Glove

• 1. Introduction

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  A glove is a covering for the hand, with a separate sheath for each finger and the thumb, built to guard against cold, heat, friction, and disease. The History of Herodotus, written around 440 BC, describes how Leotychides was incriminated by a glove full of silver that he received as a bribe. Centuries later, medieval soldiers wore gauntlets of leather or metal as a basic piece of battlefield armor, equipment that all but vanished once firearms replaced hand-to-hand combat. Somewhere between those two extremes, gloves became bound up with royal vanity, religious ritual, criminal disguise, and eventually the vacuum of outer space. What is it about a covering for five fingers that made it useful to kings, popes, astronauts, and burglars alike? And how did the same object end up on trial in a modern American courtroom?

• 2. Ancient and Medieval Gloves

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  An ancient Egyptian tomb dating to the 5th dynasty depicts figures wearing gloves, among the earliest visual evidence of the garment. In some translations of Homer's Odyssey, the character Laertes wears gloves while walking through his garden to avoid the brambles, though other versions of the text describe him simply pulling his sleeves down over his hands instead. Pliny the Younger, working as his uncle's shorthand writer around the year 100, wore gloves in winter so the cold would not slow down his work.

  By the 13th century, gloves had become a fashion accessory for women, made from linen and silk and sometimes reaching all the way to the elbow. The Ancrene Wisse, a guidance text written for religious women in the early 1200s, warned that such worldly accessories were not appropriate for holy women. City governments tried to rein in the trend with sumptuary laws, banning samite gloves in Bologna in 1294 and perfumed gloves in Rome in 1560.

  A guild of Paris glovers known as gantiers, working in skin and fur, existed from the 13th century onward. In England, glovers were folded into the Dubbers, or Bookbinders, Guild until they broke off to form their own during the reign of Elizabeth I, receiving a formal charter as the Glovers' Company in 1613.

  That same queen was about to turn the glove into one of the most extravagant fashion statements in European history.

• 3. A Golden Age of Gloves

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  Queen Elizabeth I set the fashion for gloves richly embroidered and studded with jewels, and reportedly put hers on and took them off during royal audiences specifically to draw attention to her hands. The 1592 "Ditchley" portrait of the queen shows her holding a pair of leather gloves in her left hand. In Paris, glovers known as gantiers parfumeurs scented leather gloves with musk, ambergris, and civet for the court of Catherine de Medici, though the trade was not formally recognized until a royal brevet in 1656.

  Knitted gloves, which held no perfume and carried less social prestige, were made by a separate guild called the bonnetiers, who also worked in silk and wool. Learning the craft took five years of apprenticeship, and defective work could be confiscated and burned. In the 17th century, gloves made from soft chicken skin came into fashion, alongside so-called "limerick" gloves, made from the skin of unborn calves by a manufacturer in Limerick, Ireland.

  Embroidered and jeweled gloves became part of royal burial dress. The chronicler Matthew of Paris recorded that Henry II of England was buried in 1189 wearing his coronation robes, a golden crown, and gloves on his hands. Gloves were still on the hands of King John when his tomb was opened in 1797, and on the hands of King Edward I when his tomb was opened in 1774. Liturgical gloves worn by the pope, cardinals, and bishops during mass trace back to at least the beginning of the 10th century, spreading from the Frankish kingdom to Rome by the earlier half of the 11th century.

  Two centuries after Elizabeth's jeweled gloves fell out of fashion, the garment would find an entirely different kind of respectability in servants' quarters and army barracks.

• 4. Fingerless and Hybrid Gloves

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  A fingerless glove opens or shortens the sheath over each finger while still covering the palm, a design cigarette smokers and church organists have long favored because it leaves the fingertips free. Cyclists doing road racing or touring typically wear fingerless gloves, and guitar players sometimes reach for them when weather turns too cold to play bare-handed.

  A hybrid design merges glove and mitten: four fingers sit in open-ended sheaths, as in a fingerless glove, but an extra mitten compartment stitched to the back can be flipped forward to cover them when needed, usually held in place by a hook-and-loop fastener or button. These hybrids are known as convertible mittens, or "glittens."

  Elsewhere, fingerless gloves are padded across the palm for protection while leaving the fingertips free for grip and sensation, and often have a ventilated back that helps the hands stay cool, a feature common in weightlifting gloves. Skateboarders and rollerbladers wear them to cushion a fall, fly fishermen favor them for handling line and tackle in cold weather, and marching band members who play clarinet or open-hole flute rely on them because covering small finger holes with a full glove is nearly impossible. Professional MMA fighters are required to wear fingerless gloves in competition, and the same open fingertips let a wearer operate a touchscreen phone or tablet without removing the glove at all.

  That exposed-fingertip design solved one problem. A very different design, built entirely from wood-era driving needs and battlefield hazards, solved several others.

• 5. Gloves Go Modern

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  Western women's formal gloves traditionally come in three lengths: wrist-length, known as "matinee"; elbow-length; and full-length opera gloves that reach the biceps, most often made from satin or stretch satin. When short sleeves came into fashion in the 1700s, women began wearing long gloves that reached halfway up the forearm, and by the 1870s, buttoned gloves of kid leather, silk, or velvet were paired with evening or dinner dress, while long suede gloves were worn during the day and for afternoon tea.

  Through much of the 19th century, thin white cotton gloves known as "Berlin gloves" were worn by servants such as butlers and waiters, and the same white cotton gloves were issued with the dress uniform of the American military during the First World War. Today in Japan, white gloves remain common: work-oriented pairs are worn for gardening and cleanup, while "dress" white gloves signal a clean public image for taxi drivers, police officers, politicians, and elevator operators.

  Long white gloves also became a common accessory for teenage girls at formal events such as proms, quinceañeras, cotillions, and church confirmations, worn as part of a deliberately dressy outfit.

  Not every glove in this period was about appearances. Some were built for a very different purpose: getting away with something, or getting a job done.

• 6. Gloves for Every Job

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  In 1905, The Law Times published one of the first written references to criminals using gloves to hide their fingerprints, noting that "when the burglar goes a-burgling, a pair of gloves will form a necessary part of his outfit." The tactic has a flaw: gloves themselves leave prints on surfaces that are just as unique as human fingerprints, giving investigators another trail to follow.

  Early Formula One race cars used steering wheels borrowed directly from ordinary road cars, and because those wheels were normally made of wood, drivers needed gloves just to grip them safely. The Australian company Ansell developed disposable latex gloves, now standard in medicine and food service. Gloves made of kevlar protect wearers from cuts, and gloves paired with gauntlets are a required component of pressure suits and spacesuits.

  Welders wear gloves for protection against electrical shocks, extreme heat, and ultraviolet and infrared radiation, beekeepers rely on them to avoid stings, and construction workers use them for grip and general hand protection. Chainmail gloves protect butchers, woodcutters, and police officers who might otherwise be cut, and a similarly specialized list covers the sporting world: an archer's glove, a falconer's glove, and a biathlon glove padded to support a rifle that can weigh anywhere from 3 to 7 kilograms while the wearer skis. Scuba divers choose among cotton gloves for grip without warmth, dry gloves sealed at the wrist against water entry, or wet neoprene gloves that allow some water through, while wheelchair users have gloves built specifically to protect their hands from the rims.

  In baseball, fielders wear an oversized leather glove, sometimes called a mitt, both to catch the ball and to protect their hands. Cricket batsmen wear gloves with heavy padding across the back to shield their fingers from a fast-moving ball, while the wicketkeeper wears large webbed gloves built for catching rather than batting. Skiing gloves are padded and reinforced against both cold and the risk of a fall, and oven gloves, sometimes called oven mitts, protect hands from heat in an entirely different setting: the kitchen.

  None of these functions, from steadying a rifle to protecting a fielder's palm, depend on what the glove is actually made of. That choice of material is its own story.

• 7. The Leathercraft

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  Peccary leather is considered the rarest and most luxurious material used for gloves, prized for its softness even though it is notoriously difficult to sew. Hairsheep leather, taken from sheep that grow hair rather than wool, is finer and less bulky than most alternatives and is particularly suited to dress gloves, while cowhide is generally considered too thick and bulky for all but the most casual styles. Deerskin offers strength and elasticity but a more rugged, heavier finish, and goatskin is coarser and normally reserved for cheaper gloves.

  Linings shape how a glove feels as much as the leather itself. Cashmere, spun from the hair of mountain goats adapted to extreme cold, is prized for warmth without bulk. Silk stays warm in winter and cool in summer and appears in both men's and women's gloves, while wool supplies natural warmth and elasticity on its own.

  A finished leather dress glove is built from a pair of tranks, a pair of thumbs, four whole fourchettes, four half fourchettes, two gussets, and six quirks, small diamond-shaped pieces of leather sewn at the base of the fingers to improve the fit. Hand stitching, the most time-consuming and skilled method, remains popular for men's gloves and some women's styles, while inseam stitching is used mainly on women's gloves.

  A set of European standards now governs how protective a glove has to be before it can be sold for a given job: EN 388 covers mechanical risks such as abrasion and cuts, EN 374 covers chemicals and microorganisms, EN 407 covers heat resistance, EN 511 covers cold resistance, and EN 60903 covers protection from electric shock.

  None of that craftsmanship or certification, though, is what made two particular gloves famous. Fame found them somewhere else entirely.

• 8. Notable Gloves

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  Michael Jackson wore a single jeweled glove on his right hand, a choice that became part of his signature look and has since been the subject of several auctions.

  A dark leather glove became a central piece of evidence in the O. J. Simpson murder case, where defense counsel famously argued, "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit." According to some analysis presented at the time, the glove had shrunk after being soaked in blood, complicating what should have been a simple demonstration in front of the jury.

  Gloves have shown up in far stranger places too. The Power Glove, an alternate controller released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, let players control a video game by moving their hand instead of pressing buttons.