Giant Jersey – Geraldine

It is the only textile in this catalogue, and that makes it genuinely unusual. Every other oversized object here is fibreglass, steel, concrete or timber – materials chosen to survive weather. A woollen garment is the opposite: it has to live indoors, it can be damaged by moths and damp, and it exists only because somebody was prepared to spend an extraordinary number of hours making something that could not be moulded, cast or fabricated.

The patchwork construction is the tell. A jersey that size cannot be knitted as one piece on any normal needles, so it was made in squares and assembled – which is how community knitting projects work, and hints at a good many hands rather than one.

South Canterbury is fine wool country, so the subject is honest. Geraldine itself, a town of a couple of thousand thirty-six kilometres north of Timaru, was bypassed when State Highway 1 moved, but sits on the route from Christchurch to Aoraki/Mount Cook and the Southern Lakes – which has kept its visitor businesses alive.