Media Category: issue

Flail: a long handled wooden tool used to crush the husks of the flax seed balls. Looks like a large mallet with a curved handle.

Early 19th century English hackle marked “Ridsdale Porter Darlington.” A wooden base with at least 4 columns and 25 rows of long, pointed, metal teeth.

A picture by Pieter Pietersz, a mid-16th century Dutch painter, shows an old man winding yarn off a spindle and onto a small cross-reel niddy-noddy (where the crosspieces are at right angles to each other). The man is bearded and wears loose-fitting red trousers, a dark, loose-fitting shirt or tunic, and wooden shoes. He is surrounded by a variety of tools including a small knife and a bellows. There are three full spindles resting by the straight-backed wooden chair he sits in.

Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, from De Mulieribus Claris (About Famous Women) by Boccaccio, a 15th- or 16th-century book about famous women of the past.
A rather dour looking woman wears a padded roll and veil on her head and a front-laced red bodice over a dark kirtle. She is skeining yarn on a niddy-noddy.

Ape drawn in the margin of Maastricht Hours, an early 14th-century manuscript, skeining yarn on a niddy-noddy.

Six-arm reel with paper label “T Garb [***], STOCKTON-ON-TEES”. Arms, frame, and legs have decorative turning. Gears used to work the mechanism for the reel are made of wood.

Lady’s upright spinning wheel from Hutton-in-the-Forest, a historic house in Cumbria, in northwest England. Single treadle wheel with attached basket distaff. Distaff supports, drive wheel spokes, maiden, and legs all have decorative turning.

32″ model of track wheel.

Detail of bobbin/flyer on Herring wheel.

Herring spinning wheel. Single treadle, wooden, bobbin and flyer wheel with three pegs for holding bobbins on the frame.

Detail of trolley that holds the spindle mechanism on the track wheel.

Schrock family trolley wheel with 11-foot long track; track is extended.

Track wheel with the track folded back towards drive wheel.

Square-frame great wheel from Nova Scotia. The upper and lower sides of the frame extend out a bit beyond the square made by with the sides. The drive wheel is at one end of the upper side and the spindle is on the opposite end. Short legs come off the bottom side of the frame.

Upright, single treadle spinning wheel, freestanding sitting distaff, and spindle, all from Hungary.

Spindle next to top of distaff with flax.

Spooling wheel marked “H. Z.” Wooden, looks somewhat like a horizontal spinning wheel. It has a boxy structure on the table where the bobbin and flyer or spindle would normally be and has no treadle.

Spinning wheel marked “H. Zuber.” Single treadle, bobbin and flyer wheel with attached basket distaff.

Carlton’s free-standing umbrella swift.

Rebecca’s free-standing umbrella swift.

Strickland Silent Spinner. A relatively small, single treadle, upright, bobbin and flyer spinning wheel. Most of the wheel is wooden; the drive wheel is metal.

Detail of bobbin/flyer unit on the Strickland Silent Spinner.

American Traveler wheel, front view. An upright, double treadle, bobbin and flyer wheel designed, patented, and manufactured by Doloria Chapin in New York State in the late 1970s.

Doloria Chapin’s Yarn Guide, Patent 4,090,347. A system for guiding yarn onto a bobbin.

Decorator: non-functional spinning wheel. Appears to be a wooden, single-treadle, bobbin and flyer wheel.

Henry Miller lever-action spinning wheel.

Miller’s patent #71,897 for a lever-action spinning wheel.

Francis Nixon tabletop spinning wheel. Small metal wheel with gearing mechanism.

Nixon’s patent #88,065 for geared tabletop spinning wheel.

Susan’s Swiss wheel; small, wooden, upright, bobbin and flyer flax wheel.

Example #2 of an inscribed hackle, hatchel, or hetchel. Inscription on example #2 reads: “MAY THE 18 AD 1797 JOHN MATHEWSON LYDA MATHEWSON STAY AT HOME AND USE ME WELL.”

Great wheel built by David Bryant.

Great wheel marked “R. TOWNLEY3.”

Great wheel marked “N. R. HILLS.”

Two Brantford-style great wheels.