Randers become the epicentre of it all?
When the first Franciscan monks settled in Randers in the thirteenth century, they brought with them a deep appreciation of nature – and something rather more tangible in their baggage: calamus – Kalmus in Danish – an aromatic water plant.
It thrived around Randers Fjord, producing thousands of tiny flowers when in bloom. Today, the Kalmus flower is the symbol of the RHANDERS glove. But the story does not end there. At some point, someone discovered that using Kalmus in the finishing of the skins made their unpleasant odour disappear, replaced by the fragrance of the Kalmus.
And with that, the gloves acquired a signature that proved irresistible to a Europe undergoing a process of civilisation, in which people increasingly sought to distance themselves from the primitive and malodorous in favour of purity and beauty.
Nor does it make the story less appealing that the French queen Marie Antoinette is said to have worn the gloves to bed so that she would wake with beautifully scented hands.
As I write this, I lift my own RHANDERS gloves to my nose and breathe in the trace of fragrance that connects them to the past, to Randers and to centuries of craftsmanship.
Today, RHANDERS is Denmark’s oldest registered trademark, and its circle of loyal customers has long since expanded beyond royalty and the aristocracy to generations of people who simply want to pass on a tradition of fine craftsmanship.
My own mother was introduced to the gloves by her mother. A generation later, she introduced them to me, and a few years ago I took my son to the Copenhagen store for the first time. He left with a pair in the style called Thomas, and I felt as though our little family glove tree had sprouted a new branch.
Another devotee was Countess Danner, one of my personal heroines. She was a woman with her finger firmly on the pulse and, before marrying King Frederik VII, ran a fashion business on Vimmelskaftet in Copenhagen.
Whether her enthusiasm rubbed off on King Christian IX’s daughters, Dagmar and Alexandra, is unclear, but they too were among the clientele. And one of the fascinating things about these gloves is the way their popularity has travelled through families and across social classes.
And onwards into literature.
Just read what Nobel Prize-winning Danish author Henrik Pontoppidan writes in Lykke-Per about the gloves that the clergyman’s daughter Inger leaves behind: “They were a pair of soft, suede, so-called Randers gloves, quite new. He unfolded them gently and gazed at them for a long time. He raised them to his face, greedily inhaled their scent and smiled deeply.”
Oh, how sensual. A symbol of deliciousness and a woman’s skin – and the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as they say in Casablanca.
Over the centuries, enthusiasm for the gloves has risen and fallen and risen again. Competitors have come and gone, but RHANDERS gloves have survived winters and world wars, changing owners and fleeting trends. The main reason, of course, is that fine craftsmanship never goes out of fashion. Neither does cultural heritage. And, apparently, people still get cold fingers.
RHANDERS still has the best answer to all that.
Standing in St Bendt’s Church in Ringsted, looking at the tombstone of King Erik Menved and Queen Ingeborg, dating from 1319, it is rather wonderful to imagine that they may both be wearing long gloves from Randers.
If so, they would rank among the earliest patrons of the Randers glove – and they remain loyal to this day.
As do the rest of us.
Anne Sophia Hermansen
Danish writer and cultural critic
RHANDERS gloves wearer for some 40 years.
ANNE SOPHIA'S FAVOURITES
Cecilia Pouch · Crystal Necklace Black Agate · Anna · Grand Kalmus Scarf
Discover more about the Coffee Table Book The Art of Glovemaking since 1684 and the Danish literary edition RHANDERS: Danish design since 1684.
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