Jean Long is a hand knitter from Cork working across design, teaching and textile heritage.
She knits professionally for Conor O’Brien studios, volunteers with Fibreshed Ireland and is an advocate for Irish grown wool.
Her work with Conor O’Brien has been shown at Dublin Independent Fashion Week, the World Wool Forum in Rome, Bloom and at the Annual Galway Wool Meitheal in Athenry.
She teaches alongside Blatnaid Gallagher, founder of the Galway Wool Co-Op and has been invited to teach Heritage Sheep Farming courses and the forgotten skills of knitting at Ballymaloe Organic Farm School by Darina Allen.
Jean comes from a long line of fishermen and their families on Cape Clear, off the south west coast of Ireland. Through her Geansaí Chléire project, she has gone back to a fisherman’s gansey knit by a local woman from Cape Clear in 1920; reverse engineering it, recording it and bringing it back to life.
Jean was recently accepted as Knitter in Residence for Knit for Wildlife, an international initiative backed by the UN Ocean Decade that brings together knitters, scientists and communities to address environmental challenges through creative projects. Working closely with the Vega World Heritage site in Norway, her mission was to translate stories from bird tenders, coastal life and seabird decline in the North Atlantic into a gansey design to highlight the gentle reciprocal relationship between eider tenders and eider ducks on the islands of the Vega archipelago.
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“The project has been very personal for me. Ganseys were knit by local women to protect fishermen at sea, but they are also stories of identity, resilience and place. It has allowed me to explore my ancestry in a tangible way and to highlight the largely undocumented contribution women made to society in the early 20th century.”
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