A sock monkey is a toy made from socks fashioned in the likeness of a monkey. These stuffed animals are a fixture of folk art and kitsch in the culture of the United States and the culture of Canada.
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.[1] 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.[1]
Developments
Around 1951, the Nelson Knitting company discovered that their socks were being used to make monkey dolls. In 1953, Nelson Knitting 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.
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.
Sock monkeys today
Sock monkeys remain a popular toy to this day, though not as much so as teddy bears. Most vintage 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, the style of clothing worn, and other features. However, since sock monkeys are home-made rather than mass-manufactured, it is extremely difficult to accurately date any particular monkey.
1 Boschma, Janie (2007-11-05). "History of the sock monkey: Stuffed animal created during the Great Depression". The Spectator. Retrieved 2009-07-01.
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