Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing 9780300134803

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Findings

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Findings The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing

Mary C. Beaudry

Yale University Press New Haven & London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College Copyright © 2006 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers Set in Electra type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beaudry, Mary Carolyn, 1950– Findings : the material culture of needlework and sewing / Mary C. Beaudry. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-300-11093-7 (clothbound : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-300-11093-6 (clothbound : alk. paper) 1. Pins and needles—History. 2. Sewing—Equipment and supplies—History. 3. Needlework—Equipment and supplies—History. I. Title. a gt2280 .b43 2006 306.4—dc22 2006015214 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources 10

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In memory of my mother, Mary Mason Barkuloo Beaudry, who continued to take joy in her sewing despite losing her sight

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix

one Introduction: Small Finds, Big Histories two The Lowly Pin

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three The Needle: ‘‘An Important Little Article’’

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four The Ubiquitous and Occasionally Ordinary Thimble five Shears and Scissors

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six Findings: Notions, Accessories, and the Artifacts of Textile Production

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seven Stitching Together the Evidence

Notes

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References Index

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Acknowledgments

I owe great thanks to many people for their assistance and supportiveness over the years as I have worked in my halting fashion on this book. Carl Crossman’s enthusiasm on finding a monogrammed silver thimble at my site, the SpencerPeirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, inspired me to research the artifacts of needlework and sewing, and I thank him for that as well as for all the many volunteer hours he donated to the Spencer-Peirce-Little Project, enlightening me and my students all the while about ceramics and material culture in general. George Miller, Richard Candee, and Jane Nylander encouraged me to pursue this project and were instrumental in my good fortune in securing a fellowship to conduct research at the Winterthur Museum and Library. As I embarked on my research, Jean Wilson, through the good offices of her husband, Norman Hammond, told me to read Roszika Parker’s book The Subversive Stitch. Parker’s insightful book helped frame my thinking, and I am exceedingly grateful to Jean for putting me on to it in my early research. I am also grateful to have been blessed twice, in 1994–95 and in 2001, with the opportunity to pursue research at the Winterthur Museum and Library, in both instances funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Advanced Study. Winterthur is, of course, a mecca for material culture researchers, and it is not just the library and its marvelous resources that make working there so special. Neville Thompson, now retired, was librarian during both of my fellowship periods; she was a marvel at recommending relevant resources in the Winterthur collection and in suggesting avenues I might pursue in winkling out the sorts of information I was after. She has been called ‘‘Librarian Extraordinaire’’ with good reason! I also thank E. Richard McKinstry, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian, for his help with archival materials; Linda Eaton, Curator of Textiles, for her generosity with her time and expertise; Gary Kulik, Director of

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Library Operations, and J. Ritchie Garrison, Director of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, for their guidance; Gretchen Buggeln for her cheerful support and assistance; Bert Denker for help with photography and photographic resources; Sue Newton and Dot Wiggins for assisting me with securing illustrations of Winterthur materials; and Pat Eliot for being the best. One of the delights of the Winterthur experience is the opportunity to interact with other visiting scholars, and I enjoyed the many conversations with other Winterthur researchers Bernard Cotton, Tom Denenberg, Terence Lockett, Carl Lounsbury, Joe Torre, and Shirley Wadja. In 1995 I was able to continue my research in England while I was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield, and I thank then Head of Department, Keith Brannigan, and then Head of the Research School, Barbara Ottaway, for hosting me so graciously, providing office space, and including me so thoroughly in department activities. James Symonds, Director of the Archaeological Research Consultancy at the University of Sheffield (ARCUS), took me under his wing, as it were, befriended me, and assisted me in innumerable ways. Among his many kindnesses was introducing me to John Widdowson, Director of the Centre for Folklife Studies at the University of Sheffield, who gave me access to the research library of the Centre, where I found many useful sources. I am also grateful to David Crossley for permitting me to sit in on his lectures and tag along on field trips; David and his wife, Elizabeth, also took me to many local sites of interest, among which for me the most impressive was Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, with its outstanding collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century embroideries. Dr. Vince Gaffney, former Director of the Forge Mill Needle Museum, Redditch, and Jo Ann Gloger, its current Director, were most welcoming and helpful, allowing me to explore the museum and its archives, with its rich collection of documents pertaining to the needle industry. In 1995 I also had the privilege of being a Visiting Scholar at the Philips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. There I was able to read many account books and women’s diaries and to conduct research in Essex County records, and I am grateful to William LaMoy, Jane Ward, and John Koza for their patient guidance and insight into the collections, and Daniel Finamore for his collegiality and many kindnesses. The highlight of my time at the Peabody Essex was the opportunity to explore with Curator Paula Richter the collections in storage, most of which have not just Essex County provenance but well-documented histories in local families. And, of course it is always a thrill for an archaeologist to be able to see and touch (indirectly, with gloved hands) items of the sort she will never recover from the earth.

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Many archaeological colleagues generously allowed me access to their collections. Henry Miller and Silas Hurry of Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland, opened the St. Mary’s City collections for my inspection, and Silas has served as a sounding board and font of useful information over the years. Julia King, Director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory at the Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum in Lexington Park, Maryland, allowed me access to materials from all of the seventeenth-century domestic sites held by her museum and Dan Mouer and Robin Ryder let me roam freely through the collections held by the now-defunct Archaeological Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Charles Burke and Andrée Crépeau paved the way for me to examine the spectacular collection of sewing artifacts recovered from Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. I must apologize in advance that they will find that I did not incorporate any of the Louisbourg material into this work and plead what I fear is a lame excuse: the data mysteriously disappeared from my computer before I could back it up. Other colleagues sent or loaned me materials that have proved helpful, among them Sharla Azzizi, Edward Bell, Ellen Berkland, Kelly Britt, Eleanor Conlin Casella, Edward Chaney, Joyce Clements, Sara Rivers Cofield, Linda Derry, Diana DiPaolo Loren, Wilhelmina Lunt, Marla Miller, Stephen Mills, Virginia Myles, Martha Pinello, Peter Pope, Mary Praetzellis, Marta Cotterell Raffel, Suzanne Spencer-Wood, Roderick Sprague, Kathleen Wheeler, Carolyn White, Rebecca Yamin, and Anne Yentsch. For assistance with securing illustrations and permissions to reproduce them, I thank Sara Rivers Cofield, Lorna Condon, Sally Hinkel, Ann-Eliza H. Lewis, Douglas Lister, Rebecca Morehouse, Sharon Raftery, and Howard Wellman. I am grateful to Lara Heimert for making it possible for me to publish with Yale University Press and to Christopher Rogers, Executive Editor, and Ellie Goldberg, Assistant Editor, for making working with Yale such a pleasant experience. Laura Jones Dooley, Senior Satellite Editor for Yale, did a wonderful job copyediting the manuscript, turning my stilted prose into readable English. Heartfelt thanks to Karen Bescherer Metheny and Ann-Eliza H. Lewis for helping me so much by applying their sharp eyes and sharp minds to the task of proofreading. Throughout my research and writing, Lu Ann De Cunzo, Julie King, and Rebecca Yamin have been unfailingly supportive and always helpful with ideas about how I should approach my research and writing. I value their friendship and have been inspired by the writings that they have produced while I slowly, slowly stitched away at this ‘‘bit of work.’’

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Findings

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1

Introduction Small Finds, Big Histories

My interest in the material culture of needlework and sewing began in the early 1990s, with the slowly dawning realization that many items I was finding at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, the site I had been excavating since 1986, were artifacts related to sewing. Each season we found one or more thimbles and many straight pins; every so often we recovered a pair of sewing scissors. The 1993 season turned up several objects we could not identify at first, among them a carved bone bobbin that, I later learned, was used to make lace. That year we also found a silver thimble with a monogram. It occurred to me that such a valued personal object could serve as the point of entry for learning about the women who once lived at this site, women about whom both the documentary and archaeological records thus far have been disappointingly uninformative.1 Although I had watched my mother sew and had learned embroidery when young, I was a spectacular failure in the sewing portion of the home economics course I was required to take in high school. Not being inclined to pursue activities that I am not good at, I have since avoided sewing anything. And so my understanding of sewing and its associated paraphernalia was rudimentary, even though I often excavated sites at which generations of women had spent much of their lives sewing, mending, making lace, and the like. Their pursuits were largely invisible to me because I did not recognize the implements used in such work for what they were. Like most of us, I knew a pin or a needle or a thimble— and certainly a pair of scissors—when I saw one, or even part of one. But there my knowledge ended. I could only guess at the identification of other objects, especially if they were not part of the great trinity of historical archaeologists’ artifacts: ceramics, clay pipes, and glass. Excavated artifacts of needlework and sewing—pins, needles, thimbles, and

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so on—fit quite naturally, albeit often anonymously, into the category of ‘‘small finds.’’ Although the phrase is more likely to be used by excavators working within the British archaeological idiom than by American historical archaeologists, a state of mind pervades the field as a whole that has led to acceptance of a narrow set of conventions in thinking and writing about small finds. Historical archaeologists tend to assume, without giving it much thought, that ceramics, glass, clay pipes, and animal bones are more informative and hence of far greater interest than many other sorts of finds, and they have developed useful and widely employed conventions for presenting, analyzing, and interpreting those categories of material. Yet even though historical archaeology has burgeoned over the past four decades and is now practiced all over the globe, huge gaps remain in our knowledge of the material culture of medieval, early modern, and modern times. The frequent reprinting of Ivor Noël Hume’s Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America, the appearance of Kathleen Deagan’s two volumes devoted to artifacts of the Spanish colonies, and the publication in 2000 by the Society for Historical Archaeology of a volume of artifact studies and of a second edition of a collection of artifact studies reprinted from its journal, Historical Archaeology, are ample proof that we hunger for more information about the artifacts we dig up.2 The increased interest in gender analysis among historical archaeologists has given rise to greater interest in objects that might be related to women and, especially, to women’s activities. This has led since the early 1990s to attempts to fill the gaps and remedy the silences of finds analysis by seeking out objects that have not been studied because they were deemed trivial for the very reason that they were associated with women’s domestic activities. Because sewing is so universally associated with women, artifacts of needlework and sewing often stand as evidence of women and women’s activities. The link is based in part on reality but also on uncritical assumptions about sewing and how sewing ties in with the lives of both men and women. Throughout history, activities customarily performed either by men or by women have become associated with and deemed appropriate to members of one sex or the other. Through such customary associations various undertakings and responsibilities have become culturally designated as the ‘‘natural’’ province of one sex or another and therefore integral to the definition of gender identity through designation of gender roles. The processes, settings, tools, and materials employed in an enterprise are metonymically transformed into symbols of sexspecific tasks and so become emblems of gender identity (fig. 1.1).3 Gender identity can be constructed and negotiated (as opposed to being simply

Fig. 1.1 Frontispiece for Easy Steps in Sewing for Big and Little Girls, published by Jane Eayre Fryer in 1913. The girl’s sewing tools have come to life to keep her company during what would otherwise be tedious hours in the sewing room as she is instructed in sewing and femininity by another animated friend, her little sewing bird. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

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assigned). Archaeologist Barbara Luedtke wrote that it is important to attend to the possibility, if not likelihood, that ‘‘the meaning of our archaeological artifacts . . . varied with context.’’ In this book I explore, through the example of the artifacts of needlework and sewing, ways in which gender identity can be signaled and can shift according to context. These issues can be examined by reconstructing, through critical analysis of documentary and pictorial sources, the ethnographic contexts in which sewing and needlework served practical ends and those in which sewing and needlework implements featured as symbols in myth or ritual or as expressions of sentiment in society; by examining the classificatory logic underpinning the ‘‘gendered’’ nature of sewing; and by close readings of instances in which the ‘‘usual’’ symbolic import of sewing implements is subverted through symbolic inversion and anomaly.4 Feminist art historian Rozsika Parker, in her groundbreaking work The Subversive Stitch, examines how ‘‘embroidery has become indelibly associated with stereotypes of femininity’’—femininity being a ‘‘crucial aspect of patriarchal ideology.’’ She demonstrates through detailed analysis of works—written and stitched—by both men and women that ‘‘the development of an ideology of femininity coincided historically with the emergence of a clearly defined separation of art and craft.’’ The division began during the Renaissance, at a time when embroidery was done more and more by women working in the home rather than by professional, usually male, embroiderers. During the seventeenth century, embroidery was used to inculcate femininity in young girls, so much so that ‘‘the ensuing behaviour appeared innate.’’ An ideology of femininity as natural to women evolved in the eighteenth century, and from the eighteenth century on, embroidery came to signify femininity as well as a leisured, aristocratic lifestyle, proof of gentility because of its association with nobility, providing concrete evidence that a man was able to support a leisured woman. Moreover, because embroidery was supposed to signify femininity—docility, obedience, love of home, and a life without work—it showed the embroiderer to be a deserving, worthy wife and mother. Thus the art played a crucial part in maintaining the class position of the household, displaying the value of a man’s wife and the condition of his economic circumstances. Finally, in the nineteenth century, embroidery and femininity were fused and the connection was deemed to be natural. Women embroidered because they were naturally feminine and were feminine because they naturally embroidered.5

But, Parker notes, though many women may have ‘‘colluded’’ in the continuance of this construction of gender identity, they were not always passive recipients of such ideologies but responded to them: women used these ideologies and were

Introduction

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used by them. Over the centuries, embroidery has provided support and satisfaction for women and has served as a covert means of negotiating the constraints of femininity; women were able to make meanings of their own while overtly living up to the oppressive stereotype of the passive, silent, vain, and frivolous, even seductive needlewoman. Parker’s eye-opening study provides the framework for my examination of the material culture of fancy needlework alongside the artifacts of ordinary sewing.6 Consider for a moment the likelihood that complex civilizations could have arisen if no one had invented cordage for tying up bundles, creating strings from fibers that could be manipulated in many ways, knotted, netted, laced through skins, woven into cloth. If women had never experimented with fibers, if this experimentation had never led to textile production, to clothing, tapestries, blankets, bags, coverings of all sorts, the course of civilization, if indeed there was any, would be unimaginable, unthinkable. Textile production and sewing of some sort have been tangled up with aspects of culture—technological, social, economic, ritual, and so on—since early in human history. As a result, the products of weaving and needlework, the tools used in these processes, and the persons who undertook these activities were enmeshed in a system of symbols with multiple meanings. The job of the archaeologist, as I see it, is to investigate the cultural complex of sewing in order to explore how needlework implements carried meaning in specific historical and cultural contexts and then to place these carefully constructed cases into wider cultural contexts.7 Needlework held both homey and utilitarian as well as broader social consequence. Spinning, sewing, mending and remaking garments, and marking sheets, towels, and other linens was a regular component of household work done or overseen by women. Genteel women and girls engaged in fancy or decorative needlework as testimony to their skill in the feminine arts as well as to a social position that permitted leisure for such nonutilitarian pursuits. At the same time, not all fancy needlework was a pastime for wealthy women of leisure, nor was all utilitarian sewing destined for immediate household use. Many a needlewoman depended on the income her handiwork could generate. Knowing this, it is clear that the artifacts of needlework from historical sites can be interpreted along several lines of social and economic relevance: everyday, ‘‘practical’’ or ‘‘necessary’’ work (sewing, mending, and knitting); ‘‘fancy work’’ (embroidered pictures, muslin or ‘‘whitework,’’ cutwork, candlewicking, tambour work, stuffed work, canvas work, and so on); and work of either sort produced for sale outside the home. Attention to the type, quality, and intended functions of the artifacts of needlework and sewing makes it possible to address the issues of the nature or quality of sewing activity and to relate this to household income and manage-

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Fig. 1.2 A needlework picture stitched by Jane Peirce of Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1734, when she was five years old. (Courtesy New Hampshire Historical Society)

ment strategies, to social standing and social display, and to the construction of gender identity.8 In the collections of the Historical Society of New Hampshire there survives a wonderful embroidered picture (fig. 1.2). It was done in 1734 by Jane Peirce when she was five years old. Jane was one of seven children of Charles Peirce and Sarah Frost, and she grew up in the Spencer-Peirce-Little House, on the farm

Introduction

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where I have spent so many seasons excavating. The embroidered picture is a rare and marvelous survival, tangible evidence of needlework in service to the inculcation of and construction of feminine identity. In the chapters that follow I explore ways of identifying and interpreting the needlework tools archaeologists commonly find; in my case, I am hoping that the knowledge I have accumulated will help me understand the sewing implements excavated from the soils around the house where young Jane stitched her canvaswork picture and to reconstruct a more complete picture of the generations of women who plied their needles at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm. But I am hopeful that the guidelines I provide will prove useful for other archaeologists, and I have sought out many additional case studies beyond my own site to provide examples of how differing contexts lead to differing interpretations.9 My approach is broadly interpretive, and my aim is to move past the ostensibly simple first steps of artifact identification and dating and even beyond ‘‘engendering’’ artifacts by bringing multiple lines of evidence to bear on the interpretation of the material culture of sewing and needlework in the ‘‘active voice.’’ An interpretive approach acknowledges that material culture is not just something people create but an integral component of our personalities and our social lives, deeply implicated in how we construct social relationships. Trying to comprehend what things meant to people in the past is not the most easily undertaken task, but it is not altogether impossible, especially not for historical archaeologists. My goal is to construct a rich contextual analysis of how women and men used objects of needlework and sewing and to consider the multiplicity of meanings these everyday items conveyed. Sometimes the best way to do this is to try to reconstruct the stories in which people and their things played active roles, to construct narratives that ground interpretation in the everyday lives of people in the past and in the life histories of the objects that archaeologists find otherwise mute or mysterious and strangely distant.10 I see the analysis of documentary evidence as vital to constructing the interpretive ground, as it were, for artifact analysis. This is why, throughout this book, I offer case studies that track back and forth among documents and artifacts to offer interpretations that arise from the combined evidentiary sources. Alison Wylie has described this process as one of constructing cables of inference; her metaphor is a powerful one and aptly captures what I am attempting to accomplish.11 An important step in the research process involves casting a wide net through primary and secondary sources to learn generally about the importance of needlework in women’s (and men’s) lives. This involves knowing what articles different needlework tools were used to produce and their social, cultural, and

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economic significance, the contexts of production, and the social implications of different forms of needlework. It is clear that cloth production, sewing, and needlework played an important part in the lives of most women throughout history and that the implements of these activities, because they were associated with women, often served as symbols of women’s status and women’s role.12 Consider the seemingly most obvious and most trivial of all small finds—the common straight pin and the not-so-logical syllogism about pins that one often encounters in the literature. Pins equal sewing, or so most archaeologists assume; they also assume that sewing was done by women. Therefore, pins = sewing = women. But, as I explore in chapter 2, common straight pins were used to fasten both men’s and women’s clothing, to fasten documents, to fasten shrouds, to serve as guides for thread in lace-making, to conjure spells and to ward against them; in other words, pins were used for many purposes beyond sewing. And it is sometimes possible to differentiate what these purposes might have been, since pins were made in varied sizes because different sizes were needed for the diverse purposes I’ve mentioned. But because we think we ‘‘know’’ what pins mean, we do not pay them much attention. A typical illustration in an archaeological report will show a small pile of pins from various contexts at a given site carefully set beside the other items the archaeologists assume are women’s things or part of the sewing assemblage. In the following chapters, I examine items of the material culture of needlework and sewing that are most likely to survive in archaeological contexts: pins (chapter 2); needles (chapter 3); thimbles (chapter 4); scissors (chapter 5); and less common items associated with weaving, lace-making, and the finishing of garments (chapter 6). I focus on implements or tools; I do not consider textiles except as they relate to sewing, and I do not consider buttons because although they are sewn onto clothing and usually serve as fasteners, in my mind they are not tools of needlework but functional clothing fasteners, items of personal adornment, or both.13 In each chapter I present the history of the type of implement under consideration as well as a comprehensive discussion of the techniques of manufacture and, where relevant, conditions under which the objects were produced. I think it is important to understand how changing technology brought about changes in form and functionality of objects, and like many before me, I am intrigued by the nature of the work involved in the production of items like pins and needles as well as the conditions under which youngsters, men, and women labored to produce practical and fancy items used in sewing or worn as elements of social display. I have also attempted to present for each type of artifact a comprehensive guide to dating as well as identifying excavated specimens and suggestions for in-

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terpreting their intended uses. My intent is to provide archaeologists with better ways of making fine-grained distinctions within seemingly homogenous categories of artifacts, as well as to provide for historians and collectors of needlework tools information about what sorts of things archaeologists have recovered. My primary goal, however, is to provide examples of ways to construct contexts for interpretation of needlework tools. To this end, I conclude each artifact-specific chapter with a case study that suggests possible avenues of interpretation. In the concluding chapter, I attempt to ‘‘stitch together the evidence’’ by turning to a wider consideration of the significance of sewing and needlework in the lives of men and women, looking at sewing as a profession and as a pastime, and offering final thoughts on how archaeologists can use the excavated material culture of needlework and sewing to illuminate ways in which the people who lived and worked at the sites they excavate incorporated such items into their daily negotiations of personal and social identity.

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The Lowly Pin He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound. —samuel pepys, Diary, 2 January 1668

Common straight pins made of copper-alloy wire are recovered in impressive numbers from almost all domestic sites of the medieval, early modern, and modern eras. What could seem more ordinary and trivial than a common pin (fig. 2.1)? This, at least, is the attitude most archaeologists take. When they excavate straight pins, unless the pins are unusually long or have decorated heads or are otherwise distinctive, archaeologists assume that all are sewing pins and tend to lump the pins together as such without regard for where they came from on the site and for what other objects they were associated with in the ground. And archaeologists tacitly assume that if the pins are for sewing they must have been used by women. Hence the common straight pin has become, in the archaeological literature at least, a widely accepted indicator for the presence of women. But the situation is far more complicated than this simplistic equation permits. Pins were indeed used for sewing, by both men and women (although accomplished tailors and professional seamstresses used few if any pins in their work), but they served many other functions as well, and they were even perceived at times as having magical or prophylactic powers against witches and other malevolent forces.1 THE HI ST O RY AND A RC H A E O LO GY OF THE C O M M ON ST R A IGH T PI N

Pins of various sorts are common finds on archaeological sites throughout the world. Those found on historical sites are technologically superior though essentially similar in shape and function to the individually fashioned, handmade pins of prehistoric times. Since the very earliest of times pins have served as fasten-

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The Lowly Pin

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Fig. 2.1 The parts of a pin.

ers, first fashioned simply of thorn or fish bone. Pins of bone and thorn have been found in Paleolithic sites, and bone pins have been found at Incipient Neolithic as well as at Celtic and Roman sites. In ancient Egypt, the eyelids of the dead were held fast with tiny fish bones, and George Herbert, Lord Carnarvon, discovered in his excavations at el-Assasif, Thebes, a small, pierced ivory game board in which carved pins with heads of dogs and jackals served as the game pegs. Exquisite, ornately decorated pins of gold have been found at Salamis in Cyprus (eighth century bc), at Chiusi in Tuscany (seventh century bc), and from the Temple of Aphrodite at Paphos in Cyprus (sixth century bc). The pin from Paphos is interpreted as a votive pin; the others were likely hairpins. Highly decorative silver hairpins are also found.2 Wooden and ivory pins and sticks were found by Sir Flinders Petrie in his excavations of predynastic sites in Egypt; some were dress pins, some hairpins. But items sometimes identified as pins are more likely to have been spindles that once held a whorl or weight to aid in spinning thread or yarn. Elizabeth Barber notes that the close resemblance of some spindles (when found without whorls) to dress pins and hairpins leads to confusion over the functions of such ‘‘carved shafts.’’ She notes especially the presence of items identified as dress pins in an Early Bronze Age (mid-third millennium bc) royal tomb, Tomb H, at Alaca Höyük in central Turkey. These have flat ends and hence are far more likely to have been spindles than pins.3 Prehistoric peoples used pins for hairdressing, perhaps as votive offerings, and, chiefly, as clothing fasteners, or at least to fasten lengths of woven textile that served as cloaks or other garments. By the Bronze Age pins took the form of complexly designed metal spikes; examples have been found in North Africa, Asia, and throughout Europe (both on the Continent and in the British Isles). An especially interesting example of early metal pins, typical of the large hammerheaded pins found in Kurgan burials of the third millennium bc in the vicinity

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The Lowly Pin

of Nalchik in the northeast Caucasus, provides clues to an early form of textile production. Some of these pins were decorated by impressing twisted cords into the clay used as molds for casting the pins; at least one such pin bears the impression of fabric, not just cordage, serving as evidence of the antiquity of card or tablet weaving. Barber notes that tablet weaving was practiced in ancient Egypt from very early times—a good example being the girdle of Rameses III (around 1200 bc)—but that the technique was introduced into Egypt during the New Kingdom. The pin found in the Caucasus points to a region in which tablet weaving may have originated before knowledge of the technique spread to Egypt.4 The Romans had hand-forged pins with elaborate heads, made of bronze but also of ivory, jet, silver, iron, and glass; these ranged from two and a half inches to about six inches in length. Roman pins are extremely common finds, and although many retained a skewerlike form, others were turned on a lathe and embellished with a wide array of carved heads. The decorative terminals take the form of birds, animals, busts, and small statuettes, and some are enameled. It seems likely all were used to pin garments. Ring-headed bronze pins were commonly worn by Norse explorers and colonists and sometimes included in Vikingperiod graves, such as the Celtic-type pin with faceted head found at Tjørnuvík in the Faroe Islands. The rather plain ring-headed pin found at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland is among the most tell-tale artifacts of the only acknowledged Viking-age settlement in North America, around ad 1000.5 Many wooden pins have been found in waterlogged sites in Europe; these artifacts seldom survive in terrestrial sites, so their recovery from bogs and wetland sites leads one to speculate that wooden pins may once have been quite common. Many sites from which wooden pins have been found date to the Neolithic period, for example, at the Sweet Track on the Somerset Downs in England, from which elongated, curved wooden pins were recovered; a single example of a very similar pin was found in a burial at Duggleby Howe in Yorkshire. Short, straight wooden pins, some with carved heads and others with beads for heads, have been found in crannogs in Balinderry, Ireland, as well as at other sites in Ireland and Britain. Wooden and bone skewers or pins were still in common use throughout the medieval period and into Elizabethan times, when metal pins were still relatively rare and expensive, although a comprehensive study of pins from excavations at medieval sites in London reveals that metal pins were more common during this period than many scholars have suspected.6 Large numbers of pins were recovered from excavations of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century deposits in London, indeed, ‘‘in abundance from almost all sites yielding fifteenth- and sixteenth-century material.’’ Museum of London archaeologists were not surprised by the increased numbers of pins in medieval

The Lowly Pin

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layers of the city, for by the fourteenth century pins were manufactured in greater quantities than ever before. In April 1440, two galleys outfitted on behalf of seven Venetian merchants docked at Southampton on their return voyage from Flanders carrying eighty-three thousand pins as part of their cargo. Documentary evidence hence reveals both trade in and use of vast numbers of straight pins, most of them made of finely drawn wire and fitted with small heads. Such pins would not have served well as cloak fasteners and the like but instead were used to fasten women’s veils—pinning the folds of linen headdresses or securing transparent veils to the hair or around the shoulders to the front of a gown. It is noteworthy that the trousseau of Edward III’s daughter, Princess Joan, whose wedding took place in 1348, included twelve thousand pins for fastening her veils, and there are numerous examples of the use of pins in this manner in fifteenth-century art.7 The study of more than eight hundred pins from six sites in London revealed that although pins with decorative heads were still being produced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they were much rarer than in earlier times, and the heads were small. The decorated pins from the London assemblages included fifteen with attached heads of materials different from that of the shank. Three pinheads were of red coral, two were small blobs of glass that had been applied in a semimolten state, and another was a cast pewter circular head depicting Christ’s face surrounded by a nimbus. This last pin, with its obvious religious symbolism, is interpreted as one of the mass-produced pilgrim badges commemorating the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket. The majority of the pinhead designs, however, were much less varied in form than earlier pins and lacked ‘‘the virtuosity displayed by many of the larger pins of the Anglo-Saxon and Viking epochs which would have been worn more conspicuously.’’ Some of the decorated pins matched the ornamentation on dress accessories of the fifteenth century, such as strap-ends on girdles or tassels on drawstring pouches. A few of the London pins of both bone and copper alloy had hipped shanks (that is, ‘‘shanks with a swelling towards the tip to help prevent the pin from slipping out of position’’), and a few had looped heads. It would appear that pins with decorated heads continued to be made and worn in England up until the seventeenth century, as several have been found in postmedieval contexts in Norwich and elsewhere. Bone pins seldom appear in contexts postdating the early thirteenth century, the fineness of metal pins, it seems, having given them dominance in the pin market.8 The importance of pins as clothing fasteners continued in the early modern era; pins were used as makeshift fastenings for items of clothing such as breeches ‘‘by country folk and the poor’’ throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Seventeenth-century men who could not afford buttons to fasten the sleeves of their doublets used pins instead, as this bit of verse from 1616

14

The Lowly Pin

makes clear: ‘‘A countrey fellow plaine in russet clad / His doublet mutton-taffety sheep-skins / His sleeve at hand button’d with two good pins.’’ 9 Despite what we might consider a potential hazard to the child, pins were important for fastening babies’ clothing from at least medieval times. Pincushions filled with pins were popular additions to the layette, although mothers were warned not to keep the pincushion in the child’s basket or cradle. Pins would be used for fastening the tailclout (nappy or diaper) as well as the child’s headgear and swaddling. Both the child’s garments and the pins used to fasten them played a role in shaping the child’s posture and future presentation of self.10 Appropriate head covering for a newborn in the eighteenth century, for example, included several layers of bonnets known as biggins: ‘‘As to the head, it is covered with two or three small biggins, the first of which is of linen, and the others woollen, and these are tied behind the neck. In many places they add a stayband [headband] or a kind of headdress with two ends which hang down on the side of the head and are fastened on the breast with pins in order to make the infant hold its head straight.’’ 11 Even once tailored or sewn clothing became common, women’s clothing continued to be fastened with pins as well as held together by lacing—long after men’s clothing was being fastened with buttons, buckles, and the like. The stomacher, a long, triangular fill-in worn with low-necked bodices common in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, was stiffened by a busk (a strip of wood, whalebone, or other rigid material passed down the front of the corset to stiffen and support it) and secured to the bodice either by ties or pins, and bodices worn without stomachers might be fastened together in front by pins, ribbon ties, lacing, or, among the wealthy, a close row of buttons. Gorgets, deep, capelike collars typically worn by women around 1630–1660, were closed at the neck with pins but could also be tied or buttoned in place. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the term pinner was used to refer to more than one sort of woman’s garment: a ‘‘modesty’’ fill-in pinned to a low décolletage (also sometimes called a tucker); a white cap or coif with long lappets or strips that could be worn hanging on either side of the head or pinned atop the head; and the bib of an apron, which would be held in place with pins. In the late seventeenth century, a cap or coif known as a cornet, fitting the back of the head tightly but with flaps or lappets dangling against the cheeks, was worn by some beneath the large hats that were popular at the time among women of the middling classes.12 In the eighteenth century, women used pins on their clothing in a variety of ways, including those described above for securing modesty pieces, apron bibs, and so on. They might also pin up part of a gown to expose the petticoat below (at this time women’s gowns were open in front and the petticoat was an integral part

The Lowly Pin

15

of the dress, so it was a simple matter to gather up and pin back a portion of the gown), or they might pin up a train of a dress. Mantuas or manteaus, worn during the first half of the eighteenth century, were open robes worn with petticoats, an unboned bodice, and an overskirt with train, which would often be pinned up: ‘‘A pin . . . now in her mantua’s tail.’’ In the 1780s, large shawl-like ‘‘handkerchiefs’’ were often worn draped around the neck and closely pinned beneath the chin.13 In 1751 a book aimed at children included a poem, ‘‘Miss and Her Pin,’’ that enumerated the elements of a young woman’s costume requiring the services of a pin. My Knot and my Hood, It stickes in the Mode, My Kercher in Order it places; It fixes my Ruffles And other Pantoffles In their Plaits it keeps all my Laces.14

It did not escape notice that women were, at times, bristling with pins that held their costume in place. Lord Byron in Don Juan compared a fully pinned woman with an unapproachable animal, at the very least a creature to be approached with extreme caution.15 Pricking her fingers with those cursed pins, Which surely were invented for our sins,— Making a woman like a porcupine, Not rashly to be touched. [6.61, 62]

The use of pins on clothing declined once other fastenings were massproduced, but in 1830 they were still recommended for baby clothes, along with a pincushion, as part of the layette, and women continued to use black steel pins on mourning dress throughout Victorian times.16 M AK I NG PI NS

Bronze was the first metal used for pin-making, and each pin was forged by hand; as noted above, such pins often sported elaborately decorated heads, and double pins—two spike-like individual pins connected by a short length of chain, were fashioned from bronze or other metal to serve as especially decorative clothing fasteners. But here I am concerned for the most part with medieval and later ‘‘common’’ pins or straight pins, made from iron or, more often, brass wire. Before pin-making was mechanized, wire straight pins, like pins of earlier times, were

16

The Lowly Pin

fashioned individually by hand. The craftsman created a point on the pin by setting the length of wire into a bone, known as a ‘‘pin-maker’s peg.’’ Pinner’s bones (often horse or cattle metapodials, although sheep bones were also used) have been found at medieval and postmedieval sites in Europe; several pinner’s bones were found, for instance, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century contexts at the Battle Bridge Lane site, London Bridge City, Southwark, as well as elsewhere in London. Additional examples of pinner’s bones were found in seventeenthcentury dump layers overlying a clay floor at 14 Orange Street, Westminster, Greater London, from pits behind an early-sixteenth-century three-bay timberframe house that until 1968 stood at 59–61 Moulsham Street in Chelmsford, Essex, at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and in a seventeenth-century cesspit as well as other contexts in Norwich.17 The pinner’s bone served as a holder to improve the grip of the pin-maker and avoid bending the pin. The bone was altered by sawing two or three grooves in its long axis; the pin wire was inserted into these grooves, which held the length securely while the pin-maker filed the exposed end to a point. As a result, the bone was usually marked by diagonal file marks and frequently stained green from copper salts in the pin. In most cases the head was then fashioned from another section of wire, usually of the same diameter as the pin, that was coiled on a lathe, then cut into pieces of two or three turns. One of the resulting coils would be slipped along the pin until it was held in place by a slight flattening at the top of the shank, where it would be secured by soldering it with tin. The heads could be formed in various ways, so as a result, the size of the heads tended to vary as well. This technique at times resulted in problems, as the ends of the coiled head proved rough and tended to snag the material on which the pin was used; the defect was eventually remedied by stamping the head into a smooth, round ball. Geoff Egan and Frances Pritchard’s study of wound-wire-headed pins from medieval sites in London showed fairly equal numbers of spherical heads and heads that had been stamped flat; the wound-wire heads overall were smaller in size than the heads of pins with solid wrought heads.18 Pin-making is similar to needle-making and almost as expensive; at the end of fifteenth century, when in England a sheep sold for twenty pence, pins, pointed individually on a pinner’s bone, cost four pence per hundred. A guild of pinners was established in London in 1356; by the fifteenth century several other towns in Britain had pin-makers with their corresponding guilds, but their products fell short of the quality of those achieved by French pin-makers (chiefly because of problems with brass wire production in England). As a result, large quantities of fine pins were imported from France, which served as the main center

The Lowly Pin

17

for pin-making. French pin-making was based in Paris, where more than a thousand craftsmen were employed in making high-quality straight pins. Denis Diderot illustrated several scenes in ‘‘The Pin Factory’’ in his Encyclopedia; another Frenchman, René-Antoine Ferchault de Réamur, in his Art de l’épinglier (1761), described how French pinners went about their work and illustrated his text with many detailed copperplate engravings of the pin-making process and the tools employed by the pin-makers (fig. 2.2).19 Brass wire was used in England for pin-making as early as 1443, and in 1483 Richard III attempted to protect and advance the home market by prohibiting the importation of pins, though his edict had little effect.20 In 1543 Henry VIII made a move to control the quality of pins produced in England in hopes that English pins of high quality would prove more desirable than the imported items: ‘‘No person shall put to sale any pinnes but only such as shall be double headed and have the heads soldered fast to the shank of the pinnes, well smoothed, the shank well shapen, the point well and round filed, canted and sharpened.’’ 21 Even though English pins may have improved had the pinners followed their king’s command, the raw material for pin production, brass and iron wire, continued to be imported from the Continent until its import was prohibited in 1662. Nevertheless, the English wire-drawing industry was not truly viable until around 1700, when the areas around Gloucester and Bristol became centers of manufacture. The first recorded mention of Gloucester pin-making dates to 1608, in a document that referred to both John Payter in West Ward and Thomas Edge in St. Nicholas Parish as pinners, though it seems likely that Payter and Edge were engaged in making pins (rivets) for suits of armor rather than common straight pins. A proper pin factory did get started in Gloucester in 1626, and by 1744 pin-making was among Gloucester’s most important industries. The Folk Museum on Westgate Street in Gloucester retains part of a pin factory, including its annealing furnace, and excavations on Eastgate in the same city produced evidence of a late-seventeenth-century pin factory. Gloucester and its environs remained the chief center of pin-making until the automated pin machine was patented in 1824, after which the industry moved to Birmingham.22 The slow progress of the wire industry in England did not prevent efforts in the colonies to establish manufactures based on wire-drawing, however. It seems highly likely that Joseph Jenks intended that some of the wire he hoped to produce at his waterpower seat below the ironworks at Saugus, Massachusetts, would be made into pins. In 1667 Jenks petitioned the General Court for seed money to start up ‘‘wyre-drawing’’ at Saugus; the court approved an advance of money

Fig. 2.2 A pin-maker’s workshop as depicted in René-Antoine Ferchault de Réamur’s Art de l’épinglier (1761), showing the equipment and tools for drawing wire and heading pins. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

The Lowly Pin

19

to purchase wire-drawing tools and forty shillings to encourage the manufacture of ‘‘cards and pinns of the said wiar,’’ though it is unclear whether these funds went to Jenks or to someone else.23 Because eighteenth-century attempts at pin production in the colonies proved largely unsuccessful, most colonials ordered their pins from England, and the United States continued to import pins, primarily from England, until the middle of the nineteenth century. During the American Revolution, a financial incentive was offered by the North Carolina Provincial Congress to anyone who could establish a pin industry that would compete with pins imported from England (this consisted of an offer of fifty pounds for anyone who could produce the first twenty-five dozen pins equal to British imported ones costing seven shillings, six pence a dozen). At about the same time Jeremiah Wilkinson was already making pins from wire drawn at his mill in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and a man named Leonard Chester was petitioning the Connecticut legislature for permission to erect a pin factory at Wethersfield. Samuel Slocum, who twentyfive years previously had patented in England a machine for making pins with solid heads, also began a factory in Rhode Island. Shortly thereafter, another Connecticut gentleman, Dr. Apollos Hinsley, invented a pin-making machine. By the early nineteenth century, there were many pin factories in the United States. The emergence of a fully-fledged U.S. pin industry can be attributed to the Howe Manufacturing Company of Derby, Connecticut, which began its operations in 1836.24 Once mechanization was introduced, the manufacture of copper-alloy pins was transformed into a labor-intensive, complex operation involving many people at different stages of the production process. The organization and efficiency of the pin industry—‘‘a very trifling manufacture’’—caught the attention of Adam Smith, the Scottish economist, who in 1776 described pin-making in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.25 As noted above, early straight pins were made from two pieces of wire. One piece served as the shank, and the other was coiled two or three times to form a head around one end of the shank. The basic steps in industrialized pin production were as follows: wire was first reduced to the correct gauge by hand drawing, cut into lengths and pointed at both ends on a grinding wheel, then cut and pointed several more times until the required length was obtained (0.98–1.18 inches). The shank was left in ‘‘the hard’’ (that is, it was not annealed). The head was a close spiral made on a long wire the same diameter as the shank and cut into lengths of two or three turns; after the heads were annealed, a number of coils were put into a tray, or the worker’s apron, and four headless shanks were placed into a holder. Pushing this device through the coils, the pinner managed

20

The Lowly Pin

to pick up a head on each shank (there is some indication that children sometimes performed this operation). The heads were then secured to the shank with pressure by a machine similar to a drill press, usually a small drop-stamp that consisted of a weight that could be raised on guides by a foot-operated treadle, then allowed to fall under its own gravity. The bottom die of the anvil had recesses into which the headed shanks were positioned, and the top die was allowed to fall, squeezing the spiral heads onto the shanks.26 Most pins were tinned ‘‘by placing the pins in a boiling aqueous solution of argol (crude potassium bitartrate—the reddish deposit from wine vats) containing granules or thin leaves of tin.’’ Alternatively—albeit with considerable risk to the pinners’ health—a solution of an alloy of tin, mercury, and lead could be used for this purpose. Once tinned, the pins were ‘‘barrelled’’ in a manually turned bran tub to be polished. In all, this was a lengthy process, with a different craftsman (or woman) undertaking each of eighteen distinct operations. A lone pinner could produce just twenty pins a day. Adam Smith remarked that the redistribution of labor, detailing one craftsman to each task, increased production to 4,800 pins per person per day. We can see in pin-making the beginnings of assembly-line production, so it is easy to understand why Smith held up the pin industry as a milestone of industrial progress.27 The disadvantages of the straight pin with applied wound-wire head are obvious to most archaeologists, who often recover only the headless shanks of early pins. So it is easy to understand that there were many attempts to make a onepiece pin until at last the technique was perfected. In 1797 Timothy Harris took out a patent for pinheads made from molten lead. In 1817 American Seth Hunt patented an ‘‘upsetting’’ machine to make pins with heads, shaft, and point in one process; Kirby, Beard, and Company of Gloucester, England, bought Hunt’s patent, but the firm was not successful because with Hunt’s machine only pins from soft wire could be made, so pins with the harder, spirally wound type of head continued to be produced and sold. Finally, in 1824 American Lemuel W. Wright patented a machine that forced the head up from the shank and formed it in one movement, producing forty to fifty solid-headed pins per minute. Wright set up business in London and later moved to Strough, Gloucester. He eventually sold out to Daniel Foote Tayler, who adapted Wright’s machine to make 170 pins per minute. It seems likely that it was Tayler who sold the first solid-headed pins in London in 1833; in 1840 the company again was sold and moved to Birmingham.28 In Birmingham the company continued to operate under the name of D. F. Tayler, and ‘‘Dorcas’’ was used as the trademark for the pins the company produced. A booklet issued by the company in 1860, Useful Arts, explained how

The Lowly Pin

21

solid-headed pins were made and illustrated the various stages in manufacture. By 1880 pin-making was fully automatic. The company known as Newey, which had been producing shoe buckles since 1798, absorbed D. F. Tayler in 1934, and in modern times Newey Goodman Limited has continued to make pins from brass, carbon, and stainless steel; the company’s advertising recommends ‘‘Dorcas’’ pins for dressmaking.29 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the mass production of pins coincided with the introduction of cheaper steel and sophisticated power-driven machinery. The result was a dramatic decrease in the cost of pins. The English pin industry alone produced almost a hundred million pins daily and became the chief supplier to world. The wholesale cost of a pound of pins ranged from one shilling, three pence to three shillings—and it took on average ten thousand pins to make up a pound.30 DAT I NG PI NS

Although there are some broad criteria for distinguishing early straight pins from later ones, dating individual pins is nearly impossible—not even the standard of workmanship provides reliable evidence of the time of manufacture. Metal pins were made in France by the fifteenth century, but the method of making a two-piece brass pin with wound-wire head was invented by the middle of the sixteenth century and continued until around 1830 when Wright’s patented pin-making machine came into use. R. F. Tylecote’s metallographic examination of pins ranging in date from 1548 to 1875 demonstrated quite clearly that there was little, if any, difference in pins manufactured between the midsixteenth and at least the late eighteenth century. In the late eighteenth century some spirally wound globular heads were replaced by a conical shape made up of wire of a smaller diameter than the wire used for the shank, with up to five turns versus the two or three turns of earlier wound heads, but this practice was far from universal. So such pins, though definitely of late-eighteenth-century date, could readily be found in the same context as pins that look just like earlier pins. The major change occurred when the modern form of pin with ‘‘upset’’ head was introduced in the early nineteenth century.31 It is possible to determine the approximate age of selected individual pins only because pins were sometimes used as a means of attaching the pages of a dated document, much in the way we use staples or paper clips today—the assumption being that only relatively new pins, ones that had not begun to tarnish or rust, would have been employed for such a purpose. Of course, a pin speared through the pages of an old document may be perceived as being out of its nor-

22

The Lowly Pin

mal ‘‘use context,’’ but the survival of pins in archival contexts reminds us that these objects were used for many things besides holding together fabric awaiting stitching and that as archaeologists we should be alert to the multiple uses to which pins might be put. The earliest European straight pins in the Americas likely are those found at the Spanish site of La Isabela, founded by Columbus and occupied between 1493 and 1498, and these are dated only by the secure context of the site rather than on any other criteria, for they are all copper-alloy wire with wound-wire heads. Apart from the fact that they are longer than most pins found at sixteenth-century Spanish colonial sites, they are indistinguishable from thousands of other pins found on colonial and European sites dating from the fifteenth century until the early nineteenth century.32 PI N SI Z ES AND T Y P ES General Rules and Remarks. In fixing work, the pins used should not be larger than what is needful to hold it firm. —Instructions on Needlework and Knitting . . . , 1829

Most historical archaeologists tend to lump all pins together regardless of size and to assume that almost all straight pins can readily be classified as sewing pins, relegated to the ‘‘sewing assemblage,’’ and hence linked directly to women. If only it was truly so simple! Pins varied in length and thickness because they were intended for different purposes (fig. 2.3). Archaeologists will find that paying attention to pin sizes and being aware of the various uses to which pins could be put will perhaps pay the reward of helping them realize the full interpretive potential of their finds. Kathleen Deagan, in discussing pins found on Spanish colonial sites in La Florida, indicates that small pins were used for dressmaking and tailoring, particularly with light or fine fabrics, and larger pins were used for holding headdresses, veils, clothing pleats, and folds in place. It has also been suggested that fine ‘‘dressmaker’s pins’’ were much in demand in the late medieval period for the wearing and pleating of ruffs on men’s clothing and hence might be more indicative of the presence of men and boys than of women—1,575 pins were recovered from the sixteenth-century all-male Free Grammar School in Coventry, England, for example.33 It seems likely that veils and garments of fine materials, including ruffs, would have been pinned with the smallest pins possible, and professional tailors and seamstresses were less likely to use large numbers of pins than less experienced persons engaged in home sewing. In the discussion that follows I have attempted to set out rough guidelines for distinguishing one type of pin from another (table 2.1). All of the pins I discuss

Fig. 2.3 Another workshop scene from Art de l’épinglier illustrating various stages of wire-drawing for making pins. Of particular interest is the depiction of a range of pin types in the left center of the lower portion of the image; the accompanying text provides suggestions for appropriate uses for each size of pin. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

24

The Lowly Pin Table 2.1 Types of pins and their approximate lengths and diameters (wire gauge)

Pin type

Approximate length

Approximate diameter

Lills Sewing pins Short whites Long whites ‘‘Blanket pins’’ or corkins Double long whites Lace pins Wig pins Mourning pins ‘‘Shroud’’ pins

1/2 in. (12 mm)

3.5 Fragments Total – – – – 8

3 1 – 3 –

6 7 – – 56

1 18 4 2 10

– 3 – – 7

– – – – 1

– 1 – – 36

10 30 4 5 118

Source: Personal inspection of each item; see these sources for details on each site: Compton: Lewis Berger and Associates 1989; John Hicks: Stone 1974; King’s Reach: Pogue 1990; Mattapony: King and Chaney 1999; Jordan’s Journey: Mouer and McClearen 1991, 1992

pins were, of course, lills or small dress pins, while the largest were calkins or double long whites used for pinning heavy folds of cloth used in furnishings or on cloaks and other garments. By far the majority of pins from St. John’s were short whites or middlings, in other words, general-purpose sewing or dress pins. Excavations at St. John’s produced a wide range of other sewing tools (six thimbles, a possible thimble case made of bone, two needles and a bone needlecase, a stiletto or graver, and nine pairs of scissors—though not all of these were sewing scissors), strengthening Hurry’s interpretation that many pins from St. John’s were part of the sewing assemblage. But the variable lengths of the pins found here tell us that the successive inhabitants of the site, like most of their contemporaries, used pins in many ways.77 If we compare the St. John’s pins to pins found at several other Chesapeake sites, the results are almost certainly an artifact of recovery techniques (table 2.4). Only the St. Mary’s City site, the John Hicks homestead in Maryland, and site PG307 at Jordan’s Journey, near Hopewell, Virginia, have samples of pins large enough to reveal the same range of pin sizes and types found at St. John’s. The other sites produced small samples of pins, either because the plow zone was stripped off, because deposits were not screened, or because the household was so low on the economic scale that its members simply could not afford to have a good supply of pins on hand. If we wanted to admit all possible explanations, we might also offer the explanation that some people were so successful in ‘‘keeping pins’’ that pins do not show up in the archaeological record—but given that sites excavated carefully for the recovery of small finds almost invariably produce impressive quantities of pins, this is not the most convincing interpretation.78

42

The Lowly Pin Table 2.5 Common straight pins and pin fragments from a seventeenth-century midden at Tilbury Fort, Tilbury, Essex, England Pin length (cm)

No. of pins

1.6–1.9 2.0–2.5 2.6–3.0 3.1–3.5 5.0–6.0 Fragments

7 143 30 12 2 143

Total

337

Source: Moore and Reed 2000:68

At an English site, seventeenth-century Tilbury Fort in Tilbury, Essex, recovery of pins was good, providing 337 pins and pin fragments, with a head count producing a minimum pin count of 247, all found in a redeposited midden (table 2.5). The archaeologists who examined this site mistakenly claim that pins were cheap in the seventeenth century; as we have learned, this was not the case until the nineteenth century, so the large number of pins must be explained in other ways. Most of the Tilbury Fort pins range from about eight-tenths of an inch to just over an inch in length (and hence classify as middlings). Archaeologists Peter Moore and Graham Reed attribute the preponderance of a single pin size to lack of access to pin manufacturers, but they also conclude that the high number of pins in the collection (and relative lack of other types of clothing fasteners) is closely linked to the poverty of the fort’s occupants, who, like the country bumpkin described earlier, could not afford to fasten their clothing with anything much fancier than common straight pins (and they note that uniforms for the lower ranks of the military would have had few if any embellishments along the lines of ruffs and the like). But they also use ancillary evidence from the site—a bone needlecase—to support an alternative explanation that some of the pins could have been used for sewing and mending. It is clear that a contextual analysis of Tilbury Fort leads to a somewhat different interpretation of how pins were used there in contrast to the Maryland site of St. John’s.79 Because large numbers of pins were recovered from both sites, however, it is difficult to assert that the military context of the English fort, with its occupants of low economic status, versus the domestic context of the frontier site, with its well-to-do occupants, is the key factor in explaining the high numbers of pins at

The Lowly Pin

43

either site. As I noted above, rate of recovery of pins is highly variable depending on the excavation and recovery methods employed at each site. Until we have a good corpus of samples from sites that have been excavated with great care taken in the recovery of small finds, we may have to consider potential sampling bias as the overriding factor limiting our efforts in interpreting common straight pins.

3

The Needle ‘‘An Important Little Article’’ The modern needle—one of the most useful implements in the world. —abel morrall, History and Description of Needle Making, 1865

A survey of the archaeological literature for finds of needles is almost as frustrating as the proverbial quest for a needle in a haystack. Needles were even more expensive than pins and were used, and hence owned, in far smaller numbers than pins. What is more, needles seldom survive burial in archaeological sites. Kathleen Deagan reports that even though needles were ‘‘indispensable household items,’’ none have been recovered from sixteenth-century contexts at St. Augustine, Florida, or Santa Elena in South Carolina, and only a very few have been found at other Spanish colonial sites. She remarks, ‘‘Not only were most of the needles after 1500 made of steel, which has notoriously poor preservation qualities, but they were also considerably more costly than pins and probably curated more carefully.’’ When a needle is found, it is often incomplete, sometimes broken at the eye, the shape and treatment of which are among a needle’s most functionally diagnostic attributes. As relatively rare and often fragmentary finds, then, needles tend to elude efforts at interpretation.1 Deagan is right to stress that needles were exceedingly important; indeed, they are the most diagnostic and irrefutable evidence of sewing and are the least likely of sewing tools to have been used often for purposes other than those for which they were intended. This does not mean that no one ever used ‘‘the wrong needle’’ for sewing or embroidery, but when we find a needle we know it was likely used for stitching fabric, be it fine or coarse, leather, or other materials together. The task for the archaeologist who does find a needle or needles at a site is to consider what purposes a particular needle may best have served. In this chapter I set out criteria for making distinctions among needles in hopes of pro-

44

The Needle

45

viding a guide for the archaeologist who is interested in saying something about a needle once it emerges from the archaeological haystack. Needles held social significance beyond their functionality; for one thing, they were valuable and often personal items (though few were monogrammed or inscribed) that had close associations with parts of the body (hands and fingers) and with particular postures, gestures, and sequences of motion. Right up through the nineteenth century, the social pressure on women to keep their hands busy with their sewing at all times meant that much sewing was done in public. Advice manuals aimed at women made it clear that women could put this to their advantage by holding their needles properly, perhaps evocatively, showing off their hands as well as their skills. The following passage from Harper’s Bazaar in 1874 includes proper needle holding and use among the accomplishments a girl should be taught as part of her grooming toward gentility.2 How to Hold a Needle Gracefully The graceful preceptress goes on with directions for sitting, for holding one’s needle, for dancing, and holding one’s petticoats out of the mud. Nobody will allow that these hints are superfluous who notices the varied awkwardness which women fall into who are habitually thoughtless on these points. Some of these nice customs may have been carried to our shores, possibly with Rochambeau’s French ladies at Newport or Salem. I remember hearing one of the fine Newburyport ladies, who answer to the description of gentlewomen still, maintain that it was most graceful to ‘‘sew with a long point’’—that is, to push the needle nearly its whole length through at each stitch, instead of pulling it out, so to speak, by the nose. And she was right, as you can verify by the next sewing you take up.

THE HI ST ORY A ND ARC H AE O L O GY O F NEEDL ES

The modern needle is the direct descendant of the flint or bone awls used by humans beginning in the Lower Paleolithic, about 26,000 to 20,000 bc. An awl is a pointed implement for punching holes in fiber or skin, sometimes hafted to a handle, but lacking a hole or eye through which fiber, sinew, or thread can be inserted. Some early awls, however, bear a notch or collar cut near the blunt end; the user could have whipped or ‘‘snooded’’ a fiber at the notch in the manner that fishers attach their line to a hook. In the Solutrean phase of the Upper Paleolithic (more than 20,000 years ago), true needles, made from splinters of bone, appear, and by the Gravettian and Magdalenian phases were quite finely made. A number of early Neolithic sites in Anatolia, Iraq, and Greece have pro-

46

The Needle

duced bone needles, and bone needles and thread-pickers have been found at late Saxon sites in Britain, including St. Neots in Huntingdonshire. The first true eyed metal needles, of copper alloy, were found at Tepe Yahya in Iran in layers dating between 3600 and 3200 bc. At medieval sites in Britain, archaeologists have found needles made of iron, bronze, and bone—at Breachacha Castle, Coll, Argyll, Scotland, a bronze needle was found in the same context as one made of bone, suggesting that they were in use at the same time. There was little change in the form of these implements or in their method of manufacture from Saxon times until the introduction of iron needles.3 Roman needles varied in form, and it seems likely that it was during Roman times that a special-purpose needle, the bodkin, developed. Both bone and metal needles were used, although bone was preferable to the metal needles of the time because the metal tended to corrode and stain the fabric it was used on. Most early needles were used for heavy work and were never intended for fine sewing; the finer needles that do survive often have two or three eyes, to prevent the thread from slipping. Steel needles first were made in China and spread to the Middle and Near East; Damascus and Antioch became centers for fine needlemaking during the time of the Roman Empire.4 In historical times, sewing needles were more expensive than pins, and because they were used one at a time, people had fewer of them. As a result, archaeologists find far fewer needles than pins. Although the frequency with which needlecases appear on historical sites is testimony to the care taken to curate needles and pins and to keep them from rusting, needles are relatively rare finds. In part this is because iron and steel used to produce needles are less well preserved in the ground than the copper alloys from which most pins were made. Needles found on historical sites are customarily fashioned from steel wire, although cheaper iron needles were probably present in far greater numbers than their low survival rate indicates. Copper-alloy needles survive more readily than iron ones, but copper-alloy needles were too crude for domestic sewing. Most were pack needles, used to sew up parcels for storage and transport in pack-cloth, a practice that was common up to the nineteenth century.5 Needles, cloth, and thread were among the exports traded to Iceland out of the English ports of Boston and Lynn in the early fifteenth century, when for a time the merchants of these English cities, fed up with the German monopoly over the fish trade, sent their ships directly to Iceland instead of to Bergen, Norway, to trade for stockfish. This trade continued at least partly on a clandestine basis, until Boston and Lynn suffered a decline in the mid-fifteenth century.6

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M A K I NG NEEDLES

Before the seventeenth century, copper-alloy needles were made individually by local craftsmen. The process consisted of cutting a piece of copper-alloy wire to the desired length, flattening the eye end on an anvil with a small hammer, forming the eye by striking the flattened part with a punch on the anvil, then clearing the hole with a sharper punch on a lead cake. Next, the wire was gripped in a pair of grooved pliers while the point was formed and the head trimmed and smoothed with files. A guttering iron was used to file a groove around the eye on both sides, to accommodate the thickness of thread.7 Before the tenth century, when a technique for wire-drawing was invented, iron wire was made by forging. Early iron needles were made of forged wire; they had no eye but rather curved at the blunt end into a closed hook, with the point at the other end. These served well enough at a time when the population consisted mainly of peasants clothed in leather and loose-woven cloth; more complex tailoring and embroidery, however, required conventionally manufactured needles that had been eyed, guttered, tapered, and tempered. These were imported, the earliest sources of supply being the Near East, whose craftsmen were renowned for their metalwork and for their tapestries.8 Iron needles continued to be made in a similar fashion for several centuries after the development of wire-drawing. During the fourteenth century a European needle industry began at Nuremberg, producing needles of drawn iron wire pointed at one end and looped at the other. The first eyed needles of drawn iron wire appeared in the fifteenth century and were a product of the Low Countries. In the late Middle Ages needles were also produced in Spain and Flanders, and England imported its domestic and sail needles from these suppliers.9 Steel needle-making requires a knowledge of heat treatment through annealing, hardening, and tempering. Steel metallurgy originated in China, spread to the Near East, and was carried by the Moors into Spain, where, during the Middle Ages, Córdoba became a great needle-making center. John Stow, who had been a tailor in his youth, wrote in his Survey of London and Westminster (1598) of a ‘‘Spanish needle’’ of steel introduced into England.10 There is no evidence that needles were manufactured in England before the mid-sixteenth century, although simple instruments that served as needles had long been made by blacksmiths, wire-workers, and others. The English needlemanufacturing industry dating from the late 1550s was introduced by Flemish refugees. Although the Flemish method of making needles was a simple process requiring the most rudimentary of tools, it consisted of about twenty operations.11

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Wire, usually made of steel, was drawn to requisite gauge. It arrived at the needle-mill in coils cut into doubles or needle lengths, pieces the length of two needles. The lengths were straightened by tightly packing two iron rings, about eight inches in diameter, with the wires, then placing the packed rings in a furnace and heating them. They were then transferred to a flat iron slab, where a curved iron bar with slots fitting over the rings was used to roll them backward and forward until the wires were perfectly straight (this took about twenty minutes). After the lengths were annealed, they were passed to the pointers, who by the eighteenth century used water-powered grindstones. Originally the lengths were pointed with a hand-operated grindstone. Inhaling particles of stone and steel caused pointers to contract pneumoconiosis—‘‘Pointer’s disease’’ or ‘‘Pointer’s rot’’—and few lived beyond thirty years of age. As a result, pointers were paid four pounds a week compared with an average of ten shillings paid to other workers. In 1846 an automatic pointing machine and extractor fan were introduced, but the men at first refused to work with them and went on strike, fearing a reduction in wages. A pointer revolved twenty-four or more wires back and forth with his thumb against the stone, sharpening both ends of a length. The wires were then taken to the stamping and eyeing shop. The heads and eyes were impressed by a man using a very heavy kick-stamp drop-hammer that handled thirty thousand doubles a day, but ‘‘eyeing’’ could be done more cheaply by women, two of whom worked flat out to keep up with the stamper. Drop-stamps formed two eyes in the center of each length, then a groove was cut for the thread to lie in, after which the wires were annealed again. Eyeing consisted of punching out the thin film of metal that remained after stamping; this was done by young women seated at screw presses. The twin needles were then threaded (spitted ) onto two parallel wires, one through each of the eyes, by women as well as by children as young as three years old. The spitted, eyed lengths were then fixed between wooden clamps and screwed in a vise while the surplus of metal (the flash) was filed away. The two sets then were broken apart, and the top of each set in turn was smoothed off before the wires were removed. The needles, now called points, were hardened, then tempered to restore their resilient state, and finally scoured or polished.12 Scouring removed oxidation and discoloration brought about by tempering and consisted of placing from fifty thousand and a hundred thousand needles on a large piece of stout cloth such as canvas or sackcloth, sprinkling the set, as it was called, with abrasive (usually emery paste) and a solution of soft soap, rolling up the cloth, tying it at each end, and binding it thoroughly with cord. A number of sets were placed on a long, troughlike bench with a heavy block of wood on top.

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Before waterpower was introduced to the scouring process, the block was propelled back and forth by two men, one at each end of the bench. The bundles were rolled beneath the blocks for between eight and eighteen hours. Scouring by hand was long and laborious; the most important development in the industry was the adaptation of water mills for this purpose, which greatly increased production, improved quality, and lowered costs.13 After the initial scouring, the needles were removed from the set and washed with soap and water before being bundled up again with polishing powder, this time an oxide of stone. A second scouring gave the needles a high finish. They were then washed, dried in rotating barrels of hot sand, bran, or sawdust, and given a final polish with an emery stone. Finally, the interior of the eye was polished. The needles were then packaged and labeled for sale.14 Needle-making was so readily divided into discrete stages that an economy of scale could easily be achieved by a strict division of labor. The typical unit of production tended to be small, usually a master employing a handful of journeymen and apprentices; this pattern continued until the middle of eighteenth century, when the small master began to give way to the industrial capitalist employing domestic outworkers. The English needle-making industry grew apace after the late seventeenth century because of two developments: increased demand and the emergence of an impoverished labor force caused by an upswing in agricultural production that brought success to some but forced many people off the land. The trade initially was conducted in London and Colchester, but by the early seventeenth century needles were made at Dorchester and Chichester; the industry spread into such rural areas as Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire, Much Wenlock in Salop, Bridgnorth in Worcestershire, and Studley and surrounding parishes in the Worcestershire-Warwickshire border area.15 The Worshipful Guild of Needlemakers was incorporated in 1656 in London, but the group had been active beforehand in attempting to control the industry and fix prices. As a result, many producers were forced out of London by restrictions voted by the guild members, whose effective control extended only within a ten-mile radius of the capital. The needle industry began to concentrate in the rural West Midlands. This region, largely bog and wasteland, was chiefly pastoral in character before the introduction of rural industries. But here there were deposits of coal and iron, the raw materials for needle-making, and people willing to work them; what is more, the several other nearby industries (for example, saddlery, gloving, cap-making, shoe-making, and leatherwork) created a ready market for needles.16 The earliest wills of needle-makers date after 1650; in all probability the trade

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was first introduced by William Lea, who appears to have arrived in Studley during the second quarter of the seventeenth century. A William Lee, who had been indicted in London for use of an ‘‘unlawful engine’’ (a wheel-turned grindstone), presumably left London, and he may be the same individual who showed up in Studley soon after. By the 1680s at least two dozen needle-makers were at work in the area, a dozen of whom had been trained in the workshop of William Lea.17 The products of the English needle industry eventually outstripped the quality of European needles; soon after 1712 the West Midlands dominated the trade. Makers were able to expand sales and increase market share because they were free from guild restrictions. London makers were required to employ only those who had been apprenticed and to use only steel wire, and they were discouraged from innovating. In contrast, rural needle-makers were free to employ anyone they wished and could use whatever materials and methods they chose. As a result, they were able to undercut the London market in high-quality steel needles and to introduce cheap iron needles at less than one-fourth the price of best goods. These factors permitted the needle industry in the West Midlands to expand and rise to preeminence, but it would not have grown so quickly had there not been such acute poverty in the district in the mid-seventeenth century. Advances in technology were certainly important but not widespread before 1750. Attempts at creating an American industry were largely unsuccessful; in 1775, during the American Revolution, the North Carolina Provincial Congress offered an incentive of fifty pounds sterling for the first person who could within twelve months manufacture twenty-five thousand needles, sorted from sizes one to twelve inclusive, that were equal to needles from Great Britain of the price of two shillings, six pence sterling per thousand. No one seems to have met these requirements.18 The earliest needle mill, Forge Mill at Redditch, Worcestershire, was probably commissioned no earlier than 1730. Needle-making thus remained a cottage industry before the full-scale adoption of mechanization and the factory system. A family was supplied with raw materials and tools by a merchant who collected and sold the finished article. The needles thus produced were expensive, but toward the end of the eighteenth century some families began to specialize and became expert in one of the many operations, which slightly increased production and lowered cost. At its peak, Redditch supplied 90 percent of the world market for needles. Some of largest factories made needles from start to finish, but there were a few specialists, including Forge Mill, which just scoured needles. Because Redditch was the center of needle production for the world market, including the United States, until after World War II, it is the likely place of origin

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for almost all excavated examples of sewing needles. Forge Mill, which remained in operation until 1958, is now the National Needle Museum of England.19 T Y P ES OF NEEDLES

Even a cursory survey of site reports reveals that most historical archaeologists are content to identify a needle as such, assume that it was used for some sort of sewing, and leave it at that. Few realize that closer inspection of these small finds could prove worthwhile for interpreting what types of sewing the occupants of a site engaged in or at least for what purpose a needle may have been intended. It is, of course, impossible to state with certainty that people really used any item solely for the purpose for which it was designed, but surely it is useful to be aware of what the possibilities might have been.20 The mass production of high-quality, smooth, strong needles was assured by the invention of crucible steel in the eighteenth century and of needle-making machines in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In some instances, mass production led to a dramatic drop in quality as well as in price, as factories produced millions of needles a day for different types of needlework. But by the end of the eighteenth century needles of extreme fineness (less than a hundredth of an inch in diameter) were readily available, making it possible for ladies to copy etchings by sewing fine black and gray threads or human hair on a ground of white silk. The range of needles is truly impressive, but the basic types of eyed needles fall into a limited range: sewing needles, darning and embroidery needles, tapestry needles, and specialty needles. The salient characteristics that distinguish one type of needle from another are the shape, size, and placement of the eye, the cross-section of the shank, and shape and form of the point, in addition to the overall size, length, form, and quality of the needle (fig. 3.1).21 An undated publication by Henry Milward and Sons clarifies the size classification system employed by needle-makers in the nineteenth century. Two size scales were used: the most common was applied to ordinary sewing and darning needles, while another scale was used for tapestry and chenille needles, but to some extent the scales were interchangeable (table 3.1). Sewing needles came in ten sizes, numbering 1 to 10 for those in general use, but the scale stretched out at either end to accommodate both extremely large and extremely small needles, ‘‘for which there is a certain demand.’’ The largest needles used numbers such as 1/0, 2/0, and so on: the higher the number before the slash indicated the largest size. The smaller needles were simply given numbers above 10, up to 16. Tapestry and chenille needles were sized according to the British Standard Wire Gauge and began with size 13.22

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Fig. 3.1 The parts of a needle.

sewing needles Sewing needles are made with a bevel eye and are known as sharps, betweens, blunts, and milliner’s or straw needles (fig. 3.2, fig. 3.2a). Sharps is the traditional name for ordinary needles used in domestic sewing. They are manufactured in sizes 1–12. A very large needle of a similar type, in sizes 14–18, is termed a carpet needle. Most have a bevel eye, but some professional sewers prefer a guttered eye (a small, round eye with a long groove beneath; fig. 3.2b). Betweens are widely used by experienced needlewomen and by tailors; they resemble sharps but are shorter, coming in sizes 8–12 for delicate domestic sewing and in ‘‘middle’’ sizes, 5–7, for quilting (hence these sizes are sometimes called quilting needles). As with sharps, most betweens have bevel eyes, but some are made with guttered eyes. Shorter than sharps, they are also stronger, enabling the sewer to do fine stitching on heavy fabrics. Blunts are shorter and thicker than betweens, being made in sizes 1–9 only, and are used by tailors. Because they have extra-strong points, blunts are suited for heavy work, such as bed-ticks, shoe-binding, and staymaking. Work such as hat-making and basting require needles of extra length, termed milliner’s or straw needles. These are long versions of sharps, made with a bevel or guttered eye in sizes 1–10.23 A novelty introduced in the 1850s was the calyx-eyed needle, whose blunt end terminated in a V-shaped notch that was slit so that thread, when pressed downward into the notch, could be sprung into the eye. Such needles were marketed for those with failing eyesight and as a solution for threading a fine needle. Vari-

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Table 3.1 Manufacturer’s size scale for needles Sewing needle scale

Tapestry and chenille scale

Diameter (in.)

Diameter (mm)

6/0 (heavy) 5/0 4/0 3/0 2/0 1/0 1 2 3 4 5 (medium) 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 (very fine)

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

.092 .080 .072 .064 .056 .050 .046 .043 .040 .037 .034 .030 .027 .024 .021 .018 .016 .014 .012 .011 .010 .009

2.34 2.03 1.83 1.63 1.42 1.27 1.27 1.09 1.02 0.94 0.86 0.76 0.69 0.61 0.53 0.46 0.42 0.35 0.30 0.28 0.25 0.23

ous other needle-threading devices were eventually replaced by a simple wire on a small metal, cardboard, or plastic holder.24 Sewing needles of gold and silver were produced for the tropical climates of many of the British colonies and elsewhere; unlike steel needles, these would not rust in conditions of high humidity.25 darning and embroidery needles The needles principally used are tapestry needles, which are thick and blunt, and have a long open eye.—Sharps, which are similar needles with sharp points, and are used for working on thicker substances than canvas,—as cloth, &c.; and short long eyes, which are used for the same purpose, and are like common needles, but very short, and with long eyes. —mrs. ann s. stephens, The Ladies’ Complete Guide to Crochet, Fancy Knitting, and Needlework, 1854

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Fig. 3.2 a, bevel eye typical of sewing needles; b, short and long darning needles. Never work with too small a needle, as it will drag the material, and produce an unpleasant effect. —jane eyre, Needles and Brushes and How to Use Them: A Manual of Fancy Work, 1887 For worsted work a rather coarse darning needle should be used, and for floss silk a fine one. A large round eyed needle is necessary for chenille and three corded silk. If the needle is too large, besides being clumsy, it will make a hole in the work. —The Ladies Self Instructor in Millinery and Mantua Making, Embroidery and Applique, Canvas-Work, Knitting, Netting and Crochet-Work, 1853

Darning or mending and embroidery needles have a long eye, to take wool and stranded cotton (fig. 3.3). Darners for domestic use are made in sizes 14 (large) to 12 (small). Sizes 14–18 (large) are sometimes called wool or yarn darners, sizes 1–12 cotton darners. Double-long darners, for tough work or for spanning large holes, are made in sizes 14 (large) to 9 (small). Embroidery or crewel needles are for most ordinary embroidery work, coming in sizes 1–12 in the same lengths as sharps, but with a long (darner) eye to facilitate threading of stranded threads and silks. These are sometimes called ‘‘Long-eyed sharps’’ or ‘‘Whitechapel’’ numbers 1–10; some have gold burnished on the eye, along with grooves, to ease the passage of the thread. Some women preferred to use embroidery needles for ordinary sewing because they were easier to thread. The slight bulge around the long eye tends to make a largish hole in the material on which it is used, however, so this use was not recommended. Extra-short embroidery needles called primary needles were made exclusively for schoolgirls; these were easy for small fingers to thread and to use. Beading needles, similar to very fine double-long darners, were made in very fine gauges from sizes 10 to 16 (small) for work with sequins, beads, and fine lacework.26 tapestry or art needles Tapestry needles, as their name implies, are used for tapestry work employing wool on a scrim or net base; they are sometimes called rug needles. Made in

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Fig. 3.3 The five main types of needle eyes. Left to right: bevel; guttered; grooveless; long; tapestry. Sewing needles tend to have a bevel eye and lack any bulge around the eye to prevent the needle from dragging through or leaving a conspicuous hole in the material. (After Milward n.d.:9)

Fig. 3.4 The three principal types of needle points. Left to right: normal; tapestry; glover’s. The normal has a long and gradual taper to ease passage through the material and sharpness on the extreme point to effect initial penetration; the tapestry point has a gradual taper to a shoulder and blunted point for use on a net or scrim base; and the glover’s needle has a cutting edge reaching to the point, to prevent tearing of the leather. (After Milward n.d.:10)

sizes 13–26, they have blunt rounded points and an especially large ‘‘tapestry eye’’ (extra-long and extra-wide) to facilitate threading the wool (fig. 3.4). Chenille needles, used for embroidery on linen, canvas, and other woven materials, are identical to tapestry needles but have a sharp or normal needle point. The terms cross stitch needle without point or with point were sometimes used to describe tapestry and chenille needles, respectively.

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specialty needles There is a wide range of specialty needles, used for any number of tasks, most having nothing to do with home sewing (fig. 3.5). By the nineteenth century manufacturers of specialty needles produced elaborately illustrated trade catalogs that advertised a dizzying array of needle types. To give just a hint of the variety a retailer could choose from, I list many of the types of needles advertised by Julius Berbecker and Son of New York in its undated trade catalog (probably early twentieth century; table 3.2). The range of specialty needles shown here represents only a small selection of special-purpose needles with distinctive characteristics that made them suitable to their intended tasks. Any of these types of needles might be found on archaeological sites of a domestic, commercial, craft-industrial, or military character, although some are so specialized that one would expect to find them only at sites where they were made or sold or where the special activity for which they were intended was carried out. For example, glover’s needles, made in two lengths (sizes 3/0–9), have a bevel eye and a triangular point with cutting edges that taper gradually to an extreme point (fig. 3.5a). The cutting edges insure that the leather is cut, not torn, by the needle’s penetration. Sail needles range from two and a quarter inches to four and a quarter inches in length (English gauge sizes 7 and 9–17), have a somewhat elongated, guttered oval eye and a point with a triangular cross-section, the better for piercing canvas (fig. 3.5b). Lace needles are very long (seven and a half inches) and fine and made with a grooveless eye in special gauges numbered in reverse direction from normal (table 3.3). Gimp needles are intended to take thick thread (gimp thread ) used in making buttonholes and are made only in heavy gauges, 13–18.27 Upholsterer’s needles come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all with smooth, oval eyes (fig 3.5c). The catalog of upholsterers’ needles published by Julius Berbecker and Son lists and illustrates six types of straight needles: single round point, single three-square point, double round point, double three-square point, double three-square point grip, and single three-square and spear-point grip. Singles have only one point; doubles have a point at either end. A round point is the normal needle point, while a three-square point is triangular in cross-section and a spear-point has a diamond-shaped cross-section. The first four types come in light, heavy, and extra light, the last two only in heavy and light weights. Straight upholsterer’s needles come in sizes ranging from four to twenty inches long. Curved upholsterer’s needles come in the following forms: single round point (regular and ‘‘extra quality curved or cord needles’’), single three-square point, and double round point (heavy only). Curved leather needles are made from flat wire.

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Fig. 3.5 Specialty needles: a, glover’s needle; b, sail needle; c, upholsterer’s needles (top to bottom: straight single round point, straight single three-square point, straight double round point, straight double three-square point, curved single round point, and curved single three-square point); d, collar needles (left, full curved; right, half curved); e, pack needle; f, brush or matting needles (top, ordinary eye; bottom, long oval eye). (After Berbecker and Son n.d.)

Collar needles range from four to seven inches in length and come in full curved and half-curved versions (fig. 3.5d). Regulating needles are made of forged cast steel and have a thick, flattened end with a relatively small, oval eye. Carpet needles are made of extra-silver steel, with an oval eye, in round point and three-square point models.

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Table 3.2 A list of specialty needles available from the firm of Julius Berbecker and Son Upholsterers straight single round point light heavy extra light straight single 3-square point light heavy extra light straight double round point light heavy extra light straight double 3-square point light heavy extra light straight double 3-square point grip heavy light curved single round point light heavy extra light curved single 3-square point light heavy extra light curved double round point heavy extra quality curved or cord, single round point xx light xxx light curved leather heavy light Collar needles, full curved Collar needles, half curved Source: Berbecker and Son n.d.

Regulating needles, forged cast steel and tempered light heavy Carpet needles (extra silver steel, oval eye) round point, 3-square point Ham bag needles Packing needles light heavy Bagging needles, American pattern Flour needles Bagging needles, best cast steel, with spring eye and cutter straight bent Sail needles, extra fine quality, cast steel forged (reduced edge) Harness needles, best cast steel Sadler’s needles, best cast steel Glover’s needles Long darning needles Short darning needles Embroidery needles Light carpet or milliner’s needles Broom needles Brush needles Bag machine needles Steel sail hooks with brass swivel Light and heavy double points made in short and long points

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Table 3.3 Size scale for lace needles Gauges In inches Size

.010 2/0

.011 1/0

.012 1

.014 2

.014 3

.016 4

.018 5

.021 6

.021 7

Bagging and packing or pack needles are generally used to stitch together bales of goods shipped for trade (fig 3.5e). They are often found at fur-trade posts in the Americas and are sometimes listed in probate inventories of traders’ goods, such as that of Edward Wharton, recorded in Essex County, Massachusetts, in 1677–1678, which listed goods on consignment in old England as well as goods in New England, among the latter ‘‘6 doz. pack needles, 5s.,’’ along with ‘‘soweing needles, 6d.’’ An example identified as a baling needle was found in excavations in the kitchen area of the British North West Company’s trading headquarters at Grand Portage, Minnesota. It was five inches long and made from a round steel rod hammered into a diamond-shaped cross-section.28 Matting needles are extremely long needles (eleven to twelve inches in length) used for weaving mats (brush needles, fig. 3.5f, fall into the same general category as matting needles; they do not require tapered sharp points); the indigenous peoples of North America used long bone needles to weave bullrush mats. By the middle of the nineteenth-century mat-weavers had shifted from bone to iron needles once fur traders recognized that there was a ready market for them. Needles of various sizes are also used in thatching; thatchers employ needles to hold bundles of thatching material in place on a roof and for inserting tarred twine in the thatch.29 Yet another type of specialty needle that deserves mention has nothing to do with sewing or needlework. Culinary or flesh needles used in cookery (for example, for securing the stuffing inside a turkey or chicken) are large needles with large eyes and often with curved three- or four-square points similar to those on upholstery needles (fig. 3.6); although I have not seen any reported in the literature, it is altogether possible that such needles might be found in archaeological contexts. knitting needles Knitting is an ancient technique and has been practiced by many cultures, but even though knitting was common and widespread, archaeological finds of knitting tools are rare. Often, the evidence for knitting appears in the form of scraps of garments recovered from contexts with good preservation conditions for tex-

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Fig. 3.6 Culinary or flesh needles available from the Friedrick Dick Company catalog, c. 1912. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

tiles. Such contexts tend to be waterlogged and ‘‘cessy’’ (in other words, from cesspits or privies), leaving us to surmise that the textile scraps may have been recycled for purposes of personal hygiene. It is therefore not surprising that knitting needles seldom accompany garment fragments in such deposits.30 Although ‘‘its origins have not so far been traced with any great success,’’ knitting seems to have been a logical development out of netting, and an early variant of knitting known as nålebinding (knotless netting) or looped needle netting, employing a single coarse needle, was common in northern Europe during the Middle Ages. This technique was used for making stockings and gloves, and in Norway many milk-straining clothes were made in this way. At Jorvik (Viking York in England), a rare example of a complete woolen sock in nålebinding dating to the tenth century was found, but needles used in nålebinding remain elusive. The art of knitting with two (or more) needles spread throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.31 Most knitting needles are straight, slender rods tapered at either end, varying in length and diameter according to the sort of work being done, though straight needles can be either single or double-pointed. Knitting needles have been and continue to be made in a wide range of materials—including wood, bone, steel, aluminum, and plastic—certain materials being better suited to one sort of work than another. Wooden needles were usually made only in the largest sizes, in matched pairs, and were used for flat work. The length of the needles used depends both on the article being constructed and the preference of the knitter, as some people are more comfortable working with long needles and others with short ones. The diameter of the needle varies according to the sort of work being done; standard gauges for knitting needle sizes exist, though the U.S. standard differs from the English standard. English standard gauge sizes 1– 24 run from largest to smallest (about .31 to .08 inches in diameter), while U.S. sizes 0–10 1/2 are numbered from smallest to largest. Double-pointed straight needles, sometimes called sock needles, are used in sets of four or five to pro-

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duce work in the round, such as socks or mittens. Some knitting needles have a knob at one end, in which case they might be called knitting pins; such straight needles with single points are used for producing flat work and are among the most common of knitting needles used today. Whether this was the case in the past is difficult to determine from existing evidence. Circular knitting needles used for constructing seamless tubular articles are made of flexible materials such as metal, nylon, or plastic; these curve in a complete circle but nevertheless have two pointed ends.32 The earliest examples of knitted garments are from the mid-third century ad, from Dura-Europus in Syria. Both surviving textiles and wall murals reveal that knitting was well established in the Near East by the first century ad. Although the first knitting needles were probably made of bone, as noted above, over time they have been made of a wide array of materials, including wood, steel, celluloid, and so on. A Roman knitting needle was found at Silchester, England, in excavations that took place between 1874 and 1878; it is made of a copper alloy, eleven and a half inches long, with a rounded point at either end, and a maximum diameter of slightly over a tenth of an inch. The gauge comes out to be about size 11 in the modern English system, size 2 in the U.S. system.33 Two copper-alloy needles were found together in an excavation layer dated to the late fourteenth century in Viking York; this layer has been interpreted as representing the floor of a tenement. The needles are slender rods, about eight inches long, that taper to a rounded tip at each end. Though they are the same length, the needles vary in diameter (.10 of an inch and .07 of an inch, respectively) and hence correspond to English size 12 and 14 knitting needles. Historians of knitting puzzle over whether these two needles could possibly have been a ‘‘set,’’ because in contemporary knitting it is critical for a pair of needles to be identical in both length and diameter. So little is known about how people actually went about knitting in earlier times that it is a matter of some debate, especially given the likelihood that the wool yarn used by early knitters was unlikely to have been of standard gauge.34 If the relative rarity of knitting needles from archaeological sites results from poor preservation conditions, then it makes sense that they will be found in greater numbers at more recent sites, for instance, those dating to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A single bone knitting needle was found in the ‘‘underfloor accumulation’’ from the third quarter of the nineteenth century at the Armsden house, part of the Cumberland/Gloucester Street sites in the Rocks neighborhood of Sydney, Australia. Wooden knitting needles were recovered from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sites excavated in advance of the Cypress Freeway Relocation Project in West Oakland, California. Single needles

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were found in a privy associated with the French family (about 1880) and a well associated with the Curtis household (about 1890). The well of the Pullman Hotel, filled about 1905, contained five knitting needles, while the Railroad Exchange Hotel well, filled about 1880, produced thirteen needles. Some of the needles in these larger groupings were of the same size and hence may have constituted matched sets of knitting needles, but it seems likely that most of these items were lost rather than deliberately discarded. Careful study of the needle sizes (gauges) could produce information about the sorts of garments or other items (for example, small handbags) they were used to produce. Two examples are noted as having diameters of an eighth of an inch, corresponding to U.S. knitting needle size 10, which is very large. The West Oakland knitting needles are all of wood; as noted above, wooden needles tend to come in large sizes and to be used for producing large flatwork items.35 tambour hooks Tambour work was all the rage in the eighteenth century, in Europe as well as among the elite in Europe’s colonies. The term tambour comes from the French word for drum, referring to the drum-shaped frame, sometimes on a stand, upon which the work was done. The tambour-worker holds the hook in her right hand above the frame, in a more or less vertical position, and with the left hand guides the thread underneath the frame. The resulting work resembles the chain stitch in embroidery. In the middle of the eighteenth century, some tambour-workers used a specially designed open-ended thimble with a deep notch in its center front. The needle was kept in the notch and guided down by means of it. The tambour hook itself consisted either of a handle and hook all in one piece or, more commonly, a handle into which a steel hook was fitted, often being held in position by a small wing nut (fig. 3.7). The handle swells out at one end to ensure a firm grip and often was made hollow to hold the long, fine blades of the hooks, or tambour needles, when they were not in use. Often a point protector was screwed over the actual hook when it was not in use; this could be screwed on to the top part of the handle when the work was being done. Indeed, an elegant ivory handle for a tambour hook recovered from Feature H, a privy in an alley between Baxter and Pearl Streets in New York’s Five Points neighborhood, filled before 1890, has screw threads at its top intended for just this purpose. Like some early tambour hooks, especially early-eighteenth-century French ones, the Five Points example was elaborately decorated. An early-nineteenth-century tambour hook handle found in the cabin referred to as Triplex Middle at the Hermitage in Tennessee, interpreted as the home of an enslaved African woman who pos-

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Fig. 3.7 English tambour hook (1780–1820) with steel needle portion fixed to a carved and stained bone handle. (Courtesy The Winterthur Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Sittig)

sessed advanced skills as a seamstress and needlewoman, is simpler yet elegantly lathe-turned in a series of cordons and balusters.36 crochet hooks Hints on Crochet. A steel crochet-needle is generally advisable;—with expert workers, it makes the most even stitches, but it is easier to work with an ivory needle. —miss lambert, My Crochet Sampler, 1849

Miss Lambert, whose hints on crochet appear in her charming My Crochet Sampler, defines crochet as ‘‘a species of knitting originally practised by the peasants in Scotland with a small hooked needle called a shepherd’s hook.’’ It seems likely, however, that crochet is as ancient as knitting and may derive from it because it is a similarly simple technique. Early crochet hooks normally came in two parts, consisting of a handle into which different-sized steel hooks were fitted, and many early handles were hollow so that the spare hooks could be stored in them. Initially the hooks were held fast in the handle by a wing nut, but this was superseded by a simple metal fitting into which the steel hooks could be slotted. Eventually the handle and hook were made in one piece, albeit of differing materials, and by around 1800 the crochet hook made of the same material overall, usually ivory, bone, or steel, came into common use.37 Crochet hooks have been made of a wide variety of materials and come in many sizes, ranging from ‘‘a very fine steel hook for fine threads to large wooden

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ones for coarser yarns.’’ Typical materials include bone, aluminum, plastic, steel, and wood. The defining characteristic of the crochet hook is of course its hooked end; on special hooks for working the afghan stitch the hook tends to be large, nine to fourteen inches long, and the shaft straight and even. Crochet hooks are sized both by numbers equivalent to those used to gauge knitting needles and by letter, running from smallest to largest from A to K.38 Crochet hooks are rarely reported in the archaeological literature. It is difficult to identify a cylindrical shaft as a crochet hook if the hook end is missing, but intact examples provide clear evidence of the sort of crochet work for which the hook was intended and what sort of yarn or thread would have been used in conjunction with it. The bone handle of what was possibly a crochet hook was recovered during excavations at Champlain’s Habitation at Place-Royale in Québec City, but without its hook we can say little else about it.39 The Triplex Middle cabin at the Hermitage in Tennessee produced many artifacts of needlework and sewing, some of them mass-produced; among the handcrafted items was a crochet hook with a flat handle. The flatness of the tool’s handle would have required a different grip and a somewhat different set of motor skills than a typical cylindrical hook, and it is interesting to consider what the resulting work would have looked like; archaeologist Jillian Galle notes that this tool might have been employed alternatively to pull thread through eyelets or in other forms of openwork. Excavations in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco produced many sewing-related artifacts from households of an ethnically diverse nineteenth-century working-class community; in deposits from five households there were bone crochet hooks and from two others, finely turned bone handles into which steel crochet hooks would have fitted. The bone crochet hooks are about four inches long and only three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and their hooks are tiny; they are polished from use. Such finegauge hooks would have been used with fine thread or exceedingly fine yarn for fashioning popular Victorian decorative items like doilies, tablecloths, and antimacassars, or for hairnets and baby clothes.40 netting needles Netting is among the most ancient of crafts that use fiber to create a loosely ‘‘woven’’ product suitable for many purposes, and the spread of netting as a technique may have followed the spread of hemp cultivation from central or southcentral Asia by early Neolithic times to Europe, Tibet, and China. String skirts and hairnets of twisted fiber string have been documented as early as the Gravettian phase of the Upper Paleolithic (that is, at least by 15,000 bc and perhaps earlier than 20,000 bc) in Europe. Nets, of course, were used for fishing and

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for hunting as well as for containers of various sorts, and the style and thickness of netting differed dramatically depending on the nature and size of the fibers, thread, or yarn used and the size of the openings in the net.41 The earliest netting tool was likely a simple shuttle with a V-shaped notch at either end, used in combination with a short gauge made of wood or bone. As finer meshes were required, a finer implement was needed, and so the netting needle came into use. A netting needle is usually made of iron, bone, or wood and is in essence a long, thin needle with a large, flattened or spatulate, open, forklike or pronged eye at either end. Thread was wound from one prong down the blade to the other prong and back again, until the needle was full and ready for use. Netting needles and their accompanying gauges vary in length according to the fineness of the work to be done, the needles ranging from three to four inches to eight to ten inches long. The gauge, also called a mesh or spool, was usually pointed at both ends and served as a base upon which the loops were formed, ensuring that they would all be the same size and could be easily slipped off. Flat, rulerlike tools with a groove along one side were used as gauges for the fringes that finished off many net-work articles.42 Because most netting tools were made of perishable organic materials (wood being most common), they are not commonly found on terrestrial sites unless they are made of metal. In fact, despite the near ubiquity of net-making across cultures and throughout time, the tools appropriate to the task make little more than cameo appearances in the medieval and postmedieval archaeological literature. An object made of bone and identified as a yarn twister was recovered from a sixteenth-century site in Trondheim, Norway. It has a pronged end, but its shaft is broken, so it is impossible to know if the other end of the implement took the same form. Nevertheless, it is a good candidate for a bone netting needle, and as potential supporting evidence, many fishing-related artifacts were found in the excavations (a fish hook, boat rivets, reels, and other objects). A copperalloy netting needle, bent but about five inches long, with prongs or forks at either end, was found in layers dating about 1200–1230 at the site of Weoley Castle, Birmingham, England. A copper-alloy object found at the seventeenthcentury site of Renews, Newfoundland, has been identified as a possible netting needle, although exact matches have not yet been found; this identification is somewhat problematic given that the extant end of the implement takes the form of a closed rectangle rather than the pronged-fork shape typical of netting needles. The implement is just under thirteen inches long, although because it was broken this is not its full length. The fact that the site at Renews was a fisherman’s dwelling is the chief rationale for calling this item a netting needle.43

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One expert on needlework tools states flatly that the ‘‘only difference between a bodkin and a needle is size, although some bodkins made for threading ribbons were flat and others may terminate in a knob,’’ but it is worth noting that the term bodkin has multiple meanings. As a result, ‘‘any early reference to these implements must therefore be read with care and interpreted according to the immediate context.’’ The same holds true for interpreting archaeologically recovered bodkins, although of course archaeological contexts seldom equate with use contexts.44 Bodkins were used by both men and women for dunning in drawstrings and for threading and re-threading ribbons, cords, and laces; their chief purpose has always been to thread bands or cords through corsets and bodices. The term bodkin also referred to hairpins (as in the above quotation from Dryden) and to sharp, stiletto-like daggers. The type of bodkin used for lacing up clothing lacks the sharp, tapered point of the stiletto (although it may have enough of a point to do double duty as an awl) and, unlike a decorative hairpin, has an elongated eye through which lacing or cord can be threaded.45 Geraint Jenkins, in his book Traditional Country Craftsmen, notes that a kind of bodkin is used in osier basket-making; to make openings in the weave for the insertion of rods the craftsman uses a wooden, iron, or bone bodkin, which varies in length from three to ten inches. What is more, awls used in traditional leatherwork and boot-making may closely resemble bodkins, although in those trades a wide variety of awls would be used.46 A pierced bone bodkin, rather crudely made but well polished from use, was found at the medieval village site of Pevensey, Sussex. Those of the mid-seventeenth century can be quite large, sometimes more than seven inches long, sometimes with an ear-spoon or earscoop at one end. The earscoop was designed to gather earwax for use on sewing thread, to keep the cut ends from unraveling. Well-to-do women were likely to purchase beeswax for this purpose, but earwax was thrifty and readily available—and cleaning out the ears contributed to personal hygiene.47 Silver bodkins with initials and other inscriptions, though relatively rare and highly valued in the seventeenth century, were popular after 1750; these were made as presents and souvenirs and were stamped with phrases and the like. By

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the late eighteenth century, bodkins were shorter but were still handmade and thick in section compared with later tools. Bone bodkins with simple or no decoration continued to be made into the nineteenth century, but mechanization of the needle mills brought about the production of metal bodkins in mass quantities, some of which were stamped. Bodkins found a new use upon the invention of elastic in 1840, and after 1900 many were sold on cards as ribbon threaders and given fanciful names.48 Though bodkins are relatively rare finds, they do turn up at medieval and postmedieval sites often enough to excite the interest of finds specialists. Several examples from the Chesapeake (for example, three silver and four copperalloy bodkins from Jamestown and a copper-alloy bodkin from Jordan’s Journey, both in Virginia) have been identified as headdress pins and noted as artifacts reflecting social status. The notion that the bodkins found on seventeenth-century Chesapeake sites are headdress pins arises chiefly from North American archaeologists’ reliance on a single publication that contains a somewhat misleading treatment of bodkins in a study of items of personal adornment from medieval and postmedieval sites in Norwich, England. The treatment is misleading because the actual finds are not illustrated; rather, a Dutch painting showing a woman wearing a bejeweled silver hairpin (which could quite easily be a fully useful bodkin tucked up under her cap) and a monogrammed silver bodkin found in Norfolk are used as illustrations to support the interpretation of the Norwich finds. The excavated Norwich bodkins were all made of base metal— copper alloy—and according to the published descriptions, all had rectangular eyes, and one had an earscoop. This suggests that they were ordinary bodkins for lacing and dunning-in purposes (and for personal hygiene) and would have had little cachet as hair ornaments.49 Seventeenth-century Dutch artists painted both young and mature women wearing bodkins tucked into their caps; the costumes and the settings—as well as the quality of the bodkins or headdress pins—depict a range of economic and, presumably, social standings among the sitters. Most fancy headdress pins, especially bejeweled ones, are worn by well-to-do women. Judith Leyster’s painting Joyful Company (1630), however, shows a woman of middling or perhaps lower status wearing a hairdress pin with a decorative tip and lacking an eye. This most definitely seems to be of the hairpin variety and not for other purposes. Other Dutch bodkins were multipurpose tools. In the village of Hindelopen in Friesland bodkins were worn threaded through the cords of the bodice; married women wore their bodkins on the right-hand side of the bodice, unmarried women on the left. Some bodkins were also used as hair needles, tucked under the cap (in some parts of the Netherlands a woman’s marital status was indicated

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by whether she wore her bodkin on the left or the right side of her cap), and finely made decorative bodkins, usually of silver, might have a second hole near the end through which a jewel could be depended. Randle Holme, in his Academy of Armory (1688), illustrates a rather chunky bodkin and calls it a hairpin, but he also notes that the term bodkin was applied to several rather different objects. It therefore is unfortunate that North American archaeologists have tended to use the Norwich households study so uncritically and to embrace a somewhat rigid line of interpretation about bodkins; bodkins are in truth more interesting and complicated cultural artifacts than one might think. Bodkins were important and highly charged personal possessions; they were not all hairdress pins, and not all bodkins were, as a class of object, equally suited to social display.50 Excavated seventeenth-century silver bodkins at times bear the initials or name of their former owners, in most cases not engraved by a silversmith but inscribed or scratched into them by inexpert hands. Linking the names or initials to specific individuals can seem a daunting task, but archaeologists who succeed in making connections between the small objects and their former users are sometimes able to reconstruct ‘‘lost biographies’’ of women whose lives are not chronicled in traditional histories. A distinctive silver bodkin inscribed zarra*rvlofsen was recovered during excavations at a historic-period Oneida Indian village in the 1960s; when finds specialist Meta Janowitz learned of the bodkin’s existence, the name inscribed on it struck a chord. Janowitz specializes in Dutch colonial archaeology and has studied the artifacts recovered from many large excavation projects at sites in New Amsterdam, among them the Broad Financial Center site, former location of the headquarters of the Dutch West India Company on Manhattan Island. She knew that a Sara Roelofs (also known as Roeloff or Roeloffsen), who was the daughter of the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, married Hans Kierstede, a surgeon, in 1642. They moved into a house on the Strand, very close to the West India Company headquarters and warehouses; a privy in the rear of the Kierstede home lot, excavated during the Broad Financial Center project, produced many artifacts dating from between 1670 and 1710, when Sara Roelofs lived at the site with her second and third husbands and her children. It seems that before her marriage to Kierstede, she had spent time among Native Americans and learned their language; she later served as interpreter for Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherlands, during negotiations with native leaders. This perhaps accounts for the isolated find of a silver bodkin bearing her name in an Oneida site far from the city of New Amsterdam: the bodkin may have been presented as a gift or special token of friendship. For Sara Roelofs it surely was a treasured personal possession. Curiosity about the bodkin’s former owner has led Janowitz to conduct intensive research and bring to light many details of the life of this complex and fascinating woman.51

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Fig. 3.8 Detail of copper-alloy bodkin, formerly tinned or plated with silver, recovered from a late-seventeenth-century trash deposit at the site of Charles’ Gift in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. The initials ‘‘SS’’ are probably those of Susannah Sewall. Scale in centimeters. (Courtesy Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD)

Two other seventeenth-century bodkins offer similar possibilities for investigating lost biographies of early colonial women—although in both cases the possibilities remain unexplored. A site investigated before the expansion of the Officers’ Club at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, produced extensive evidence of the late-seventeenth-century occupation of land patented to William Eltonhead in 1648; in 1668 the property ‘‘known by the name of the Mannor of Little Eltonhead’’ was awarded to Jane Sewall, who renamed the parcel Charles’ Gift in honor of her second husband, Charles Calvert. The property devolved to Jane’s son, Major Nicolas Sewall, who became embroiled in the political struggles between Catholics and Protestants and between colonists and local Indians that overtook Maryland at the end of the century. What is important for our purposes is that among the thousands of artifacts recovered from a late-seventeenth-century trash deposit at the site was a bodkin bearing the initials ‘‘SS’’ (fig. 3.8). It seems likely that the bodkin once belonged to Nicolas Sewall’s wife, Susannah, whose initials were chiseled, not engraved, into the bodkin. It is also intriguing that the ‘‘SS’’ bodkin is made of copper-alloy with silver or tin plating, for the Sewalls were wealthy and of high social standing. Other finds from the site include elegant items of personal adornment, fine ceramics, book clasps, and a rare pipe clay statuette representing the British monarch. A woman of Susannah Sewall’s status would likely own a silver bodkin, yet the one discarded at the site was an imitation, not the genuine article. The fact that her initials were chiseled, not inscribed, makes the object all the more personal, but the method of personalizing the object was also less costly than inscription by a silversmith or goldsmith. Little is known about Susannah Sewall’s life and how she and her children fared while her husband was preoccupied with political troubles, especially when the family was left behind at

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Fig. 3.9 A silver bodkin recovered from fill of Boston’s Mill Pond. Its form and style are typical of seventeenth-century bodkins; it is monogrammed with the initials ‘‘EI.’’ (Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Commission)

Charles’ Gift when he was forced to flee to Virginia. Research might shed light on why the bodkin seems to indicate small measures of thrift alongside efforts toward the appropriate and fashionable presentation of self.52 At the Mill Pond site in Boston, Massachusetts, archaeologists explored features built on original land along the Mill Pond’s shoreline as well as structures built in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as shoreline revetments and to receive fill to create new land. Soil within the land-making structures contained artifacts representing the rubbish of Bostonians’ daily lives, commerce, and industry. Among the most personal of finds was a silver bodkin of late-seventeenth-century date bearing the initials ‘‘EI’’—or perhaps ‘‘EJ,’’ since in the seventeenth century a ‘‘J’’ was often written as an ‘‘I’’ with cross-marks through it. Here again the initials seem to have been scratched or chiseled in after the item was produced, as a means of linking it to its owner. The eye of this bodkin is broken and twisted, and this may be why an otherwise valuable and useful object was discarded. We do not know who owned this bodkin, but it is evident that women in early Boston, like women elsewhere, treasured their bodkins enough to personalize them and probably used them in social display.53 NEEDL E C ASES A ND NEEDL E PAC K AG I NG

It is difficult to say exactly when people would have been able to purchase needles in ready-made packaging; it seems that up through the eighteenth century, at the very least, dry goods dealers received needles wrapped in small paper packets, and sometimes they show up this way in probate inventories. The detailed inventory of John Lowell of Newbury, Massachusetts, dated 1647, lists ‘‘a

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boxe—4 papers of needles, 4s.’’ Among the stored items in the collections at the Winterthur Museum is a box full of once fine but now-rusted sewing needles separated into packets made of folded blue paper (fig. 3.10).54 Needles, like pins, were at first relatively expensive items and all too easily lost; needlecases and pin poppets were necessary accessories for almost every woman from very early in time. Since for many centuries even the simplest tools, such as needles or pins, were scarce and difficult to come by, they were treated with considerably more care and respect than they receive at our hands today, and thus for reasons of both safety and convenience it was necessary for women to carry their sewing implements about with them. In the earliest forms of garment worn in Western civilisation, pockets are non-existent, and any articles, such as combs, work tools, knives, were attached by chains or cords to the waistbands of both males and females.55

In chapter 1 I discussed how prominently needlework, particularly embroidery, figured among desirable female accomplishments in medieval and early modern Europe and in its colonies: ‘‘it is not surprising, therefore, that needlecases were worn by women from chatelaines as a status symbol as well as for convenience.’’ 56 Tubular bronze cases found with needles still in them are common finds from the Viking period in Europe, and a typical example of such a needlecase was found in the ninth-century Viking occupation phase at High Street in Dublin, Ireland. It would have been closed by a plug or bung at one or both ends and was worn suspended from a ring at its midsection so that it hung horizontally.57 Few needlecases are known from late medieval sites, likely because many were made of organic materials that have decayed; only five examples have been identified in deposits from London. The earliest of these was found in a pit filled in during the twelfth century and was made from the long bone of a bird; it was pierced in the center of the shaft with two pairs of holes. Metal rings would have been inserted through the holes to allow the case to be suspended from a chain or girdle, along with other implements like cosmetic sets, keys, and so on. Because this needlecase was fashioned from a segment of long bone, it required a plug or closure at either end, or perhaps needles would have been inserted through a scrap of textile that was placed inside the case. This example from London is comparable to earlier examples from many sites in northern Europe as well as one from Birka, Sweden, made of bird bone.58 The other examples from London came from deposits dated to the late thirteenth and late fourteenth centuries, and each had a slot in the side and a separate

Fig. 3.10 A collection of needle ‘‘packets’’ from the Winterthur Museum collection. These represent the practice of shopkeepers of purchasing needles in bulk, then counting out a specific number of needles of a given size, carefully folding them into paper packets, in this instance thick blue paper, for sale to customers. (Courtesy The Winterthur Museum)

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Fig. 3.11 A lathe-turned bone needlecase from the St. John’s site (ST1-23-53C/CIA) at St. Mary’s City, Maryland; length: 3.19 inches, exterior diameter 1 inch, interior diameter 0.5 inch. Note screw threads at either end. (Courtesy Historic St. Mary’s City)

cap. One case was made of calf leather, while three metal needlecases were fashioned from thin copper-alloy sheeting. These had small slots made of an extra strip of metal soldered onto either side of the main cylinder, through which a thin cord or thong could be passed. The sheet-metal needlecases were folded or rolled (the former being rectangular and the latter cylindrical) and the seams soldered; none retained their caps, but one of the cylindrical needlecases had a secondary compartment inside that still contained an iron needle made from drawn wire, with the head flattened and punched to form a tiny eye. The only documentary evidence I have found for needlecases in North America is an entry in the inventory of goods that belonged to John White, a tailor in Salem, Massachusetts, that was submitted in 1677; it notes ‘‘a needle Case & 5 needles, 6s.’’ Since White’s total estate value was only five pounds, six shillings, the needles and case represented a good portion of the wealth he had in goods.59 Bone needlecases or pin poppets turn up regularly on colonial and later sites in North America; indeed, almost every one of the fifteen seventeenth-century Chesapeake site collections I examined produced at least one turned bone pin poppet (fig. 3.11). Because so little is known about these objects—where they were manufactured and when—I have made every effort to track down information about bone working, especially production of bone cylinders of this sort, in hopes of shedding a little light on this category of artifact. Bone artifacts are relatively common finds, but most worked bone objects recovered from sites in the Americas were intended as clothing fasteners. Some of these are complete buttons in and of themselves, but many are single-hole bone discs that were intended to serve as button blanks or button backs and would have been covered with textile that matched the garment onto which they were

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sewn. Evidence for manufacture of bone buttons or button blanks, consisting of the artifacts as well as manufacturing waste (usually flat portions of cattle bone, though other mammal, and even reptile, bone was used at times), is often found in contexts associated with plantation workshops or with the living quarters of enslaved Africans (for example, at Brimstone Hill in St. Kitts, West Indies, at Monticello in Virginia) as well as at the encampments and villages of free or selfemancipated Africans (for example, Fort Mose in Florida). This has given rise to the interpretation that African craft workers fashioned these items, which they undoubtedly did in some contexts, but similar deposits of manufacturing debris have been found in Europe at both medieval and postmedieval sites as well as from a number of late-eighteenth-century British and American military sites in North America. Such waste is also found at almshouses and other institutional sites.60 Bone button-making made use of flat portions of animal bone that would otherwise have been discarded as butchery waste, as did scale-making, that is, the production of scales or side-plates for knife and fork handles. Horn was another material used for making scales, although the horn had to be rendered flat after it was softened; large deposits of horn cores are often cited as evidence of the initial steps in this process. But elsewhere there is evidence for bone working of another sort, that is, the reworking of sawn cattle bone, especially metapodials, into cylindrical objects that served various purposes. In cattle the metapodial is the solid, straight bone right above the foot; it has a straight, hollow shaft. As a result, metapodials were commonly used for bone working, not just for making the items listed above, but also for fashioning gaming pieces and other objects. Philip Armitage has noted that the long, straight shaft of these bones—cattle hind-limb metatarsals—was ideal for turning on lathes to make knife handles and for splitting into slivers to make pins and bodkins.61 Early lathes are almost unknown from archaeological contexts, but the type most likely used for bone turning before the late sixteenth century would have been either pole lathes of the sort shown in early manuscript illustrations or smaller bow-driven lathes. More efficient lathes were developed in the late sixteenth century, permitting an increase in both output and elaboration of examples, including lathe-turned bone, ivory, and other material. Arthur MacGregor, in his comprehensive study of the technology of skeletal materials, reviews the debate over whether the working of bone, antler, and ivory, and horn in early times was merely a handicraft or a true industry. Bone turning clearly involved skill, so it would not be done by just anyone who wanted to have an implement or object made of bone. But there is little conclusive evidence for the existence of a true industry for this work; rather, the archaeological evidence points

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to itinerant craftsmen making objects on demand and leaving behind relatively little waste and a few rough cuts. MacGregor thinks that many deposits cited as evidence of bone or antler workshops are more likely representative of the efforts of itinerant craftsmen rather than a full-scale industry—although by the late sixteenth century, because of the improvements in lathe technology, places such as Nuremberg, Germany, became centers of ivory working.62 Abundant evidence of bone working and production of bone cylinders was found in the Saxon settlement of Hamwih beneath modern Southampton, England, where at one site seven of eight pits examined were filled almost entirely with sawn-off distal and proximal ends of mammal long bones. The archaeologists noted that the natural tubes resulting from the removal of the articular ends of the bones could be used for handles, whistles, or hinges but do not suggest they would have been made into needlecases. There was no evidence for the manufacture of any finished articles on the site, leading to the assumption that the shafts of the long bones were taken elsewhere in the settlement for the next stage of manufacture. Other sites in Hamwih did produce a large range of objects made from animal bone and antler, however, including weaving tools, spindle whorls, handles, gaming pieces, combs, comb cases, and pins. At Hamwih, there was a clear preference for making certain objects from specific bones: fused cattle femurs for spindle whorls; cattle or horse metapodials for comb segments; and antler for knife handles. Some of the bone ‘‘pins’’ were pierced and hence probably served as needles; others were fashioned like awls and have been interpreted as pin-beaters or thread-pickers ‘‘for use in textile manufacture[,] and the points of these are frequently polished from contact with the yarn.’’ 63 Extensive excavations in the western part of the fortified settlement of OostSouburg, built in the late ninth century by local inhabitants on the former island of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland, Netherlands, as a refuge against Viking invasions, produced an impressive array of both manufactured bone artifacts and waste from bone working dating to the tenth-century civilian occupation of the site. The types of bone artifacts recovered included at least one comb (close inspection proved that most combs were made of antler, which is much tougher than bone), thirteen needles and needle-shaped objects made from the bones of large mammals (several from the pig fibula, which is already needle-shaped, and at least one from a cow metapodial), spindle whorls, several specimens of an implement the archaeologists refer to as tridents, skates and prickers used by skaters, a bead, a brooch, and a tubular flute-like object made of a sheep tibia.64 In Anglo-Danish York, England, ‘‘antler [of red deer], and to a lesser extent bone, was used for combs, knife-handles, game-pieces, pins, needles, and bodkins.’’ Another use to which bone was put in Danish York was the production

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of skates, of which numerous examples have been found. Excavations on High Street in Dublin produced evidence of intensive working of bone and antler from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Much of the material consists of combmakers’ waste and rejects; other objects made of bone and antler include game pieces, dice, and objects decorated with dot-and-circle ornament that were apparently intended for use as handles. Also found in eleventh- through twelfthcentury levels at High Street were carved bone trial-pieces (experimental or practice carvings); these are animal ribs or long bones inscribed with elaborate panels of interlaced animals and geometric motifs.65 At Basing House, in Hampshire, England, in contexts dating about 1540–1645, archaeologists found several bone objects—combs made from flat sections of bone as well as three turned bone cylinders, the function of which the archaeologists could not identify. All three are rather finely turned, with embellishments such as baluster-type curves, beading, and cordons. Two have screw threads, indicating that they may once have had tight-fitting closures. These cylindrical bone objects found at Basing House are the closest parallels I have found to the lesselegant items from seventeenth-century sites in North America that have been identified as needlecases (for example, a fragmentary example from the Jackson House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and another from Champlain’s Habitation in Québec City)—although a rather sophisticated bone needlecase from the late-seventeenth-century Josiah Winslow home site in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is similar to the Basing House examples, which, however, come from a domestic rather than industrial context, thus bringing us no closer to knowing their place of manufacture.66 Evidence of bone working during the mid- to late seventeenth century, including sawn cattle metapodials, was found at the site of Bridewell Palace in the City of London. Also in London, at the Royal Navy Victualling Yard opposite Tower Hill in London, a depot established to supply Elizabethan fleets with meat products and other provisions, archaeologists found considerable evidence for the manufacture of horn and bone objects. The middle period of occupation, 1635–1726, was remarkable for the increase in the number of sawn cattle limb bones, indicating industrial production of some sort. Once again, finished articles were not found in conjunction with the primary production phase.67 MacGregor, in his exhaustive typology of artifacts fashioned from skeletal materials notes that once metal sewing needles became available they ‘‘entirely displace[d] all those of bone’’ and that, for storage of these metal needles, ‘‘a number of putative bone cases survive.’’ He mentions one case from the Limes fort at Stockstadt, Germany, which contained several fine bone needles though none of metal and notes that needlecases ‘‘manufactured from the shafts of hollow long bones are commonly found in pagan Saxon cemeteries on the Continent.’’

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Viking age needlecases found in Scotland were fashioned from the pneumatic leg bones of goose-sized birds and sometimes have a transverse perforation in the center. Such a case from Jarlshof, Shetland, was plugged with iron at one end, and many cases of this type were found at Birka in Sweden. Medieval needlecases were open at both ends, with the needles being stuck through cloth pulled into the tube on a string. But MacGregor says nothing about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century needlecases; instead, he mentions the late-eighteenth-century explosion in the output of sewing accessories in bone and ivory, including needlecases, thimble cases, silk winders, yarn measures, lace bobbins, sewing clamps, wax boxes, cotton barrels, and pincushion holders. He notes that ‘‘many of these are elaborately lathe-turned and intricately carved or pierced. Some are of composite construction, several elements being combined to form sewing sets, the constituent parts of which are linked by integral screw threads.’’ 68 One expert on needlework collectibles claims that ‘‘small cylindrical cases known as pin-poppets, or pin-dollies, came into fashion’’ in the late seventeenth century, but archaeological evidence, from North American sites if not European ones, indicates an earlier date for their use and distribution. She also notes that pin-poppets were probably a development of the long, cylindrical form of needlecase, and the pin-case . . . and initially they were used for both pins and needles. About the mid-eighteenth century, however, they became specifically made to contain pins and, from being several inches in length became only about 2in high. In days when it was still customary for women to carry a small supply of pins about with them in order to be able to rectify any small mishap which might occur to their gowns or their many ruffles and laces, these pinpoppets were very popular and made charming little gifts, but they seem to have passed from fashion by the end of the eighteenth century, since few examples are known from the 1800s.69

A good example of the shorter, eighteenth-century version of a pin poppet was found at Notley Hall, St. Mary’s County, Maryland; it is just about two inches long and one inch in diameter, with threads at either end for closures; the threaded lid fitting one end of the case was also recovered. A somewhat similar bone object, about two inches long, threaded at one end, with a hole cut at the other end for a cord to pass through, was found at a small 1840s sawmill camp on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This may have been a ‘‘cotton barrel’’ or thread box instead of a needle- or pin-case.70 Only rarely are bone needlecases found with both their closures; presumably loss of a lid spelt catastrophe for the owner and perhaps that is why the cases were discarded. Missing its cap that quite obviously was a tight-fitting screw-thread clo-

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Fig. 3.12 A late-seventeenth-century lathe-turned bone needlecase from the Katherine Nanny Naylor privy, Boston. (Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Commission, Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Cross Street Backlot Site, Boston)

sure is the lathe-turned, bone pin poppet, elegantly rouletted, recovered from the late-seventeenth-century Katherine Naylor privy in Boston, Massachusetts (fig. 3.12). Two bone lids with screw threads and carved tops were found at Aldgate, London, in contexts dating from 1700 to 1720, and these are just the sort of lids that would have been used on bone needlecases. It is possible, however, that some screw-thread tops were covers for awl-like tools such as prickers or stilettos.71 Women could display their skills by fabricating their own needlebooks and decorating them with fancy embroidery or canvas work, but needlebooks often proved unsatisfactory because they could not prevent the needles stored in them

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from rusting; tightly closed cylindrical cases generally proved more suitable. Some of the earliest were made in the form of small figures carved from ivory; these averaged three inches in height and were divided in the middle with the top screwing into the bottom. Similar, much plainer examples were made from wood or animal bone; in the Georgian era such cylindrical needlecases were in wide use. The vast majority of these were tubular because they were turned on a lathe (except those made of mother-of-pearl). Lathe-turning also allowed for smoothing and decorating as well as cutting grooves for threading; the ornamental turning lathe was invented at the end of the seventeenth century and subsequently improved (in order to revolve the tool, not the object). Tubular needlecases were made from a variety of substances, including ivory, gold, tortoiseshell, bone, beadwork, straw marquetry, and wood. French and Italian manufacturers were highly skilled at carving mother-of-pearl into needlework cases and manifold other sewing accessories, and their products were highly prized and expensive. Embellishment of needlecases followed whatever designs were fashionable at the time; between 1750 and 1815, for instance, there was something of a craze for straw work done by prisoners of war.72 The difference between a needlecase and bodkin case is size, the bodkin being the larger of the two. Until the end of the eighteenth century the terms were used interchangeably and could refer either to a small case holding only a few sewing needles intended for feminine use or to a case holding a bodkin; but men as well as women owned bodkin cases, because bodkins could be used by either sex for lacing up garments. Netting needles, too, had special cases, cylindrical ones somewhat larger than those for regular needles; netting needlecases were intended to hold the meshes or gauges as well as the needles. Netting boxes, usually for work making large, sturdy, workaday nets (versus bags, purses, hairnets, and so on), were also fitted out with a roller that held the foundation loop for the netting. Such rollers, when used for daintier work, were commonly kept in needlework boxes rather than in the netting needlecase, because they would also be put into service for some types of lacework and occasionally for tambour work.73 I N T ER PRET I NG NEEDLES Never use a bent needle, as it makes uneven stitches. In passing a needle, hand the eye of the needle to the person, keeping the point towards yourself. —olive c. hapgood, School Needlework: A Course of Study in Sewing Designed for Use in Schools, 1893

Needles found in medieval and early modern sites (that is, contexts earlier than the third quarter of the seventeenth century) are difficult to classify according to the criteria that became common once needles were mass manufactured.

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Early needles, even those made from machine-drawn wire, were produced individually, and as mentioned above, early needles found in the British Isles or at sites of any of Europe’s early colonies are all likely to have been manufactured on the Continent, in Spain, Germany, or the Netherlands. Archaeological examples of early needles of iron or copper alloy are relatively rare, and as I have noted, it is difficult to assign them to typological categories with precision. Here I discuss finds from a variety of sites and, based on what can be observed from published descriptions and drawings, attempt a provisional interpretation of the archaeological specimens. Five copper-alloy needles were recovered from various occupation phases at Rattray, a Scottish royal burgh near Aberdeen occupied from the late twelfth through fifteenth centuries. All but one of these (the head of which was broken off ) had been flattened on one side only and had round, punched eyes; most were long (the intact examples were about two, two and a half, and three inches long, and the two broken specimens were one and three and a half inches in length) and were probably intended for fairly rugged work, not everyday sewing or embroidery.74 Excavations at Oyster Street, in the portion of the town of Portsmouth, England, known as Old Portsmouth, produced many finds postdating about 1600 from both domestic and industrial or commercial contexts. Among the small finds were three needles, one of iron and two of copper alloy. The iron needle, from a fourteenth-century context, was about four inches long and very pointed, with a very small punched eye and extremely sharp point. Both of the copperalloy needles were from eighteenth-century contexts. A mid-eighteenth-century level produced a rather stout-looking needle with an oval cross-section and elongated oval eye. The tip of this needle is broken off, but the curve on the shank appears to be its original form; it closely resembles pack needles such as the one illustrated in fig. 3.5e. The other copper-alloy needle, from an early-eighteenthcentury level at Oyster Street, is long and slender, round in cross-section, with a flattened head and tiny round eye; it is about three inches long and so was likely used for something other than everyday sewing. These needles would have served in textile work and leatherwork for a variety of sewing and stitching tasks. None are fine sewing or embroidery needles.75 Needles are relatively rare finds at North American sites; most of the examples of which I am aware are broken, often at the eye. There are exceptions, of course, including a complete long-eyed copper-alloy needle of a fairly large size recovered from a domestic context at Place-Royale in Québec City that I would tentatively identify as a darning needle. As discussed above, the shape and size of the needle’s eye, as well as the presence of a gutter or groove, are the most diagnostic

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criteria for distinguishing among types of sewing and special-purpose needles. If the eye is missing, the next best criterion is overall size or ruggedness (length and gauge) of the needle, the cross-section of the wire used for the needle, and, if one is lucky, the taper or shape of the point. A spear-shaped or three-square point may indicate a needle intended for use by an upholsterer or leatherworker. An excavated needle that seems bent or curved should be inspected closely to determine whether the curve was intentional; if so, it may have been an upholstery or collar needle or was perhaps used in leatherwork. My survey of the literature and experience suggest to me that rugged, special-purpose needles are far more likely to survive in archaeological contexts than fine sewing or embroidery needles.76 One special-purpose needle that survives well is the bodkin; bodkins were far more than a type of needle, however. The attention given them in seventeenthcentury court cases as well as in other sources points to the potent role these small objects played in the construction of personal identity.

A TA L E O F A B ODK I N

Because bodkins were often worn on the person and inscribed with the owner’s name or initials, they were highly important and charged with special significance in terms of personal identity and status. These excerpts from a court case from seventeenth-century Ipswich, Massachusetts, illustrate the point: Elizabeth Hunt’s complaint made before Samuel Symonds: That the last Sabboth day (being the second day of may) my child stoode uppon the seat by me with my bodkin in his hande, then he stept of the seat in my lapp, laying hold on the waynscott, with the bodkin in his hande. and I saw the child drop the bodkin downe. it glanct on the waynscott and so I hear it gingle on the flore, betwixt Sara Day and the said Sara Roper. Then I saw the said Sara put downe her hande betwixt Sara Day and her selfe, where I saw it fall and I did apprehende she was taking it up to give it me; but she pullde up her hande againe, and with her other hande moved her stoole, and Sarah Day her chayer, both standing up, then the flore being cleare, & I seing it not wondred at it, suspecting then that the said Sara Roper had taken it up. Soe being in type of exercise, I wished them not to trouble themselves, but lett it alone till after Sermon. Then afterward in the tyme of contribucon, I the said Elizabeth Hunt stood up looking over the waynscott, shewing my desire to have them looke a little for it. Then the said Roper stood up and moved her stoole again seeming to looke for it, and laying one hand on the waynscott and poynting with the other said it were in that crack. Soe I then thought by her words she

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The Needle saw it, but could not get it. Then after the people were all gon I looked diligently for it, Mr. Wilson being present but we could neither of us finde it. Copy of Sarah Roper’s answer to the complaint made before Samuell Symonds: Whereas in your warrant you are pleased to charge me wth stealing your bodkin, which is altogether false I stole it not. And in your complaint you say you suspected that I had taken it up, in which supposition you are all much mistaken, as you were in yor charge, for I doe affirme that I tooke it not up, neither did I see it nor feele it, untill I came home and a little before night, sitting in the howse, I was turning up the cuff of my sleeve, & feeling some thing there, pulled downe my cuff, & there I found a bodkin, which I prsently shewed to the folke in the howse, who read the name & said it was goodwife hunts bodkin. And prsently after, I spake to my brother to carry it, for I said may be the woman will be troubled for it. But he refuseing to carry it, the next morning I gave it to my sister, who deliverd it to her at the buriall of goodwife Whipple And when the people came to the burying place, I went to goodman Smiths to see if [I] could see goodwife hunt to tell her that I had sent the bodkin by my sister but when I saw my sister there I thought she had given it her, & therefore said nothing to goodwife hunt. And as the bodkin was suddenly lost soe it was suddenly found & as speedily returned to the owner[.] And therefore I suppose noe reason of charging me with it, or to make any complaint against me for it, by reason the owner received it without any damage. further in case goodman hunt had bene greived with me, I thinke it had bene his place to have complained, & not his wife likewise in case nothing will please her, but she will goe about to prove me a theef, & that I have stolen her bodkin then, if I mistake not, she proveth her self accessory to the law, of what she would make me guilty of, in her receiving her bodkin without any due order of law. I doe further apprehende goodwife hunts complaint to be groundles, for it is a meere contradiction as he that is wise may easily discern, and we can proove an utter falsehood as to the case.77

Silver bodkins figure prominently in two other Ipswich court cases, are sometimes listed in probate inventories, and were twice bequeathed by women in their wills (table 3.4). In 1663, for example, the wife of John How was presented by the grand jury ‘‘for wearing a silk scarf and silver bodkin when she was a widow’’—but the case was discharged. In this instance, I suspect How’s purported transgression hinged on her transition from married woman to widow; Massachusetts sumptuary laws forbade ostentation in dress by anyone whose income was less than two hundred pounds a year. Her accusers probably maliciously assumed that she had lost status when she lost her husband, but apparently the court quickly determined the case to be otherwise.78

Table 3.4 Bodkins in seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts: the documentary evidence A. Bodkins mentioned in seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, probate inventories Date

Decedent

Residence

Relevant entries

Estate value

Source

1654 1656 1676

George Burrill, Sr. Henry Sewall, Sr. John Cole (wife’s trunk)

Lynn Rowley

£848.20s. £330.16s.4d. £25.6s.6d.

PR 1:179 PR 1:233 PR 3:122

1677

John White, tailor

Salem

£5.1s.

PR 3:301; RF 6:301

1680

William Sutton

Newbury

£11.7s.11d.

PR 3:371

1680

Rebecca Howlet, [Mrs.], widow

Newbury

silver bodkin, thimble, 2 silver buttens, 6s. sisers, a bodkin and small things 2s.6d. One wine cup, 4 silver spoons, 3 gold rings, 1 bodkin, 1li.18s. a walking Cane, a small old Chest, a Trencher Knif, a pen knife& a bodkin, 4s.6d. 2 glas bottles, 1s., awl, Bodkin, hamer, 2 knives 2s., 3s. (bodkin here a tool) silver bodkin, 2s.

£64.8s.6d.

PR 3:417

B. Bodkins mentioned in seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, wills Date

Decedent

Bequest

Source

1641

Frances, wife of Robt. Hawes

PR 1:46; RF 3:85–86

1650

Elizabeth Lowle of Newbury

to Alis Haws her worst Philip & Cheny gown & two petticoat & a wast coat & two Aporns wth all smale linnin sutable to it & a siluer bodkine & a payer of pillowbeers I give to my Daughter Elizabeth all the remainder of my Howsehold stuff Childbed linning & else weareing Apparrell 1 siluer Tunn 1 siluer tipt Jugg 3 siluer spoones one gold ring, 1 siluer bodkine, 2 deskes

PR 1:139

C. Bodkins mentioned in seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, court cases Date

Name of accused

Residence

Charge

Punishment

Source

1663 1670 1682

wife of John How Sarah Roper Grace Stout

not given Ipswich Ipswich

for wearing a silk scarf and silver bodkin for stealing a bodkin for stealing linen & owning ‘‘a silver thimble, a bodkin,’’

discharged not guilty guilty

RF 3:70 RF 3:239ff. RF 8:281

Sources: PR 1: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1916; PR 3: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920; RF 3: Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Court 1913; RF 6: Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Court 1917; RF8: Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Court 1921

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The case of alleged bodkin theft from 1670 is more complicated. Samuel Hunt and his wife, Elizabeth, charged a young woman, Sarah Roper, a maidservant, with stealing Goodwife Hunt’s bodkin after her young son, who had been playing with it, dropped it during Sabbath services. Sarah Roper was no stranger to the Ipswich court. In her book Good Wives, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich details Roper’s testy relationships with her neighbors. In 1665 Roper’s employer Patience Denison complained to the court that she had over the course of a year stolen at least ten pounds’ worth of goods and provisions from the Denison household. The Denisons were well off, but Patience Denison knew down to the smallest item exactly what had been taken from her household. But what is of interest is that the way the case played out hinged on what Sarah had done with her stolen goods: she distributed them to others in need, most particularly to her nearly destitute friend Mary Bishop. Testimony by Goody Bishop suggested that Sarah was, in effect, dispensing the sort of charity toward the poor that was expected of Patience Denison ‘‘as a wealthy and socially prominent member of her community’’; Sarah herself indicated she thought Patience Denison was stingy rather than charitable, wise, and kind as a good housewife should be.79 The upshot was that Patience Denison had to be satisfied simply with dismissing Sarah Roper—and was forced into the awkward and embarrassing position of prosecuting the impoverished Mary Bishop, who had received the stolen goods. As Ulrich notes, this incident lingered in the memories of Ipswich housewives, especially among the community’s would-be gentry, that is, those who aspired to be among the peers of Patience Denison. One such woman was Elizabeth Hunt, whom Ulrich notes was a busybody and, it would appear, a pushy snob who felt that Sarah Roper needed to be taught a lesson about deference to her betters. Testimony in the Hunt versus Roper case indicates that Elizabeth Hunt’s bodkin fell or bounced into the cuff of Sarah Roper’s dress sleeve and that she had returned the bodkin as soon as she found it. Even so, the Hunts had Sarah brought up on a charge of theft and, when the judge ruled that there was a suspicion of theft, appealed for a stronger sentence. An interesting aspect of the testimony during the appeal is Elizabeth Hunt’s claim that she had visited the house where Sarah Roper was employed and there had seen her picking her teeth with Hunt’s bodkin. Presumably this was intended to convey to the court Roper’s disdain for her betters. Ulrich notes that the toothpicking incident was wholly a figment of Elizabeth Hunt’s imagination. What intrigues me most about the episode is that Elizabeth Hunt chose to keep her baby quiet in the meetinghouse by handing it a long, pointed object; Ulrich says that she ‘‘had given him the bodkin much as a mother today might

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hand a child her car keys or a bracelet’’ to distract it. But a child could easily put its eye out with a bodkin! I suspect that Elizabeth Hunt the social climber had an ulterior motive for selecting the bodkin above other objects with which to amuse her child. Hunt’s bodkin was, it seems likely, made of silver and monogrammed with her initials or name (this is how its rightful owner was determined). It was thus a valuable and highly personalized possession and not an item typically owned by women of Elizabeth Hunt’s social rank, which at the time of this case was not much different from that of Sarah Roper (otherwise, as Ulrich points out, the two women would not have been seated so close to each other in the meetinghouse). Ulrich notes that Hunt’s motive in pursuing the charge likely stemmed from her resentment at being seated so close to someone whom she deemed an inferior; Hunt was dogged in insisting that Roper was a thief even though it was clear that Roper had returned the bodkin as soon as someone was able to read the name on it to her. This made public the fact that Roper could not read. Though this was not unusual, the public airing of Roper’s illiteracy while presumably Goodwife Hunt could read gave Hunt ammunition in her battle to force the community to recognize a social divide more wished-for than real.80 What lesson can the archaeologist take away from the cultural field we can reconstruct for seventeenth-century Ipswich, where silver bodkins were so obviously highly charged with meanings about personal identity, social rank, and community notions about behavior appropriate to assigned social roles and gender categories? Was the situation in Ipswich, still part of a settler colony and a community in the making, utterly peculiar and local? I suspect not; I think that we can interpret artifacts like bodkins from seventeenth-century and earlier contexts as only one of many objects through which discourses about self-identity and personhood were enacted. Because bodkins were so personal—indeed, often personalized—and because they were used by women and men to present and clothe their bodies by assisting them to lace themselves into their clothing, and because they were normally carried about on the person or even worn by women as part of outward social display as they peeked provocatively out of a woman’s head-hugging coif, they were invested with meanings and with power. Bodkins were only one of many ‘‘small things’’ that were deeply implicated in the process historian Robert Blair St. George has characterized as ‘‘conversing by signs.’’ Archaeologists would do well to attend to the ‘‘mnemonic power of goods,’’ as Ulrich has urged historians to do. This requires close observation of the field or ground (the cultural context) in which their finds once operated, and an attempt to reconstruct the discourses in which their findings once so potently figured.81

4

The Ubiquitous and Occasionally Ordinary Thimble I have worked with my Thimble, and like it extremely. —m. j. holroyd, Girlhood, 1793

In 1682, in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Grace Stout was convicted as a petty thief. Her accuser, Samuel Pearce, was supported in his charge by the depositions of a series of witnesses, but in the end a thimble was the instrument of her downfall. The court-recorded depositions reveal that Moses Pengry, Jr., complained that Grace had stolen seven shillings and some linen from him: ‘‘His reasons were because she sometimes watched with his wife in the same room where these things were; because she passed daily by his house morning and evening to Goodwife Foster’s where she worked, and when the theft was committed his wife was gone from home . . . , and he also was away often; because they found a woman’s thimble near the place where the linen was.’’ 1 Why would a woman’s thimble found at the scene be conclusive evidence that Grace Stout was the thief? Other depositions provide clues to the line of reasoning the court followed in convicting Stout. She had a history of stealing from her employers, having been caught red-handed and dismissed a year and a half earlier by Joseph Porter. He found her rummaging in his chest; when he was missing some money, he accused her of taking it—and she produced it. Members of the community seem to have eyed her suspiciously even earlier. Several testified that, when anyone asked, Stout professed to have no money, but on many occasions she produced cash to purchase a variety of goods, among them a horn bottle, an earthenware porringer, a gilt box, a carved box with a drawer in it and two locks, eyewater, a whisk, a bonnet, lutestring, linen cloth, a silver waistcoat hook, lace, ribbon, stockings, a silver rump hook. Once, she gave money to Nathaniel Knoulton when he went to Boston, where he purchased for her a silver thimble, a bodkin, and three yards of ribbon.2

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The Ubiquitous and Occasionally Ordinary Thimble

87

People felt aggrieved and victimized by Grace Stout, who they said ‘‘was a notorious thief,’’ ‘‘a liar and very naughty in all respects . . . and not fit to live in any honest man’s house.’’ The good citizens of Ipswich were just as offended by her impudence, however: after hearing that a shilling had been taken from Thomas Clark’s daughter, Stout retorted that ‘‘she scorned to steal a shilling, that she had a way to get money that nobody knew and never should know.’’ When accused of having a ‘‘pretty deal of money’’ by Mary Pearce and her daughter, she replied that if she had as much as ten shillings ‘‘she would eat the keeler that then she was kneading bread in.’’ Through her behavior, Grace Stout inverted the social order in more than one way. She stole from people she worked for and apparently from others as well; she never had a cent when asked for a loan, but at other times she gave money or gifts to children and had money to spend on costly items such as a silver thimble. Grace’s duties as housemaid involved mending and sewing, and perhaps she did fancier work as well. The court calculated how much she had earned against how much she had ‘‘laid out since coming to Ipswich,’’ including fines for abusing the tithingman, her purchases, medical fees, and so on, concluding she had spent more money than she could have come by honestly. This was taken as corroboration of various people’s accusations; because several people attested that she never seemed to have any money or that they had no complaint against her (no one appeared to be what one might consider a strong character witness), the court seems to have required the further ‘‘proof ’’ that Stout was spending above her means. So in a certain sense her purchases, with both her earnings and her ill-gotten gains, would include items that enabled her to ply her skills better. But a housemaid with a silver thimble was overreaching herself, at least by the standards of late-seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Grace Stout may have sought to strengthen her identity as a needlewoman by taking pleasure in the seemingly innocent ownership of a few fine sewing implements—and perhaps an elegant carved box to store them—but this overt display of consumption beyond her means and station made her contemporaries uneasy and suspicious. In this instance a woman’s thimble became ‘‘matter out of place’’ in a deeply felt social sense as well as a clue that led to a thief ’s conviction. Grace Stout was perceived as ‘‘social dirt,’’ a threat to the social order both tangibly through her appropriation of others’ goods and symbolically through her ownership and display of objects above her station.3 The case of Grace Stout and her silver thimble shows how objects become highly charged with import and send messages that seem confusing because they are saying more than they seem to say. This tale is compelling evidence that

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The Ubiquitous and Occasionally Ordinary Thimble

Fig. 4.1 The parts of a thimble.

even humble or seemingly inconsequential needlework tools such as thimbles (fig. 4.1) figured prominently in the construction and negotiation of identity and served as symbols of status or, conversely, as indicators of behavior or ambitions unbefitting a person’s perceived or assigned station in life. THE HI ST ORY A ND ARC H AE O L O GY O F THI M BL ES

There is a good-sized body of literature on thimbles (indeed, Gay Ann Rogers claims that thimbles have inspired more prose than any other needlework tool), written by thimble collectors who often mention and illustrate archaeological examples, but authors of such works often fail to cite sources for the archaeologically recovered specimens. Collectors may draw on archaeological evidence from museums and published sources, but what they write is not aimed at archaeologists and hence tends to be of spotty and limited use to those who need to be able to make proper chronological attributions as well as meaningful interpretations of a fairly common artifact type. Collectors’ literature can be maddeningly vague about the dating of thimbles, lumping everything from Egyptian to early American finds under the category of ‘‘early thimbles,’’ and according to one expert, many sources perpetuate misinformation about the origins and antiquity of metal thimbles (more on this below). But it must be said in fairness to the collectors that archaeologists have seldom been of much help to them in their pursuit of the history of thimbles. Edwin Holmes assesses the archaeological literature acidly: ‘‘It appears however that thimbles have never received much attention from archaeologists and what little has been said about them is often nonsense.’’ 4 For historical archaeologists interested in facts as opposed to ‘‘nonsense,’’ Ivor Noël Hume’s brief treatment in his Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America, Erika Hill’s article ‘‘Thimbles and Thimble Rings from the Circum-Caribbean Region, 1500–1800: Chronology and Identification’’ (1995), and Kathleen Deagan’s discussion of thimbles in Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500–1800, Volume 2: Portable Personal Possessions (2002) are the most

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useful sources to date. Each source is necessarily limited in length and hence in coverage. As a result they offer only tantalizing glimpses of the interpretive potential of thimbles found at archaeological sites.5 In the following discussion I expand on the information that Noël Hume, Hill, and Deagan have provided, offering a comprehensive guide to identification and dating of thimbles from the earliest times up to the twentieth century. I also outline a framework for exploring the interpretive potential of thimbles from a variety of archaeological contexts. I make liberal use of collectors’ works as well as archaeological sources and unpublished artifact assemblages I have studied in my research. The origins and antiquity of thimbles as well as their eventual mass production and global distribution in the early modern era are of interest, so although I emphasize thimbles likely to be found at historical sites postdating European expansion, I also look back in time to trace the lineage of thimbles. The thimble was invented to protect the finger and thumb in the production of needle-sewn goods and garments. As a result, the evolution of the thimble is closely linked to developments in textile production and metalworking and other technologies of manufacture, both for needles and for thimbles. Thimbles, numerous and seemingly ordinary, have a history that is not without controversy. One author remarks that thimbles have been ‘‘universal’’ since about 300 bc in Syria and elsewhere throughout the world, but just when they were invented and by whom remains a point of debate. The history of thimbles before the sixteenth century has been reconstructed by thimble collectors who have consulted archaeological evidence, though the results often are more anecdotal than systematic (both because of the spottiness of archaeological publication of such finds and the lack of stratigraphic control in many early excavations). John von Hoelle, who has written several books on thimbles and thimble-makers, remarks in his Thimble Collectors’ Encyclopedia that since the publication in 1879 of a paper by H. Syer Cuming of the British Archaeological Association in which he mistakenly attributed thimbles found at the site of Herculaneum to the early Roman occupation layers there, it has been tacitly assumed that the Romans were the inventors of the thimble (Von Hoelle describes this as ‘‘the myth of the legendary Roman thimbles of Herculaneum . . . quoted by British and American authors for more than a hundred years’’). In seeking the truth, Von Hoelle examined all of the European museum specimens identified as Roman in origin and concluded that none date earlier than the ninth century ad. This led him to look beyond the Roman Empire for the origin of the thimble.6 In early prehistoric times it seems likely that it was women (though it could have been men) who laced skins together using blunt bodkins of wood, bone, or ivory that had been threaded with thin strips of leather or sinew; such a ‘‘seam-

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stress’’ would undertake her lacing only after she had used an awl or similar tool to punch holes in the hide; no pushing implement was required for the bodkin because the awl had already done the work of making the holes for the lacing material to go through. By the Mesolithic or Incipient Neolithic period (about ten thousand years ago), the bodkin had evolved into a pointed needle with large eye. Prehistoric needles were made of a variety of materials—bone, ivory, thorns— and were thinner and more polished than their bodkin predecessors.7 Strong pressure was needed to push a needle through a leather hide, so an item known to archaeologists as a needle-pusher, or acutrudium, was brought into use to aid in the pushing and to protect the fingers or thumb doing the pushing; this consisted of a rock or small piece of wood. Eventually, people carefully selected stones of the right size and shape and drilled them specifically for needle-pushing—tools of this sort have been found at many Neolithic sites in Europe, southern Russia, Africa, and China. A particularly striking example was recovered at the site of Eilsleben, near Magdeburg, Germany; it is made of black amphibolite, with a large hole near the top into which a small finger would have fitted (though one author posits that this hole was drilled to permit the tool to be suspended around the needleworker’s neck on a cord); beneath this hole were indentations drilled to catch the needle. Other examples from North Africa, averaging about three inches in length, have a deep trough or groove drilled into one face of the pebble from which the tool is formed.8 No evidence exists for the production of cloth per se before around 7000 bc, but there is growing recognition among archaeologists that evidence exists for some type of woven textile production during the Upper Paleolithic, based on finds of what have been interpreted as shuttles, spindles, and a spindle weight, as well as weavelike patterns carved onto bones at Magdalenian sites (about 15,000– 8000 bc) in Europe. These finds have given rise to the growing acceptance of the notion that some sort of basketry or simple weaving was practiced at this time, but no physical examples of what these products may have been survive. No needle-pushers from this time have been reported, but some very fine-eyed needles have been excavated from both Gravettian and Magdalenian sites; finds of pierced shell and tooth beads in Gravettian burials in France dating before 20,000 bc suggest at the very least string sewn or netted into bracelets, necklaces, headgear, and perhaps even decorated clothing.9 Flax was used for textiles in Anatolia by the seventh millennium bc, and Anatolia and Palestine had developed high-quality linen production well before linen weaving became common in Egypt around seven thousand years ago. Fabrics such as linen were lighter in weight than skins and coarse fabrics and hence required less effort to sew. This prompted the development of a smaller imple-

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ment that could be worn on a finger or the thumb; the earliest ‘‘thimble’’ was probably a simple piece of leather wrapped around the finger to absorb the pressure of the needle; other types of hybrid pressure tools, half thimble, half needlepusher, were also used, and in some cultures needleworkers protected their fingers by sewing small, caplike finger shields of leather or fibrous material. A stone grooved on one side to accommodate a needle and on the other to fit over a finger was excavated at the Egyptian site of el-Lisht; the context of the find dates it to about 1200–1000 bc.10 During the Bronze Age (about 3000–800 bc) the palm-held needle-pusher evolved into a cast-bronze implement with an elongated oval shape. Many examples of these acutrudia have been found at sites of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman occupation; some are elaborately decorated. The cast-bronze pushers are thought to have been used by men who stitched heavy canvas for sails and tents, by carpet-makers, leatherworkers, and sewers of heavy woolens. This type of implement was used throughout the Middle East until the late eighteenth century, and a version survives in the form of the sailor’s palm. Scholars posit that sewing in Iron Age and Classical times fell into two broad categories: stitching of lightweight textiles by women using leather wrapping to protect their fingers; and heavy canvas and leather sewing by men using cast-bronze needle-pushers.11 The Chinese were the first to discover the process of alloying carbon with iron to make steel, and they invented the steel needle and sewing ring. Steel needles were absolutely necessary for sewing fine silk and were originally produced for Chinese silk workers. The silk trade brought steel needles to the West sometime during the first century bc, and their advantage over those of bronze or iron was quickly perceived. It seems likely that the silk trade also brought to the West the metal needle ring or sewing ring that later developed into what we now term a thimble ring.12 Archaeological evidence reveals that the Chinese were using metal needle rings, or zen-huan, as early as the second century ad. Many examples made of bronze, brass, and silver have been excavated from sites dating to the Tang, Sung, Manchu, and Han dynasties. Although some were cast in one piece, the majority were made ‘‘in the flat’’ from a thin strip of metal and rolled to form a ring, sometimes with overlapping ends; the ends were not soldered together but left unjoined so that an individual could easily fit the ring to his or her finger or thumb. Sewing rings sometimes were elaborately decorated. Although the concept of the needle ring reached Persia before the seventh century and Byzantium by the ninth century, few metal thimbles with good provenance have been found in sites dating before the ninth century ad in Europe—although some imported Chinese-style rings may have come along the

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silk routes with other goods. Even the thimble rings found at pre-ninth-century Roman sites seem to have been imported.13 Excavations of the Byzantine occupation levels (ninth through thirteenth centuries ad) at the sites of Antioch, Ephesus, and Corinth have yielded dozens of bronze ring-type thimbles, similar to early Chinese examples, whereas the Roman and Greek occupation layers of the same cities have produced no thimbles of any sort. The earliest thimbles in the Middle East likely were made of camel bone. The city of Ctesiphon, near modern Baghdad, Iraq, was destroyed in the seventh century ad and never reoccupied; here, excavators recovered two ring-type thimbles made from sections of camel bone. Two copper-alloy thimble rings were recovered from predynastic tombs at Naqada, Egypt, by Sir Flinders Petrie.14 The type of thimble of greatest interest to archaeologists working at sites of medieval and postmedieval date are those made not of exotic animal bone but of brass, because brass thimbles could be mass-produced and hence were the most affordable and the most widely distributed. Metalworkers of the early Islamic empire developed the large, heavy, cast-bronze thimble that completely covered the tip of the finger or thumb, and this type of thimble became nearly universal in later times. Brass thimbles of the Islamic empire were made in three basic styles, defined by Von Hoelle as follows.15 Turko-Slavic thimbles are distinguished by their large, bulbous dome— indeed, they are shaped rather like turbans—suggesting Persian or Turkish influence; many have rudimentary lines as decoration. They are found throughout the eastern Mediterranean as well as in Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, in sites dating from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries. They were cast in bronze via the cire perdú method, and the indentations were hammered in after the thimble was cast. Although Von Hoelle mentions that some have ventilation holes, another thimble expert, Estelle Zalkin, states emphatically that ‘‘no thimble was ever manufactured with ‘vent holes’ in the cap or side.’’ Perhaps, then, the holes found in Turko-Slavic style thimbles resulted from the method of manufacture (lost wax) or through use.16 Hispano-Moresque thimbles have pointed tops, date from the tenth to the fifteenth century, and are found primarily in western North Africa and Spain, but also in France and in Viking settlements as far north as Denmark. The indentations were carved right into the wax model used for casting the bronze thimbles, which tended to be rather heavy but were often decorated on the band with geometric, floral, and other patterns. John von Hoelle illustrates several examples of this style of thimble from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.17 Abbasid-Levantine-style thimbles often have a distinctive ‘‘ledge-type’’ rim jut-

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ting out from the base of a dome-shaped silhouette; they differ from the other two styles because they are neither bulbous nor pointed at top. They tend to be decorated with plain bands or a series of chevron motifs separating triangular areas of hand-punched indentations; they look like miniature helmets. Such thimbles are found in sites throughout Asia Minor, particularly Israel, Syria, TransJordan, Iraq, and Iran, and date from around the ninth through twelfth centuries, somewhat earlier than other cast-bronze Islamic thimbles. They also tend to be relatively rare and are considered to have been used primarily by men who stitched heavy canvas, leather, or carpets. John von Hoelle believes that it was the ‘‘Abbasid-Levantine style thimble’’ that returning Crusaders introduced into pre-Renaissance Europe, which is why this style was adopted by the earliest western European thimble-makers.18 Even though examples of the domed Abbasid-Levantine-style thimble may have reached Europe among the booty of returning Crusaders, this type of thimble was not immediately and universally adopted. Ring-type thimbles of bronze and leather were commonly used for sewing lightweight fabrics until sometime in the thirteenth century. The earliest reference to a thimble in Germany is found in a passage written by Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1190) in ad 1150; Bingen used the word zieriskranz (ornamental wreath), referring to a metal sewing ring, rather than the word fingerhut (thimble), which seems to have been later in derivation. This leads to the inference that Bingen employed a ring-type rather than a domed thimble.19 Germany, particularly Lower Saxony, was one of the main sources for brass in medieval times because the raw materials for brass founding—copper and calamine—were readily accessible to local miners. By 1373 an artisan named Praun was established in Nuremberg as a thimble-maker, and soon the city of Nuremberg became a center of thimble-making, among other brass objects, and was especially well known for the quality of the thimbles produced there. Examples of early brass thimbles of European manufacture have been recovered from excavations at such sites as Castle Raubritterburg Tannenger, in Darmstadt, Germany, which was destroyed in 1399, and others are found in museum collections.20 What the Nuremberg thimble-makers perfected was the production of a smaller, lighter thimble made of latten, an alloy of copper and calamine. The result is a porous and easily worked metal that can be polished like brass and that, like copper and its alloys, produces a bright to dull green corrosion. Early latten thimbles were cast in sand molds, though some were hammered into a shallow die; the cast examples tended to be somewhat thick and squat from around the twelfth century until the fifteenth century, but in the late 1400s their form became taller and thinner as casting techniques improved. After the twelfth cen-

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tury, latten thimbles gradually replaced their leather counterparts, although in some cultures people still used leather thimbles until well into the nineteenth century.21 Interestingly, in thirteenth-century France, the method by which thimbles were made dictated who could make them. Two metalworking guilds governed thimble-making: the buckle-makers made latten thimbles using the sand-casting method; button-makers made thimbles in copper and iron. Whereas the iron thimbles were cast, copper thimbles were made using an iron dapping block, dapping die, and hammer.22 This variation in production techniques, materials, and producers meant that a variety of thimble shapes were produced. Overall, most early Western thimbles are of the short dome type with indentations that were either drilled or hammered. Many have a small hole in the top to facilitate sand-casting; others have a small notch or two in the rim that helped secure the thimble to a lathe, which was used to hold sand-cast thimbles while they were spun and smoothed with a finishing tool to remove roughness and irregularities left by the casting process. Sand-casting was the predominant technique for producing thimbles before about 1530, when the metalsmiths of Nuremberg discovered the secret of refining zinc from calamine. The alloy of copper and zinc could be rolled into a sheet metal that produced better thimbles than earlier alloys of copper and raw calamine because it was very malleable and could easily be hammered into thimble form, indented, and polished to shine like gold. This development spurred the formation in 1534 of a separate guild of thimble-makers, who made thimbles of ‘‘beaten metal,’’ and dapping, also called deep drawing, became the chief means of producing thimbles.23 The trade in Nuremberg thimbles was extensive, ‘‘widespread and international.’’ Indeed, forty Nuremberg thimbles were included among the cargo of the wreck of a Venetian merchantman, possibly the Gagiana, which sank near Gnalic off the coast of Yugoslavia in 1583. The thimbles, along with a prodigious quantity of Venetian glass, were intended for buyers in Asia Minor.24 From the middle of the sixteenth century until the eighteenth century Nuremberg thimbles were made in a distinctive style. The indentations usually began at the top of the band and spiraled around the body of thimble until they reached its top, and the side of the thimble met the top at nearly a ninety-degree angle— the domed look was gone. The new style of longer thimbles gave a space for ornamentation on the band, and by the late sixteenth century, a profusion of mottoes, dates, and motifs were used. Some thimbles now had maker’s marks stamped on the band just before the start of the indentations; marks included clover leaves, goblets, keys, stars, and so forth. Of twenty-seven thimbles and five thimble rings

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found at sites along the Thames in Southwark, London, in contexts dating from 1450 to 1700, eight have maker’s stamps. No two are alike, but all have been attributed to Nuremburg thimble-makers.25 Meanwhile, thimble-makers in Holland, England, and Sweden continued to employ the sand-casting method, with some refinements, until the early eighteenth century, when the secret of refining zinc became more widespread throughout Europe. The deep-drawn method, now with motive power for the presses, was adopted by all major mass-production thimble manufacturers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.26 The decline of Nuremberg in the mid-seventeenth century led to the rise of thimble-making in the Netherlands. The major Dutch thimble-making cities were Schoonhoven, Urtecht, Vianen, and Amsterdam; here the trade was passed down in families known as Vingerhoeds (thimble-makers). In 1687 the four leading Vingerhoeds formed a cartel that produced in excess of three and a half million thimbles per year. The thimble monopolists set prices, quotas, and styles and discontinued the use of makers’ marks among themselves. The Vingerhoeds’ control over thimble production lasted until the 1730s, when English and German production methods again predominated; by 1770 the Dutch manufacture was limited almost solely to silver thimbles.27 The earliest metal thimbles used in England were imported from Europe in the fourteenth century, and they looked very much like the pre-Renaissance thimbles of Germany. Customs documents for 1550 reveal that thimbles were a major item of trade; Holmes found listings in the Book of Rates at the London Customs House Library for imports of large numbers of thimbles at steadily increasing rates: five shillings per thousand in 1550; thirteen shillings, four pence in 1582; twenty shillings per thousand in 1610, and three pounds per thousand in 1642. It seems likely that before such imports appeared the English were using leather finger caps instead of thimbles, and excavations in the City of London indicate that it was not until after about 1350 that metal thimbles began to appear in any quantity. By the sixteenth century a distinct English style of thimble came into being. The new English thimble was tall and made in two pieces, one a strip rolled into a cylinder and the other a round cap brazed to the elongated, cylindrical body of the thimble. Decoration on such thimbles was limited to handchased chevron motifs, although often those produced before the Restoration bore pious mottoes such as ‘‘feare god’’ or ‘‘labour is profitable’’ engraved around the rim. Overall, these early English thimbles were fairly crude.28 Several copper-alloy thimbles were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, which sank in the Solent off Portsmouth, England, in 1545. Holmes writes about eleven of these, noting that eight are ring-type thimbles with an open top—

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exactly the sort of heavy-duty thimble one would expect on shipboard for mending sails and so forth. The ring-type thimbles are in fact ‘‘generally rougher than might be expected and correspond to a thimble previously thought to date from about 1450–1500.’’ Since they were found along with far more sophisticated thimbles, it is clear that rather crudely made thimbles continued to be produced and were perfectly adequate for heavy work, especially in the maritime world, well into the sixteenth century and possibly beyond.29 Despite the emergence of a homegrown style of thimble, English metal thimble production remained modest, and as noted, until the late seventeenth century most of the brass thimbles used in England were imported. Hence thimbles supplied to the English colonies in America originated on the Continent and were transshipped through English ports or acquired by the colonists through trade with Dutch or other European traders operating in the Americas. The English thimble industry truly got started when in 1693 a Dutchman named John Lofting, having secured a patent from William and Mary for a thimble-knurling machine, established the first English thimble mill at Islington, later relocating to Great Marlow. Lofting’s manufacture of sand-cast brass thimbles constituted the beginning of large-scale thimble production in the British Isles. The Dutch-style Lofting thimble dominated the exports to the American colonies until the middle of the eighteenth century, and many thimbles found in North American excavation contexts dating from the mid-1690s to about 1750 likely are products of Lofting’s factory. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, English thimble production was centered in Birmingham, with more than a dozen manufacturers making gold, silver, pinchbeck, steel, brass, and steel-topped thimbles. By the 1770s brass thimbles, elegantly enameled, with cartouches painted with landscapes and so forth and called Bilston-Batterseas, were made in South Staffordshire. These are relatively rare and tend to survive in collections, seldom appearing archaeologically.30 Porcelain thimbles were first developed by Meissen as an objet de galanterie, but were gradually adopted by English porcelain manufacturers, notably Royal Worcester; the late eighteenth century saw the introduction of porcelain thimbles by potteries in Worcester, Derby, and Chelsea, and since the eighteenth century large numbers of ceramic thimbles have been produced, in some cases for practical use but chiefly as decorative collector’s items or souvenirs.31 Until the late seventeenth century, most brass and silver thimbles used in the American colonies were imported from Holland and Germany. Holmes states, however, that even on the Continent thimbles of silver were ‘‘too valuable to

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serve for domestic purposes until the latter half of the sixteenth century and even then few have survived.’’ So although there are early American-made silver thimbles, both European- and American-made silver thimbles predating the eighteenth century are relatively rare in collections and hence noteworthy when found in archaeological sites. Examples do exist in both contexts, however. The Rhode Island Historical Society has a silver thimble ring made 1662–1672 with the name esther willit inscribed around the band; although this example is often cited as the earliest known American-made silver thimble, Gay Ann Rogers, in her book American Silver Thimbles, expresses doubt that it was made by an American silversmith. Found on the site of the Willett homestead on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, the Willett thimble ring is topless, has a rather crudely chased heart enclosing a circle (the inscription is also rather crude), and has hand-punched squared indentations in concentric circles around the body. Two other silver thimbles in the collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society were recovered from the grave of Princess Ninigret (a daughter of Weunquesh, chief sachem of the Narragansett, 1676–1690), so the thimbles buried with her predate her death in 1660, but their place of manufacture remains unclear.32 The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has in its collections a seventeenthcentury silver thimble bearing a chased tulip design, which suggests a Dutch origin. This thimble is fairly short, domed, and made in two parts, with handpunched circular indentations in concentric circles around the body and arcing across the crown; it has a plain band with no rim, but there is a thin chased line just above the finger opening.33 Although most excavations at the many sites that once made up the town lands of St. Mary’s City, Maryland, have resulted in the recovery of one or more copper-alloy thimbles, two silver thimbles have been found. Both bear markings that have thus far eluded identification. One was unearthed at the site of St. John’s, the other at the Van Sweringen site. Both are probably imported and may have been brought to the colony by the women who were their owners. The thimble recovered from the Van Sweringen site came from a filled-in cellar hole beneath what archaeologist Henry Miller has identified as a coffeehouse associated with the main dwelling (fig. 4.2).34 Most copper-alloy thimbles excavated from seventeenth-century sites in North America reveal Dutch influence. Dutch thimbles of this time period tend to be undecorated; indeed, Dutch brass thimbles tend to remain fairly simple in design in contrast to the elaborate decoration found on silver thimbles of the same period (for example, on the Colonial Williamsburg thimble). Erika Hill illustrates a good example of a Dutch-style thimble from the site of En Bas Saline,

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Fig. 4.2 Two silver thimbles found at St. Mary’s City. The left is from St. John’s (ST1-23-2R/DQ; height: 0.736 inches; base diameter: 0.655 inches); the right is from the van Sweringen site (ST1-19-442J/DQ; height: 0.669 inches; base diameter: 0.62 inches). (Courtesy Historic St. Mary’s City)

Haiti—a Spanish colonial site constructed atop an earlier Taino Indian village. This is a cast-brass thimble with domed crown, and the center of the crown lacks indentations, giving it the ‘‘tonsured’’ appearance characteristic of European thimbles predating 1650. This example bears large, circular indentations hand-punched in a highly regular pattern of concentric circles as well as a noticeable ledge-type rim. Later Dutch thimbles have wheel-applied knurlings that cover the dome of the crown as well as the thimble’s sides, as is the case for all but one of the thimbles, both silver and copper alloy, from St. Mary’s City.35 American silversmiths did make silver, and occasionally gold, thimbles to order for wealthy American colonists, but craftworkers could not compete with the English producers of copper-alloy thimbles until the end of the eighteenth century. Many smiths, jewelers, and merchants advertised in the colonial newspapers the availability of shipments of thimbles and other goods from England, especially in such major port cities as New York and Boston. These imports often included steel-topped silver thimbles because silver tended to wear excessively; on such thimbles the brazed joint between the silver body and steel top is readily apparent. Some women preferred thimbles made wholly of silver, however, and silversmiths like the Richardson family of Philadelphia did a good business in retopping silver thimbles. The Richardsons’ business records reveal that the colonists’ taste was somewhat behind that of England, for the Richardsons often complained that the thimble bodies sent to them were too tall. Evidently the European fashion for thimbles with elongated bodies was not readily adopted in the colonies, and for much of the eighteenth century colonial needleworkers demanded the shorter thimbles of the sort their seventeenth-century predecessors had used.36 By the eighteenth century most silver and almost all brass thimbles found in the English colonies were imported from England, and as noted above, the city

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of Birmingham was the center of English thimble production and hence the likely source for thimbles excavated from English colonial sites in North America and elsewhere. An American-based thimble industry was not established until after the Revolution, when in 1794 Benjamin Halstead, a New York silversmith of Dutch descent, founded the first American thimble factory. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, there were thimble factories in New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Longmeadow, Huntington, and Springfield, Massachusetts; Newark, New Jersey; and Philadelphia producing millions of thimbles in gold, silver, brass, and steel.37 In the first half of the nineteenth century, thimbles were made even longer and their walls even thinner than they had been in the eighteenth century; it is unclear whether this change in shape was a result of demand (resulting, for example, from a fashion for long fingernails). A new method of manufacture was developed that involved die-stamping a flat piece of silver, rolling it up and soldering the seam, then soldering the ring to a top piece of a thimble made in the regular manner (deep drawing).38 Holmes notes that some silver thimbles without hallmarks were made in imitation of English designs in dominions of the British Empire, often in an attempt to protect and encourage new industries. Several silversmiths in Australia, for example, sought to emulate the established thimble manufacturers in Britain by making branded thimbles of their own. The most prominent of the Australian brand names were Elgin, Nifty, and Palfrey. Because these thimbles were of slightly poorer quality than the imported articles, they were not highly competitive despite the tariff placed on imported goods. Other British colonies and dominions developed their own thimble industries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, metalsmiths in India produced highly ornate thimbles of gold and silver.39 Thimbles can be made of a dizzying array of materials, and many thimbles made specifically for collectors or for the souvenir trade may be impractical for sewing and, indeed, never intended for use. Bone, ivory, wood, and stone thimbles tend either to be hand carved or formed on a lathe, while glass thimbles may be hand blown or cast in a mold, then decorated either by being etched or hand cut. Ceramic thimbles are normally cast in a mold, but they can be made on a wheel, then decorated by hand painting or transfer printing. It is not impossible that thimbles of ceramic, glass, or other nonmetallic composition could be recovered from archaeological sites of fairly recent date, and certainly ones of ceramic or glass, or fragments of them, would survive quite well in the ground. I have not come across reports of any such finds, however. Unless there is evidence to the contrary, I suggest that thimbles of this sort, if found archaeologically, are

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best interpreted as items that may have been curated as part of a collection, as keepsakes, or as souvenirs—especially if they bear commemorative slogans or depictions of scenic locales—rather than as elements of sewing kits.40 DAT I NG THI M BLES

In A History of Thimbles, Edwin Holmes notes that evolutionary pointers one can use as guides for dating early thimbles are few. Given what we know about the techniques for mass production of thimbles that were developed as early as the sixteenth century and long continued in use, this is understandable. There are, however, all sorts of subtle variations in thimble production and decoration that can be of help to collectors if not to archaeologists (who are less likely to work with thimbles distinguished by their valuable components such as precious metals or gemstones or by elaborate ornamentation). But Holmes points out what for archaeologists is nothing new: ‘‘The best way to date an early thimble with accuracy is to relate it to other objects with which it may have been found.’’ Context is all, but thimbles, like so many other objects, were often highly valued even if not valuable in a monetary sense. As the example of Grace Stout illustrates, a thimble could become a highly personalized object both because it was worn on the body and hence personal in a direct sense and because it was used for an activity considered quintessentially feminine, through which women could choose to define themselves, at least in part. For these reasons, women often went to great lengths to keep track of and to curate their thimbles (more on thimble cases below). So even close control of archaeological context does not assure close dating of the object.41 The attributes of thimbles that carry chronological implications include their manner of construction, the nature of the indentations, certain variations in the treatment of the crown and rim, and the type of decoration. The only early thimbles that tended to be marked by their makers were those of silver and gold, although many nineteenth- and twentieth-century thimbles of base metal and other materials carry either maker’s marks or pattern and trademark names. Silver thimbles, while not common, are occasionally found on medieval and later sites, but I am unaware of any excavated examples of made of gold. Hill provides a chronology of thimbles based on morphological characteristics, which I have adapted and expanded here (table 4.1).42 As noted above, the earliest brass thimbles were made in one of two ways: casting or dapping (hammering sheet metal into a die with a die stamp). Thimble dapping began with a heavy iron block that had holes of different sizes let into it; sheet metal, usually a copper alloy, was hammered into the holes with punches

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of graduated sizes; the metal was heated at intervals—annealed—in a furnace to soften it and render it malleable. Later thimbles were either cast or made in two pieces from a strip of metal brazed at the joint, with the cap or crown added separately. By the end of the eighteenth century the process known as deep drawing was improved. The new process, sometimes called thimble spinning, involves stamping a thin disk of sheet metal over a mandril to form a shallow cup, which is then subjected to several stampings until the desired shape is formed; then the rim is curled over and rolled back while the thimble blank is spun on a lathe. The blank continues to spin on the lathe while a band is pressed into its lower part and while a knurling wheel is applied to the upper sides of the thimble to create the indentations.43 The earliest thimbles have no rim and no decoration, except perhaps a single incised or lightly hand-punched line; by the 1500s they sometimes bore engraved or hand-punched decorations around the sides. By the eighteenth century thimbles were sometimes made with a solid projecting rim around the edge, and from the nineteenth century onward the rim was turned over mechanically.44 The indentations or knurlings on a thimble were added to make it easier to push needles. All working thimbles (as opposed to those made, for example, as souvenirs) have indentations of some sort, in the earliest examples punched by hand. The term knurling refers to machine-applied indentations; thimbleknurling machines and tools were introduced sometime in the late seventeenth century, and the mechanically applied knurlings are easily distinguished from hand-punched indentations. The size of the cavities or indentations normally corresponds with size, or thickness, of the needle the thimble was likely to be used with. In other words, the size of the indentations reflects the nature of the work for which the thimble was intended; larger, heavier thimbles have large indentations, and smaller, lighter thimbles have smaller indentations. The latter variety of thimble was far more prone to wear and decay so it is the heavier variety of thimble that often survives best in archaeological contexts.45 In the late seventeenth century there was a change in the overall shape of silver thimbles; they were made in a shorter, more rounded form than before and tended to have indentations covering the crown as well as the sides. Holmes speculates that this is related to a change in the way people were sewing; the earlier thimbles, with their bare, ‘‘tonsure-like’’ crowns, were likely used ‘‘sideways’’—that is, the sides were used for needle-pushing, whereas the shorter thimbles, indented on the crown, allowed the thimble wearer to push a needle through fabric using the top of the thimble. During this time the nature of the indentations changed as well; whereas sixteenth-century and earlier thimbles had hand-punched indentations running around the body of the thimble in a spi-

Table 4.1 Thimble and thimble ring chronology Date range

Diagnostic attributes

Manufacturing technique

Place of production

c. 1200–1000 bc c. 3000 bc–18th c.

leather finger shields; stone needle-pushers bronze acutrudia; flat, elongated, grooved, decorated bronze, brass, silver needle rings; elaborate decoration camel bone thimble rings bronze thimble rings Turko-Slavic style; bronze, large, bulbous dome decorated with crude lines Hispano-Moresque style; bronze, pointed tops, molded indentations decorated on band Abbasid-Levantine style; bronze, ledgetype rim, domed crown, hand-punched indentations bronze thimble rings leather thimble rings latten thimbles; domed crown, squat shape, hand-punched indentations elongated body with band, flat top indentations spiraling up body of thimble, ‘‘tonsured’’ crown elongated body with band, flat top indentations spiraling up body of thimble, ‘‘tonsured’’ crown

hand-sewn casting

Egypt, Anatolia, Palestine Middle East, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires China (imported to Middle East via Silk Trade) Middle East circum-Mediterranean eastern Mediterranean, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary western North Africa, Spain, France, Denmark

c. ad 200 c. ad 600 c. ad 800–1400 c. ad 1200–1700 c. ad 900–1400

c. ad 900–1100

before c. ad 1375 c. 1375–1500 c. 1550–1650

before c. 1700

casting; beaten sheet metal; strip not joined hand carving beaten sheet metal lost-wax casting lost-wax casting

lost-wax casting

Asia Minor (brought to Europe by returning Crusaders)

beaten sheet metal hand sewn sand casting, die-hammering

Europe; Germany

sand casting, dapping, or deep drawing

Nuremberg, Germany

sand casting

Netherlands, Sweden, England

Nuremberg, Germany

c. 1650–1730s

1500s mid-1690s–c. 1750 c. 1750

c. 1770–late 1700s late 1700s 1794–1800s

1800s 1850–c. 1900 1857–1900s 1884

1889

elongated body with band, flat top indentations spiraling up body of thimble, ‘‘tonsured’’ crown, Vingerhoed monopoly elongated, two-piece; hand-chased decoration of chevrons or mottoes on band Lofting patents knurling machine, establishes factory; Dutch-style thimble Birmingham becomes center of British thimble-making: gold, silver, steel, pinchbeck, brass enameled brass thimbles; ‘‘Bilston-Batterseas’’ porcelain thimbles Halstead establishes thimble factory; spread of American thimble-making: gold, silver, brass, steel ‘‘branded’’ thimbles, e.g., ‘‘Elgin,’’ ‘‘Nifty,’’ ‘‘Palfrey’’; poor quality ornate silver and gold Iles patent thimbles; nonmetallic lining; ‘‘ventilated’’ Horner patent thimble: Dorcas; some have design registration no.; all ‘‘Pat.’’ or ‘‘Patent’’ U.S. patent for Dorcas

Sources: Hill 1995:85; Holmes 1985; Von Hoelle 1986

deep drawing

Netherlands; exported widely

beaten sheet metal

England

sand casting deep drawing

England; exported to North American colonies England

deep drawing, enameling casting/molding deep drawing

England (southern Staffordshire) England (Worcester, Derby, Chelsea) New York and other American cities

deep drawing

Australia

various deep-drawing; layering of materials

India England

deep-drawing; steel core, heavy construction; attracted to magnet

England

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ral, during the seventeenth century the indentation tended to be either in the form of small circles forming concentric rings around the body of the thimble or small diamond-shaped indentations that created a honeycomb or waffle pattern. In the latter instances it is likely that the indentations, now properly called knurlings, were applied mechanically. Indeed, by about 1650, almost all thimbles were indented using a knurling wheel. Of the two silver thimbles shown in fig. 4.2, the one on the left, with its hand-punched indentations, was likely made earlier than the example on the right, which has regularly spaced knurlings on both its crown and body.46 The fashion for fancy thimbles for women of the nobility began during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603), and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave rise to ornate ‘‘parlor thimbles’’ made of gold, silver, porcelain, enamel, mother-of-pearl, ivory, tortoiseshell, wood, bone, horn, glass, and jewels; these thimbles were designed more for show than for sewing. At the same time, mass-manufacturing techniques made it possible for thimbles both of precious and base metals to be made in vast quantities, and it seems likely that archaeologists working on nineteenth-century sites will encounter examples of these mass-produced but often handsome and well-made thimbles. Because nineteenth-century thimble-makers often took out patents on their designs or manufacturing techniques and produced illustrated catalogs of their products, a great deal is known about these items. One such English thimble-manufacturing family was that of Charles Iles, Sr., who patented a thimble with a nonmetallic lining in 1857 and whose son Charles Iles, Jr., took out a series of patents in the late 1800s and early 1900s for ‘‘ventilated’’ thimbles that were intended to improve the wearer’s comfort by permitting perspiration to escape. These sorts of thimbles are readily distinguishable by their composite layering of differing materials intended to provide the promised ‘‘ventilation.’’ 47 I have already mentioned the efforts thimble-makers undertook to improve the strength and durability of silver thimbles by capping them with steel; this practice began in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century gave rise to even more inventive ways of producing thimbles that combined the advantages of silver with the durability of iron, and in 1884 an Englishman by the name of Charles Horner patented a silver thimble with a steel core that proved to be ideal for everyday, practical sewing. Horner was a master of marketing, and his efforts to advertise and sell his new thimble were highly effective in making it widely popular. He called his invention the Dorcas thimble, after a needlewoman mentioned in the Bible as someone who made coats and garments for the poor. This name had already been adopted by many parish sewing circles in Victorian England and hence conveyed a strong sense of sewing linked to charity and good

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works. Horner enhanced his cleverly named product with handsome packaging and sold it through vigorous advertising campaigns in a variety of media. The Dorcas thimble was made in a wide range of patterns with both registered and unregistered designs, and in 1889 Horner received a U.S. patent in order to protect the American market for his thimbles. Recognizing Dorcas thimbles is not altogether a straightforward process if they have lost their packaging, however, because few were actually marked. The originals did not carry a trademark, and because their steel lining disqualified them from being sold as silver thimbles, they were not hallmarked. Some models carry the design registration number (for example, ‘‘Reg. No. 210799’’ for ‘‘The Shell’’ design), and all have the abbreviation Pat. (for patent, which occasionally is spelled out) and a size number stamped on the rim. The main means of distinguishing Dorcas thimbles is their heavy construction, their greater than normal weight (about fifty-five pennyweights per dozen), and the fact that they are attracted to a magnet.48 THI M BL E SI Z ES AND M AR K S

It is important for archaeologists to note the size of the thimbles recovered from their sites, since the size is related both to the intended user as well as to the thimble’s intended use. Brass thimbles were supplied in three basic sizes: girls’, maids,’ and women’s (also available was a fourth size, large, chiefly for tailors and men and women who engaged in heavy sewing). Silver thimbles, in contrast, were initially custom-made as special orders for individual purchasers, but as the demand for silver thimbles increased after the second quarter of the eighteenth century, jewelers and silversmiths would either build up a stock in varying sizes or make large numbers of thimbles and resell them to other retailers. Large consignments of such thimbles were exported to the American colonies from London indenting houses.49 Until sometime in the twentieth century almost all young women were taught to sew by their mothers, so throughout the centuries there was a large demand for thimbles to fit the fingers of very young girls. The demand, however, was filled largely by child’s and young women’s thimbles made of inexpensive copper alloy because youthful needleworkers tended to outgrow their small training thimbles; as a result, the small-sized thimbles were likely to receive less wear than adult thimbles. Exceptions might occur in institutional settings such as sewing schools—at nineteenth-century charity schools, for example, girls were expected to be able to sew and to knit their own stockings by age five—where institutionally supplied thimbles may have been used by a succession of students and hence subjected to excessive wear.50

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The Ubiquitous and Occasionally Ordinary Thimble Table 4.2 Thimble sizes

Country

Child’s

Small

Medium

Large

United States Germany and Holland England France Norway

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 1, 2 10, 11, 12 4, 5, 6, 7 1

6, 7, 8 3, 4 9, 8, 7 8 2, 3

9, 10, 11 5, 6, 7 6, 5 9, 10 4

12, 13, 14 8, 9, 10 4, 3, 2, 1 11, 12

Source: Zalkin 1988:19

Size marks did not become common on English thimbles before about 1880, perhaps slightly earlier on American thimbles, but the numbers given to the sizes differed not just between the two countries but in the United States among various thimble manufacturers as well. Estelle Zalkin, in her Handbook of Thimbles and Sewing Implements, notes that in the United States sizes 1 through 5 were children’s sizes and were often sold in graduated sets to accommodate a child’s growth (table 4.2). In general, for thimbles manufactured in the United Kingdom, the higher the number, the smaller the thimble (sizes ranged from 00 to 9), whereas the reverse was true in the United States as well as in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Norway.51 If we look at four thimbles excavated from the Spencer-Peirce-Little site in Newbury, Massachusetts (fig. 4.3), we see that the second from the left is a steellined silver thimble bearing the size mark ‘‘4’’ as well as the monogram ‘‘LBW.’’ This personalized thimble must have held special significance for its owner, who remains unknown because no one we know of who lived at the site had these initials. One can imagine a young woman somehow losing her thimble when she came calling with her ‘‘work’’ at the ready to take up while visiting with the female members of the household, unintentionally leaving behind this diminutive calling card. The monogrammed thimble is of nineteenth-century date, as is the thimble in the far left of the image. This thimble, like the ones to the right of the silver thimble, is copper alloy; it has regular, machine-impressed knurlings, and on its band it bears the motto ‘‘forget me not.’’ Such motto thimbles were common in the nineteenth century; an identical thimble, along with a second proclaiming that it was ‘‘from a friend,’’ was found in a late-nineteenth-century privy deposit in New York’s Five Points neighborhood; excavation of the Cumberland/Gloucester Streets site in the Rocks neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, recovered several thimbles of a sort ‘‘commonly found on Australian sites’’ that were embossed with such messages as ‘‘esteem,’’ ‘‘the queen forever,’’ ‘‘remem-

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Fig. 4.3 Four thimbles from the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts. Left to right: copper-alloy motto thimble (‘‘forget me not’’), nineteenth century; steel-lined silver thimble marked ‘‘4’’ and monogrammed ‘‘LBW,’’ nineteenth century; copper-alloy woman’s thimble and copper-alloy child’s thimble, both late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. (Photograph by Michael Hamilton)

ber me,’’ and ‘‘contentment.’’ These emphasized ‘‘the Victorian paradigm of the ‘genteel and accomplished lady.’’’ 52 The thimble on the far right in fig. 4.3 is very small; it is a child’s thimble. The regular knurlings and rolled rim indicate that it dates from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. The copper-alloy thimble to the left of the child’s thimble is also somewhat small, but it is probably intended for an adult finger. It, too, is of late-eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century date. Holmes notes that the maker’s mark most frequently encountered on American thimbles is that of Simons Brothers Company of Philadelphia, which consists of the letter ‘‘S’’ set in a shield. The company used several variations of this mark, which was in use from 1880 onward and sometimes appears with the trade names ‘‘Priscilla’’ or ‘‘Quaker.’’ Simons Brothers was begun in 1839 with thimble manufacturing as its principal activity; it was a family business until 1969 and pioneered trademarked designs such as ‘‘Liberty Bell.’’ 53 Another well-known American thimble-making firm was Ketcham and McDougall of Brooklyn, New York, which produced nearly two-thirds of all the marked American thimbles at present in the hands of collectors, so it seems highly likely that their products might appear in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury archaeological sites. The company began in 1832 and in various guises continued to make thimbles until 1932; its trademark, K&McD, was used from

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1892 to 1932. Other marks one might find on thimbles excavated from latenineteenth- and twentieth-century sites include Stern Brothers and Company, New York (1890–1912); Goldsmith Stern and Company, New York; Webster Company, North Attleboro, Massachusetts; H. Muhr’s Sons, Philadelphia; Thomas F. Brogan, New York; Untemeyer Robbins Company, New York; and Waite Thresher and Company, Providence, Rhode Island. It is worth mentioning, however, that some firms distributed thimbles specially produced for them to sell under their own brand name or logo, but they did not manufacture them. In this context one might consider thimbles distributed through mail-order catalogs such as those of Montgomery Ward and Sears and Roebuck.54 It is highly uncommon for thimbles to be marked according to their country of manufacture, but there are some general guidelines for determining where a thimble originated. Thimble shape is the key, though decoration, size numbering, and in some cases marks can be helpful. In the nineteenth century, English and American thimbles both had domed caps, but American thimbles tended to be shorter than English and German ones, and the flat-top thimble is an American development of the twentieth century. French thimbles of the nineteenth century had either waffle- or rectangular-patterned indentations, whereas Norwegian thimbles were generally smooth-sided with indentations only in the cap.55 American gold and silver thimbles did not normally carry a mark until the 1860s, when the word sterling was introduced to indicate that an object had at least 92.5 percent fine metal content; there were no hallmarks registered in the United States, and hence the ‘‘sterling’’ mark merely provides an indication of the country of origin and suggests that the article is no more than one hundred years old. Another type of marking is the patent date; the item cannot be older than date of patent (though it could date considerably later). Thimbles marked ‘‘coin’’ are also American; this mark purports to establish that the silver content of the object so marked is equivalent to that of silver coinage.56 According to Holmes, an experienced collector should be able to recognize an American thimble at a glance: ‘‘They are normally shorter and squarer than thimbles from other countries and the size markings are small, precise, and easy to differentiate from those found elsewhere; American styles are also less ornate and more conservative than their counterparts in Europe.’’ He also speculates that the early introduction of mass-production methods may have influenced the design of American thimbles, noting that their finish is invariably quite good and that ornamental scrollwork, beading, and channelings are almost invariably of a high standard. What is more, the squatness of American thimbles may have been an advantage in the manufacturing process, allowing greater thickness. This perhaps could also lead to better preservation in archaeological sites.57

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Somewhat problematic is the issue of thimbles found on Spanish colonial sites. Holmes considers it likely that Spain would have developed its own Moorish-influenced thimble-making industry by at least the fifteenth century; he states that the introduction of metal thimbles to the New World would have occurred with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on his first voyage in 1492, but these would have been men’s thimbles made of heavy brass or iron and with large indentations to match the heads of large needles. When Portuguese and Spanish colonists were established in the Americas, regular supplies of thimbles were sent from home. Holmes’s examination of colonial records of Mexico for the year 1566 turned up such entries as ‘‘500 dedales de muger . . . 800 maravedís’’ and ‘‘Dedales para sastres a rreal y medio la dozena.’’ Hill’s study of thimbles from circum-Caribbean sites, especially early Spanish colonial sites, does not provide evidence of an Iberian origin for metal thimbles supplied to the outposts of the Spanish Empire. On the contrary: Hill identifies two thimbles from closely dated contexts as likely products of the Nuremberg thimble-makers. The first example was found at the site of Nueva Cadíz, Venezuela (1515–1541), and the second at the Convento de San Francisco in the Dominican Republic (first half of sixteenth century). Both are deep drawn, copper alloy, and rather squat; they have regularly spaced hand-punched indentations running up the body in a spiral from the band to the crown, terminating in the center of the crown (hence no ‘‘tonsure-like’’ blank spot on the crown). Hill is convinced that these thimbles were produced in Nuremberg and exported to Spain. She supports this interpretation by citing documentary evidence of the trade in thimbles between Germany and Spain. This trade developed as early as 1428 and involved many other goods besides thimbles because Spain relied heavily on imports from Genoa and northern Europe to supply its colonies. Manufactured goods were collected from all over Europe in warehouses in Seville, then transshipped to the colonies. Hill’s research makes it clear that thimbles found on Spanish colonial sites from the time of their founding until around the middle of the seventeenth century are likely to be products of Nuremberg. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, the source of supply was likely the Netherlands, whereas Spanish colonial sites of the eighteenth century ‘‘display a uniformity of shape and design which is unmistakable’’ and which identifies them as of English origin. Thus the basic sequence of types of inexpensive copper-alloy thimbles and their changing sources of supply is the same at both Spanish and English colonial sites.58 As for decoration, thimbles produced in America often displayed picturesque views, especially waterfronts and agrarian scenes, while English thimble-makers tended to employ floral decorations. As noted above, marks on thimbles can be either maker’s marks, size marks, or registry marks, but such marks are far more

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likely to appear on thimbles of silver and gold rather than those of base metals. The location of marks can be a clue as to country of origin, even if the manufacturer is not known. American and Norwegian thimbles tend to be marked inside the cap or sometimes on the band, whereas English and French examples tend to be marked on the band. German marks, however, tend to be placed on the second row of indentations. Zalkin’s Handbook provides a helpful key to many pattern, trademark, and maker’s marks.59 THI M BL E C ASES

It is worth noting that thimble cases were extremely common and important items for seamstresses and needleworkers of all sorts, and here I offer only the briefest of summaries of the sorts of thimble cases that are known to have existed. In my research into archaeological collections, I came across several needle or pin cases from excavated collections, but none of the collections I examined included anything remotely resembling a thimble case. Nor did anyone respond to my published queries to say that they had excavated a thimble case or a part thereof, or something they wanted me to identify that happened to be a thimble case. I cannot help but be a bit bemused by the fact that so many thimble cases exist in private collections and museums and that seemingly none have survived archaeologically. I suspect that perhaps some have come out of the ground that I have not learned about and that others may not have been recognized for what they are, but it is also true that many thimble cases were made of materials that are unlikely to survive in archaeological contexts—at least not in a sufficiently intact state to be identified. Needles and pins are obviously easy to lose and require some means of ‘‘keeping’’ and storing; thimbles, one would think, are not tiny enough to be lost so easily. But if the number of thimbles found in archaeological contexts is any guide to go by (and we set aside for the moment the matter of discarding worn thimbles), they did get lost with what for needleworkers must have been annoying frequency. Thimble cases, therefore, served the purpose of ‘‘keeping’’ thimbles, keeping them from being lost as well as keeping them to hand. When someone needed to sew, they needed a thimble as much as they needed thread and needle, so it is not uncommon for thimble cases to be part of combination units for storing other sewing implements as well as similarly small items that needed to be to hand. Holmes defines a thimble case as ‘‘a small decorated container which is designed especially to hold a thimble and nothing more.’’ It seems likely that the idea of creating a case to contain a thimble first came from goldsmiths or silver-

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smiths who crafted fine thimbles, and by the eighteenth century costly thimbles tended to be presented in a case, often quite fancy, but as a general rule thimble cases were less expensive than the thimbles they contained. Some thimble cases were made of silver or gold or high-quality porcelain, but the favored material for truly classy thimble cases in the eighteenth century was shagreen, shark or fish skin or an untanned leather. Ivory was also popular, but wood was the most commonly used. Many thimble cases were made as souvenirs and novelties in all sorts of shapes (for example, acorns, walnuts, pinecones, eggs, barrels, beehives, shoes or slippers, sailing ships, bowling pins, mushrooms, baskets, bottles, railway cars, buckets, hats and hatboxes, electric lightbulbs, animals of all sorts, and so on and on). In addition to wood, cases were made of various base metals, leather, lacquered paper, mother-of-pearl, mussel shell, tortoiseshell, beadwork, vegetable ivory, coquilla, bone, plush, glass, stones such as agates, and almost any other material one can think of. Of all the materials mentioned above, few are likely to survive archaeologically (glass, porcelain, precious metals, and stone being noteworthy exceptions). This alone helps account for the fact that archaeologists do not report regular finds of thimble cases. Although it is certainly possible that thimble cases might be recovered, especially from nineteenth- and twentiethcentury sites, it seems likely that for the majority of needleworkers in colonial and later times, the place for a thimble was the sewing box or workbasket rather than in a separate thimble case.60 I N T ER PRET I NG THI M BL ES

Thimbles, humble little objects though they may be, have the potential to tell us about many things if we subject them to interpretive scrutiny. The size and quality of a thimble can provide clues as to the sort of sewing activity for which it was intended and whether it was likely to be worn by an adult man or woman or by a child in accomplishing this purpose. Wear on a thimble can speak to long and hard use, but lack of wear is not necessarily an indication that a thimble was never used. Maid’s or child’s thimbles, for example, were not toys, but a child might have outgrown such a thimble along with her childish clothing and playthings. We know that although most were utilitarian, some thimbles were actively deployed in demonstrations of femininity and social rank as well as in the construction of personal and social identities. So thimbles can be interpreted in ways that inform us about gender and class and work. They can also inform us about how institutions (for example, schools, orphanages, poorhouses), colonizers, and religious proselytizers used carefully selected items of material culture as a medium for inculcating values associated with such objects. The

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case study that follows offers a way of re-envisioning and reinterpreting thimbles found at sites occupied by Native Americans during the colonial period in North America as something other than merely ‘‘trade’’ goods. propagating the gospel and civilizing the natives: thimbles for magunco In the seventeenth century, New England was not a distinctive region of the Americas controlled by a single European power; rather, it constituted a number of settler colonies established by different groups for varied reasons. The presentday Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century was divided into the colonies of Plymouth and of Massachusetts Bay, their leaders often at odds with one another over religious, political, and economic issues and in disagreement about how to interact with the indigenous Algonkian-speakers who continued to reside in what had become ‘‘English’’ territory and who had cultural differences of their own. Excavations by the Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research under the direction of Stephen A. Mrozwoski at Magunco Hill, in what is now Ashland, Massachusetts, produced evidence both of cultural transformation and resistance based on the analysis of Indian use of European materials in this lateseventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century ‘‘Praying Indian Town.’’ Magunco, also known in the native language as Makunkokoag, Magunkaquog, or Magunkook, was established about 1674 by missionary John Eliot for Christianized Nipmuc Indians. Eliot was a Puritan minister who sought to Christianize the Indians of the Massachusetts Bay Colony through his preaching as well as through translation of a catechism, the Bible, and other religious tracts into Algonkian; he also spearheaded the effort to resettle Indian converts in their own towns, where they could continue to speak (and to read and write) their own language and follow their own laws while nevertheless subscribing to the values of Christianity and Puritan culture by living in English-style houses and adopting European dress and material culture.61 At Magunco, archaeologists recovered a number of identical copper-alloy thimbles, likely of English manufacture; all were small, maid’s or child’s size. Interpreting these thimbles merely as sewing tools seems insufficient. Although archaeologists often write about thimbles that have been altered by Native Americans for use as personal adornment or as tinklers affixed to fringed clothing, none of the Magunco thimbles had holes driven through their crowns. Indeed, they displayed no apparent use-wear. It is altogether possible that the Magunco thimbles represent another front in the battle waged by John Eliot to Christianize the

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indigenous people of Massachusetts. As such, they can be interpreted as gifts with a hidden agenda, as prestation—a gift or offering in fulfillment of a duty or service—in this case in service of the ideology of colonialism and Christianity as much as in benevolent generosity. A mass-produced and globally distributed object such as a thimble represents more than an attempt to draw Native Americans into the world system of capitalist exchange. In the words of Nicholas Thomas, such a good becomes an ‘‘alienated thing’’ when put into circulation and is far more than a commodity. It may become imbued with new meaning and new significance, and it may embody a complicated set of values that are not inherent to the object but are seen as arising out of qualities that its ‘‘appropriate’’ use are thought to impart or inculcate.62 To the colonizer and missionary, thimbles (and, presumably, needles, thread, and textiles—all less likely than thimbles to be found archaeologically) were a perfect medium for conveying a suite of values that linked ideals of femininity and womanhood, cleanliness, and godliness, as well as the production of proper, modest, European-style dress. Although it is not known whether women numbered among Eliot’s missionaries, it seems likely that if the thimbles were to serve their purpose, Englishwomen would have been sent to instruct young Indian women and girls in sewing and needlework. Because the Magunco thimbles are all too small for adult use, it would appear that the missionaries targeted the younger female converts as potentially more receptive than adult women to instruction in European techniques of sewing.63 The Magunco thimbles would have been diminutive yet powerful tools of the missionaries in their efforts to instill Christian values, for the very act of sewing incorporated many values espoused in Christian teachings: it required clean hands, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline. Skill in sewing was an imperative for European women and girls of all ages and social stations—a woman’s always having ‘‘work’’ to hand prevented idleness that might lead to inappropriate behavior. Hence missionaries through the ages have stressed instruction in sewing and needlework along with biblical instruction—indeed, sewing schools and missions have often made Bible verses or biblical scenes the required subjects of samplers and embroidered pictures produced by their pupils. Although we can provide a context for understanding why missionaries might have thought thimbles as effective as Bibles for their purpose of conveying Western, Christian ideals to converted Indians, it is impossible to assess how strongly Indian women embraced this new skill and the values associated with it. As noted above, little if any wear can be detected on the thimbles (this is often the case for thimbles intended for youngsters—young fingers tend to outgrow the thim-

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bles before they are subjected to much wear), and we have no indication that the thimbles were reappropriated by the Christianized Indians for purposes other than those for which they were intended. Perhaps they were simply discarded? Whatever the explanation may be, we cannot assume that the presence at Magunco of English thimbles, in numbers large or small, is by any stretch of the imagination an index to ‘‘acculturation’’ or the wholesale adoption by Christianized Nipmucs of the value system such items represented to Europeans. As one of the more ‘‘subtle ploys’’ of colonialism, the thimbles alert us to the intentions of the colonizers and missionaries and leave us to speculate as to the actions and responses of their ‘‘congregation.’’ 64

5

Shears and Scissors Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them. —sydney smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir, 1855 We are but two halves of a pair of scissors, when apart . . . but together we are something. —charles dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, 1843–1844

Cutting implements are critical to sewing and needlework of all types, for cutting fabric, yarn, or thread, for creating buttonholes, fringes, and so on and on. Scissors and shears had to be strong and sturdy to accomplish their purpose, and since their first appearance in the Bronze Age, these implements have tended to be made of hardy metals that are capable of being sharpened and resharpened. Hence shears and scissors, particularly those made of steel, are often well preserved in the ground and are common archaeological finds, especially on medieval or later sites; indeed, a Museum of London archaeologist has remarked that ‘‘blades from knives or shears are among the most common and varied metalwork finds on medieval sites.’’ Historical archaeologists have devoted little time or attention to the scissors they find, and too often they tend to assume that virtually all scissors were used for sewing. But scissors, like many another common tools, served many functions and in fact were important ‘‘tools for work or in the home.’’ 1 The basic components of a pair of shears are two blades joined by two arms to a central sprung bow. The junction of the blade and the handle may have single or multiple semicircular recesses, and the tip of the blade as well as the top of the blade may vary in form. Both scissors and shears have two opposite cutting edges working one against the other, but the cutting operation of scissors depends on

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Fig. 5.1 The parts of a pair of scissors. The scissors at the top have a round, or bodkin, pointed blade, the lower a vigo point. (After Himsworth 1953:154)

a riveted center, calling for more delicate adjustment during manufacture. Scissors consist of a pair of opposed blades with arms, pivoted together in the center; at the end of each arm is a loop (also known as a bow and sometimes as a finger ring) for manipulating the scissors, and above the pivot, at the junction of the blade and arm, there may be a stop to prevent the arms overlapping (fig. 5.1). Scissors represent a great departure from the knife because they are adapted to cut materials such as hair, wool, and woven fabrics, though in medieval times ‘‘razors and shears seem to have been interchangeable for the task of beard cutting and hair trimming.’’ 2 THE HI ST ORY A ND ARC H AE O L O GY O F S CI SS O RS

Shears probably predate scissors. J. B. Himsworth states that shears appeared in the Bronze Age but offers no examples to support this early date. There is firm evidence of shears in the Iron Age, around 1000 bc. The earliest shears consisted of two knives joined by a single U-shaped spring, the springing action made possible because of iron’s malleability; examples have been found at La Tène, France, in Roman Egypt, and in Parthian Iran. One source illustrates what it calls ‘‘the earliest known shears’’ excavated from La Tène (third century bc).3 Shears of a simple, unchanging pattern have been used since at least the Iron Age for sheepshearing, and the introduction of scissors into Europe sometime in the sixth or seventh century did not affect use of shears for this operation. With shears, a person could work the blades together with a ‘‘single-handed simultaneous cutting action, leaving the second hand free to hold or steady the item being cut.’’ This permitted a person to obtain an entire fleece of wool rather than just pull away tufts with a comb. In antiquity, wild sheep tended to have hairy coats, but with domestication herders continuously selected woolly sheep over hairy ones. Early textile producers plucked sheep at the time of molting. Though

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this gave an extremely fine product, over time sheep then developed a coat that was more woolly than hairy. Because wool fibers tend to molt earlier than the hair and kemp, it thus became desirable to find a way to remove the sheep’s coat in its entirety. Until the later Iron Age textile producers commonly obtained wool by combing sheep, spinning the wool, then weaving the cloth to shape. It seems likely that sheepshearing was the main use for shears at first, but by the end of the Roman period, when textiles were first woven in lengths, shears were also employed to cut cloth. Shears are frequent finds in British contexts of the Middle and Late Iron Age and are often found in conjunction with such other cutting tools as razors and scissors. Because such finds at times predate the shift to weaving in lengths, some archaeologists have interpreted all of these items as toilet implements, used for cutting hair, rather than for textile production.4 A study of knives, scissors, shears, and folding knives from medieval sites in London allowed archaeologists to develop in-depth understanding of the methods of construction and quality of materials used in producing cutting implements and the sheaths used to cover them. Included among the five hundred specimens studied were fifty-four pairs of shears and three pairs of scissors; the shears were recovered from contexts dating from the late twelfth through the early to mid-fifteenth centuries, while the scissors appeared in fourteenthcentury contexts.5 The form of shears has remained remarkably consistent over time, with medieval shears looking as much like modern examples as they do the more ancient specimens. The distinction between scissors and shears may never have been abandoned by cutlers, but in recent times the terms scissors and shears seem to be used interchangeably without denoting any clear distinction in the shape, size, or construction of one item versus the other. At the time of its founding in 1624, however, the Cutler’s Company of Sheffield, England, included both scissorsmiths and shearsmiths—shear-making and scissor-making were classified as completely separate trades. The closest I have come to a definition of why some cutting implements with two blades that operate on a pivot are called shears I found in the official company history of the American cutlery company, J. Wiss and Sons: ‘‘Technically, the dividing line between a pair of scissors and a pair of shears is an arbitrary measurement. Shears generally measure six inches or more in length, have one small handle for the thumb and the other larger, for the insertion of two or more fingers. The varieties smaller than six inches are usually catalogued as scissors and are made with two small matching handles.’’ 6 This makes it clear that twentieth-century scissor-makers refer to overall size and unequal size of the bows or finger loops rather than to construction to distinguish scissors from shears, that over time the term shears has come to mean

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‘‘large scissors’’ and scissors with differently sized bows. I have attempted here to maintain the distinction between scissors and shears based on manner of construction versus that based on size (that is, scissors have blades that pivot on a pin whereas shears operate via a springy bow) to avoid adding to the confusion I am aware some archaeologists experience in attempting to classify these objects, except when it seems ridiculous to reject terms that have been in constant use— pinking shears or pruning shears, for instance—and that are clearly understood by everyone to refer to a specific two-bladed cutting implement.7 Shears at times appear as motifs on medieval English gravestones as well as on secular sculptures, and the motif has been taken by some to stand as a symbol for a person who pursued the trade of wool dealer or stapler, someone who dealt in raw wool. Eleanora Carus-Wilson notes, however, that the types of shears that appear in such sculptures are often not ones that would have been used to shear sheep to obtain raw wool; rather, most shears depicted have flat blades that are wider at the end than at the base. Such shears, often referred to as fuller’s shears, were used for shearing cloth, for cutting and cropping the surface to give it a close finish. In such cases, then, the shears that appear in sculpture represent not staplers or dealers in raw wool but men who dealt in manufactured woolens, that is, finished cloth.8 Others say that shears symbolized womanhood and hence marked the grave of a female; some have posited that sharp-pointed shears were intended for use by women, whereas square-ended ones were used by clothiers for cutting nap and thus were men’s tools. But, as with most implements, it is difficult to make a case that a certain type of object was used exclusively by men or by women or that an implement was always used for the purpose for which it was intended. For example, an illustration exists of an abbess cutting off the hair of a queen with square-ended shears, and both sharp and blunt shears, along with swords, have been found in men’s graves. This does not negate the fact, however, that certain items took on symbolic import that arose from how they were most commonly used and the type of person who most commonly used them.9 Scissors were introduced into Europe around the sixth or seventh century— examples made of iron are found in Roman occupation layers at British sites, and iron scissors dating from 250 bc to 150 bc are also found in France and Germany—but scissors do not seem to have come into general use until the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Margrethe de Neergaard posits that the continued preference for shears well after scissors were introduced arises out of conservatism as well as the fact that shears can be made fairly easily compared to scissors. She suggests that by the late medieval period, the advantages afforded by scissors—finger loops that make one-handed operation simple and long, slender

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blades that make cutting in a straight line easy—were recognized by specialist tradesmen such as hatters, glovers, tailors, and barbers, while in most households shears continued to be favored for a variety of domestic uses. Neergaard points out that ‘‘the ubiquity of knives, shears and scabbards on archaeological sites in the city of London and elsewhere in the country and in Europe is a further final reflection of their importance in medieval life. They were much-used, easily available items, readily discarded and replaced.’’ 10 During the medieval period scissors began to be fashioned according to the purposes for which they were intended, taking on a variety of forms. In medieval and later times, there were many European centers producing fine-quality cutlery. Among the best known were Paris, Thiers, and Châtellerault in France; Nuremberg, Solingen, and Ramscheid in Germany; Toledo and Seville in Spain; Eskilstuna in Sweden; and Namur in Belgium. By the sixteenth century Moulins in France was known for its fine scissors, and France led the industry in production of high-quality and often elaborate scissors embellished with precious metals until late in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, fine scissors were also made in Spain, whose craftsmen specialized in damascened scissors, gilded and painted, with elaborate decoration on both shanks and blades, as well as in Italy and Germany.11 In Britain, cutlery-making existed as a separate trade in London by the twelfth century, and a cutlers’ guild formed by the thirteenth century; London cutlers dominated the trade within Britain for more than two hundred years. Beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the production of high-quality cutlery was based in England’s Hallamshire district, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, with Sheffield at its center. Evidence exists of ironworking and knife-making in Sheffield from at least the twelfth century onward; there were large deposits of iron ore and coal nearby and two fast-flowing rivers, the Sheaf and the Don, that provided power seats for hundreds of waterwheels. Available locally as well was an abundant supply of good-quality sandstone, which was used in making grindstones. Knives and scissors made in Sheffield were of the highest quality and were exported all over the world, in especially large numbers to the British colonies in the Americas, and throughout the nineteenth century Sheffield dominated the American market for high-quality knives and scissors. Hence the vast majority of scissors found in archaeological work at colonial and postcolonial sites in the Americas (and elsewhere) are likely to have been imported from Sheffield, England.12 Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century was cutlery-making seriously undertaken in the United States; the first firm to incorporate was the Meriden Cutlery Company, founded in 1835 in Meriden, Connecticut, with the aim

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of manufacturing pocketknives. Also in Connecticut, the Empire Knife Company formed in West Winstead in 1845 to produce knives and razors, and the Miller Brothers in Southington began making pocketknives in 1850. Soon the Southington Cutlery Company began making knives and razors, and the William Rogers Manufacturing Company of Hartford was one of several Connecticut cutlery firms established in the nineteenth century. None were known for scissor-making, however.13 The Clauss Shear Company was founded in Toledo, Ohio, in 1877, at first manufacturing bread knives but eventually becoming well known for its scissors. American manufacturers tended to copy Sheffield styles. Indeed, many of the Connecticut firms employed craftsmen from Sheffield, who brought with them their skill and expertise—but the American firms, being new to the cutlery trades, readily adopted the latest technological advances, unlike their more conservative counterparts in Sheffield.14 Jacob Wiss, a Swiss émigré trained as a cutler and gunsmith, arrived in Newark, New Jersey, in 1847 and went to work for Rochus Heinisch, an Austrian cutler who had set up a shear manufactory in Newark in 1825. By 1848 Wiss was in business for himself; the firm produced high-quality shears and, during the Civil War, both surgical scissors for the medical staff of the Union Army and shears for the tailors who cut cloth to be made into Union uniforms. After Jacob Wiss’s death in 1880, his son Frederick took over the business and initiated an aggressive international marketing campaign that gave Wiss cutlery a firm place in the market both in America and abroad.15 M A K I NG SHE ARS AND S CI SS O RS

The principal operations in producing shears and scissors are forging, grinding, heat treating, polishing, and finishing, yet these processes can require more than 170 steps to transform the raw bar of steel to its final, ready-for-sale state, and most of these steps are hand operations requiring expert craftsmanship. Metallurgical analysis of the collection of scissors and shears from medieval London sites revealed a high degree of standardization in the production of shears, most of which were forged from a single piece of iron that had a steel cutting edge scarfwelded to a wrought iron back. Throughout the medieval period the left blade of the shears always overlapped the right, and the cutting surface was flat, while the reverse side was usually somewhat rounded with a chamfer at the cutting edge.16 Scissor-making did not become automated until rather late in the nineteenth century. Before that, all the processes in manufacturing scissors—forging, boring, hardening, shaping, grinding, filing shanks and bows, putting together with rivet

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or screw, polishing and burnishing—were done by hand. This contributed to a lack of standardization; many ‘‘fancy patterns’’ for scissors came into being only because the cutlers crafted each pair by hand. A range of small tools could be fitted into the scissor-maker’s anvil for the rough forging and shaping of scissors, but ornamental details were filed by hand and drilled. Shanks and bows were finished off by hand burnishing. Much of the finishing work was done by women— the Sheffield cutlery trade was composed of many small-scale shops operated at the household level of production, and often both skills and shops were passed down through families over the generations.17 In her research into the cutlery trades in Sheffield, Joan Unwin found only seven pre-eighteenth-century probate inventories for scissorsmiths. Several of the inventories failed to list any items relevant to the trade the men pursued, although one man, William Burley (d. 1696/97) left behind ten gross of scissors valued at five pounds. As for the others, ‘‘Joshua Russell, d. 1692/3, had a smithy with two hearths and a complement of tools for each—bellows, stock, anvil, cooltrough, hammers and tongs, while Francis Bronell, d. 1698, had two stocks and anvils in his smith . . . as did Thomas Hunt d. 1696. Four of the seven scissorsmiths had equipment and tools for grinding and glazing, two of them at a ‘Wheel.’ Only one inventory mentions files and only two had very small amounts of iron and steel.’’ 18 As these inventory entries reveal, the scissorsmith required equipment much the same as that used by others in the cutlery trades: a forging hearth, an anvil, hammers, and tongs. The smith forged each half of a pair of scissors separately, first heating a rod of iron in the hearth, then shaping the blade, bow, and connecting shank using dies set into his anvil. Sheffield smiths initially used blister steel to forge cutting edges, but about 1742 Benjamin Huntsman developed high-quality crucible steel. Nevertheless, steel was costly, so throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scissorsmiths forge-welded a narrow strip of steel along the cutting edge of the iron blades during the initial forging.19 Bows could be formed by bending the end of the iron rod around to form a circle; the end could then be welded to the shank, producing what was known as a ‘‘shot bow.’’ The weld was not absolutely necessary, however, and Continental scissorsmiths right up to the twentieth century often left the bow detached from the shank. Another method of producing the bow was by widening a hole punched through the end of the shank; this method was often used on later small scissors.20 After the two halves of a pair of scissors were completed, the next step in forging was to match the halves (this was called ‘‘putting together’’) and to set the blades so that they could cut effectively. Scissor assembly was skilled work, involving

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careful grinding of the blade and ‘‘setting’’ it by giving it a slight twist. This twist makes it possible for the blade edges to keep ‘‘on cut’’ all along the length of the blades. ‘‘If the two blades were simply pivoted together they would not work properly because the material they are trying to cut will force them apart. The blades must therefore be made to curve or twist inwards from pivot to point, so that in use they only touch at the cutting point where the pressure is concentrated.’’ 21 When closed and not in use, scissor blades should touch only at their tips. Once the two halves were riveted together at the shank end of the blade, all surfaces were filed to remove traces of work and rough edges; then they were polished to create smooth and decorative finishes. The same finishing processes were used in the final stage of manufacturing shears.22 When mass-mechanical methods of production became popular at the end of the nineteenth century, much of the variety in the design and even types of scissors was lost, and engineering practice limited manufacturing ranges to a few basic styles and patterns. Stamping machines eliminated much of the need for handwork along with stylistic variation among scissors. Mechanically produced scissors fall into one of four broad categories: hot drop-forged of forging steel with welded high-carbon crucible steel blades; hot drop-forged of a single piece of forging steel; cold-pressed from steel strips; and cast iron. The first process results in the best-quality scissors, which are nearly unbreakable. Cold-pressed scissors lack temper, so their blades readily become dull, and cast-iron scissors and shears are brittle and will snap under pressure.23 T YP ES O F SHE A RS A ND S CI SS O RS

There are many types of scissors designed to serve specific functions within the realm of sewing and tailoring, but this is only the beginning. And given that until the late nineteenth century scissors were produced one pair at a time by skilled artisans, the variations among sewing scissors alone, in terms of decoration and minor differences in the shaping of different elements, are manifold. As with so many other types of implement, items sold as sewing scissors or barber’s scissors could be used to cut all manner of things, so although what follows can help guide the archaeologist toward the interpretation of which scissors were intended for what purpose, it cannot offer insight into alternative, opportunistic, idiosyncratic, and—perhaps—even criminal uses to which such implements might be put.24 It is also worth noting that it is sometimes difficult to identify with confidence a whole object from merely one of its parts, but this is something archaeologists are all too frequently forced to do. Implements that are not scissors might have

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bows or finger holes for ease of operation; candlesnuffers, boiled-egg cutters, and sugar tongs are examples of such objects. A pair of candlesnuffers from the Estèbe House (1755–1810) at Place-Royale in Québec City offers a good example. Because it is nearly intact, this artifact is easily identified as a pair of candlesnuffers (mouchettes en fer)—but the blade tip that has broken off, if found elsewhere than in association with the snuffers, might be identified as a fragment of a scissors blade (and of course the same is true of the bows and upper shanks of such an object).25 In late-seventeenth-century deposits at Tilbury Fort in Essex, England, for instance, archaeologists recovered a fragment of a copper-alloy object that they tentatively identified as part of a pair of scissors, although all that survived was a portion of the shank and the very beginnings of a loop or bow. They acknowledge, however, that ‘‘copper alloy scissors are very uncommon and may have had inserted iron blades for added strength. Alternatively this piece could be part of another two handled pivoted object such as a candle snuffer.’’ The latter interpretation seems the most likely of the two.26 shears Comes the blind fury with Th’ abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life. —john milton, Lycidas, 1637

Examination of the fifty-four examples recovered from London archaeological contexts dating from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries revealed only minor changes in the appearance and construction of shears over the centuries. The earliest medieval shears consisted merely of two wide blades, the upper blade straight or sloping, each blade tapering to the tip, and a plain handle. The bow held the tension; all the bows were oval or circular and averaged about one-third of the total arm length. Shears dated to the fourteenth century have rectangularsection handles, with central ridges, possibly decorative, possibly as a means of strengthening the loop. Handles long in proportion to the blades allowed greater leverage, and more pressure could be exerted.27 The shears from London sites varied in length, ranging from just under three inches long to about twelve and a half inches long. Extra length, combined with a wide span across the bow, made for a very strong cutting action; a combination of long handle and long blades was best for a continuous cutting action, while ‘‘accurate and continuous cutting required long and relatively slender blades.’’ Sheep shears require slender, pointed blades with an overall length of between twelve and eighteenth inches; long-bladed shears were also useful for cutting

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cloth. The smallest shears fit into the palm of the hand and are worked by the finger and thumb; small shears serve best for a single exact cut—cutting thread, for instance. The small fourteenth- and fifteenth-century shears from London all have a single recess, curved upper blades, and tapering or angled blade tips; these could have served a variety of domestic purposes. Small, ‘‘domestic’’ shears for cutting thread or hair were still in use in postmedieval times; a blade from such a pair was found in a seventeenth-century context by archaeologists monitoring drainage work at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery on George Street in Perth, Scotland. Two examples from the London collection have slender blades with silver inlay, making it seem likely that this type of shears was intended for use in sewing and needlework and that such examples are the precursors to ‘‘the elaborate needlepoint scissors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.’’ 28 Cloth shears are similar to sheep shears in that they are quite large, but they have broad, pointed blades to ensure a straight cut. Fuller’s shears are distinctive in shape and size; from medieval times up until the early nineteenth century when cloth-shearing was mechanized, they were huge, heavy, and broad-ended, with a stout outer framework into which two flat blades, broader at the end than at the base, were set. As noted earlier, they were used in cloth finishing to cut off the ends of fibers raised by teazels (teazling is akin to giving the cloth ‘‘a severe brushing, which raises fibre ends to the surface’’). The ends were then closely cropped, giving the fabric a soft, even surface. Shearers, as they were called, were skilled craftsmen whose tools were specialized, expensive, and highly valued— and they could weigh as much as thirty-five pounds. Fuller’s shears had long, wide blades with a straight upper edge at right angles to the squared tip of the blade. The shears were laid flat on the cloth with the shearer’s left hand inserted through the stirrup grip on the lower blade, allowing the blades to be opened and closed with the same hand.29 Not all fuller’s shears were immense. The larger versions tended to be used primarily in the first shearing of the cloth, which took place at the fulling mill, but smaller shears might be used in subsequent re-shearings by the shearman or even a final time just before the cloth was made up by the tailor: ‘‘occasionally ‘small’ instead of ‘great’ shears had to be used, as for certain striped cloths, where the surface of the stripes varied.’’ 30 Shears seem to have been acquired and discarded as readily in the early English colonies as they were in medieval and postmedieval Britain; many examples are reported in the archaeological literature. An incomplete large shears blade was found in the destruction layers (about 1650) at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire. A pair of iron shears was found at the seventeenth-century site known as the Maine at Governor’s Land, near Jamestown, Virginia.31

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scissors There is a great variety of types of scissors for diverse purposes, sewing being just one activity for which scissors were necessary. In what follows I attempt to provide as much detail about how to differentiate one type of scissors from another, but again I must add the caveat that people could use a pair of scissors any way they wished. I do suspect, however, that if someone in a household went to the trouble and expense to purchase a pair of specialty scissors, he or she had a definite purpose in mind. My search through the literature supports this inference in a circumstantial way, for it seems that by far the most commonly found type of scissors on the majority of sites are best interpreted as general-purpose or all-purpose ‘‘domestic utility’’ scissors. These are generally fairly small (about four to six inches long), with thin blades, and for the most part lack ornamentation. Examples have been found at Bolingbroke Castle (1650–1675); at a site south of Aldgate High Street, in Aldgate, London (c. 1670–1750/70), at Oyster Street, Portsmouth (one pair from a late-sixteenth- to seventeenth-century feature and another from a mid-seventeenth-century feature).32 Sewing scissors. First it is useful to comprehend the possible formal and stylistic variation among the various parts of scissors, which in the nineteenth century was considerable. Bows could be fluted, flat, wire, bevel, or bevel-curl in section (fig. 5.2). Shapes of bows ranged from variations on ovals to nearly circular, and some scissors had offset bows, that is, one bow (usually the thumb grip) is larger than the other. Sheffield scissorsmiths had a colorful vocabulary to refer to the style of shanks: bead-neck; winged Spanish; thread-neck; square sarum; reverse glass; fiddle joint; common tup; leaf sarum; fluted beaded with curl swamp joint; and combinations of and variations on these. Scissor blades were classified according to their profile: flat, bodkin, or rapier. Illustrated here are three pairs of eighteenth-century English (probably Sheffield) sewing scissors from the collections of the Winterthur Museum. From left to right, the blade types are flat, bodkin (or round), and rapier (or pointed); the bow types are, from right to left, bevel, wire, and flat. All three have unusually elaborate shanks (fig. 5.3). Buttonhole scissors. Buttonhole scissors, a Victorian invention, have special slotted jaws and a small screw at the shank end of the blades (fig. 5.4). This could be adjusted to the size of the buttonhole to be cut; one manual advised that ‘‘a button-hole should be long enough to reach across the button; it cannot be cut so well with common scissars [sic] as with those made for the purpose.’’ Before this specialized implement was devised, a needleworker would cut a buttonhole with a cutter or seam-knife, a small tool about three to four inches long, with a handle of bone or other material and a blade that was sharp and somewhat

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Fig. 5.2 Some bow and shank styles as defined by Sheffield scissorsmiths. (After Himsworth 1953:59–156)

spade-shaped. The seam-knife was more commonly used for cutting stitches to unpick seams, and by the nineteenth century small folding or pocketknives were preferred for these purposes.33 Tailors’ trimmers with side-bent shank; tailors’ or dressmakers’ shears. Tailors make use of small scissors or cuts, medium-sized scissors known as trimmers, and large-bladed ‘‘scissors’’ up to sixteen inches long, which cut six to eight inches and several layers of cloth at once. These large specimens, as noted above, are commonly called shears both because of their size and because one of the bows or finger loops is larger than the other. This differing size of the bows gives them an offset from the shanks and blades, hence the descriptive phrase ‘‘side-bent shank’’ (fig. 5.5).34 Pinking shears likewise have a ‘‘side bite,’’ different-sized bows, and distinctive serrated-edge blades for cutting fabric. Lace scissors. These small scissors have a protuberance at the end of one of the blade points, ‘‘as though a lump of metal had dropped on to it and not been filed off.’’ This type of scissors was particularly used for Carrickmacross lace, in which the design is formed by cutting away the top layer of material from the

Fig. 5.3 Three pairs of eighteenth-century English sewing scissors displaying a range of bow and shank shapes as well as differing blade sections. (Courtesy The Winterthur Museum)

Fig. 5.4 A contemporary example of buttonholing scissors with adjustable screw.

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Fig. 5.5 Tailors’ or dressmakers shears, distinguished by offset bow.

underlying layer of net. The pattern is achieved by cutting with great delicacy and precision, requiring specialized scissors. The small ‘‘bump’’ at the tip of the scissor blade helped keep the two layers of material carefully separated, lessening the risk of a false cut.35 Scissors for personal hygiene: Barbers’ scissors. Scissors designed for professional haircutting often have a small, curved protuberance off of one of the bows (sometimes called a cockade); this is a finger grip or brace (fig. 5.6). The blades tend to be flat and the shanks straight (Sheffield scissorsmiths referred to this plain, straight style as a ‘‘quaker shank’’).36 Scissors for personal hygiene: Manicure scissors. Manicure scissors are made in a variety of patterns and in quarter-inch size variations between three and four inches in length. The blades are curved to accommodate the curve of the nails over the fingertips and to reach the cuticles for trimming. Such scissors are known from at least the sixteenth century; Mary Andere cites an order dated from 1560 ‘‘for a pair of scissors, of Moulin manufacture, garnished with coppergilt, for trimming the nails of M. the King.’’ 37 Culinary scissors. Scissors (or shears) can be put to good use in the kitchen, and certainly all good cooks would tend to keep a pair of such scissors on hand. There is also a range of scissor types that the well-appointed dining room might have boasted; these are highly specialized and likely to have been used only in the wealthiest households. Shears and scissors designed for use by cooks take many forms and sometimes closely resemble their counterparts intended for other purposes, though such special-purpose implements would not likely be found in contexts predating the nineteenth century or in ordinary households. Probably the most common sort

Shears and Scissors

129

Fig. 5.6 Barber’s scissors (often called barber’s shears) with finger rest. Barber’s scissors range in overall length from about 5 to 7 inches long and were made with or without finger rests.

of kitchen shears are heavyweight fish or chicken shears with offset bows, the wide, sharp blades of which could easily cut through bones as well as skin and flesh (figs. 5.7, no. 8 Fischschwanzsheere, and 5.8). A portion of a page from the Friedrick Dick catalog from about 1912 shows several evil-looking implements intended to give a cook or chef advantage over various potentially recalcitrant animal parts (fig. 5.7). Each has a spring as well as a locking device, which, given the seemingly lethal sharpness of the blades, makes eminently good sense. Another type of culinary scissors was sugar scissors or, as depicted here, sugar pliers (Zuckerzange), used to cut lumps from a hard cone of sugar (fig. 5.9). Grape scissors (ciseaux à raisin) are very elaborate scissors that were usually gilded or of gold and were fanciful in shape; they were intended to permit a dinner guest to gracefully separate grapes from their stems at table. Such items would have been used only in the most elegant of households.38 An egg cutter (coupe-oeuf or pince coupe-oeuf ) normally has only a single blade that cleanly beheads the top of a boiled egg, so these tools are probably better categorized as a type of pincer. Only occasionally do they assume a form resembling scissors, instead coming in a variety of ingenious shapes.39 Other specialty scissors. Scissor-makers have long catered to special needs by

Fig. 5.7 A selection of meat, poultry, and fish shears from the Friedrick Dick Company catalog, c. 1912. The graterlike implement (No. 8) just below the large poultry shears in the center (No. 1) is a fish scaler. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

Fig. 5.8 Shears for fish or poultry, available in three sizes from the Friedrick Dick catalog, c. 1912. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

Shears and Scissors

131

Fig. 5.9 Steel sugar pliers used to remove lumps from a solid cone of sugar, available plated in either nickel or silver from the Friedrick Dick catalog, c. 1912. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

producing a variety of scissors for special-purpose use. Surgical scissors, for instance, are made for the medical profession and include dissecting scissors, made either with or without probe points, as well as angular, roweling, and apothecaries’ scissors. The archaeologist excavating deposits at hospitals, infirmaries, and asylums is likely to encounter such implements. Folding pocket scissors and lamp-trimmers’ scissors (also known as candlesnuffers) also fall into the category of special-purpose scissors, although, as noted earlier, they may be easily confused with small sewing scissors. Anglers’ scissors are special-purpose scissors designed to hold open the mouth of a fish while the angler extracts the hook; they have serrations along the outer edges of both blades to prevent slipping, along with a spacer bar to keep the blades open at the desired width. The other (inside) edges of the blades tend to be sharpened in the normal fashion. I N T ER PRET I NG S CI SS O RS

At first glance, scissors appear to be lacking in potential for social and cultural interpretations of the sort I have been able to wrest from other types of needlework implements. Could scissors have much of anything to do with, for example, the construction of identity or with gender? They are, after all, quintessentially utilitarian. But there are clues that lead me to think that as archaeologists we may wish to subject scissors and scissorlike objects to the same sorts of interrogation I recommend for other small finds. As we have seen, scissors are made in varied shapes and sizes and to different specifications for various purposes, and with care we can determine the intended uses for a pair of scissors. This does not

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Fig. 5.10 Portrait of Allethenia Fisk Farrar, painted in Vermont c. 1835 and attributed to itinerant folk portraitist Asahel Powers. The subject has a pair of sewing scissors on a chain attached to her waistband with a chatelaine hook. (Courtesy Historic New England/SPNEA)

mean they were always used in ‘‘appropriate’’ ways, but it does lead us further than assuming that all scissors were sewing scissors. Even sewing scissors came in a variety of styles designed to assist the needlewoman or tailor to perform specialized sewing tasks with ease and efficiency, and it is clear that seemingly ordinary all-purpose utility scissors could vary widely in quality. The portrait of Vermont resident Allethenia Fisk Farrar, painted about 1835 by Asahel Lynde Powers, reveals how great pride in a pair of high-quality (and hence expensive) scissors could be (fig. 5.10). Farrar’s scissors were likely made in Sheffield, England (they have a round tup shank (see fig. 5.2), flat bows, and pointed or rapier blade—very effective for buttonholing as well as for snipping

Shears and Scissors

133

Fig. 5.11 Detail of Farrar portrait showing sewing scissors. (Courtesy Historic New England/SPNEA)

fine embroidery threads and tiny hemstitching; fig. 5.11). She has elected to be portrayed at her sewing with her scissors displayed prominently; the portrait conveys that she is an accomplished needlewoman, a dutiful wife, and a woman of good character. What is more, her scissors are literally attached to her person, depending from an elaborate chain affixed to a chatelaine hook slipped over her wide belt. All of this bespeaks wealth, as do the lush fabric and lace of her costume, the small gold brooch at her décolletage, and the large buckle so prominently clasping her belt round her cinched-in waist. That a pair of scissors could be considered so precious as to become part of a woman’s costume and a part of her presentation of self is evidence that, in some instances, scissors could become intimately associated with personhood and gender identity and could serve as a medium to convey messages about the self and the careful construction of an image of domesticity and femininity. the unkind cut for archaeologists Most archaeologists who do recover scissors from their sites fail to find many pairs; instead they find the occasional rusted or broken example that is costly to conserve and difficult to interpret. My study of many archaeological collections leads me to conclude that on the majority of sites a single pair of all-purpose utility scissors is the most common find. It is rare that a site produces multiple pairs of scissors, but even a site that offers up several examples may not provide the archaeologist with much fodder for the interpretive mill. We can take an object lesson from the scissors found at the site of Charles’ Gift (18ST704) at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. At this late-seventeenth-century site, fragments of three pairs of iron scissors were found. All were badly corroded; one small pair of utility or sewing scissors looks for all the world like a collection of corrosion lumps (fig. 5.12). An

Fig. 5.12 The corroded remains of a pair of small utility scissors found in a lateseventeenth-century deposit at the site of Charles’ Gift in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. (Courtesy Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD)

Fig. 5.13 X-ray photograph of the scissors from Charles’ Gift in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, showing how little actual metal remains after the scissors spent more than three hundred years in the soil. (Courtesy Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD)

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Fig. 5.14 Half of a small pair of nineteenth-century embroidery scissors found at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm, Newbury, Massachusetts. (Photograph by Michael Hamilton)

X-ray photograph of the same pair of scissors reveals that very little iron remained after the scissors had spent three hundred years in the ground (fig. 5.13). It is impossible to study details (such as marks, steel treatment on the blades, and so on) on such badly corroded specimens.40 At the St. John’s site in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, archaeologists recovered a surprising minimum of nine pairs of scissors. This was a site occupied over a long period by a succession of well-to-do households, so it is not too surprising that the assemblage should be rich and varied. But this is a high number of scissors nonetheless. Curator Silas Hurry noted that only three specimens came from dated contexts, and these were all assigned to the 1685–1715 or terminal phase of occupation at the site. Hurry further concluded that the assemblage of scissors lacked any temporally diagnostic attributes, which is not unexpected.41 Distinctive features of scissors are likely to arise from different intended purposes, as we have seen, or simply from stylistic variation, given that until the later nineteenth century scissors were not mass-produced but manufactured by scissorsmiths separately, by hand, in small workshops. What is remarkable about the St. John’s assemblage is that three of the scissors are marked, one with the lowercase initials ‘‘pc,’’ another with a ‘‘7,’’ and a third with a mark resembling a spade of the sort that appears on playing cards. One specimen has incised lines known as decorative ‘‘stringing’’ in scissorsmith parlance. The St. John’s scissors do not exhibit much variation in size, though the blades

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differ in shape and include bodkin or round, rapier or pointed, and vigo or bluntpointed types. Nevertheless, most seem to fall into the category of multipurpose utility scissors. One nearly intact pair, however (No. 75S/AEU), has protrusions that appear to be finger guards, which suggests that this was a pair of barber’s scissors intended for cutting hair. So it would appear that even when blessed by an abundance of scissors from a single site, the archaeologist can offer only limited speculation about their intended purposes and, because the recovered scissors are often fragmentary or poorly preserved, even less in the way of interpretation of their relative quality and likely social significance. Under most circumstances it would be unwise to attempt to assign scissors to any gender-specific task category or to state with certainty that they are sewing implements unless they exhibit characteristics specific to scissors designed to cut fabric or to assist with such tasks as buttonholing or embroidery, as is the case with half of a small pair of embroidery scissors found at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts (fig. 5.14). Close inspection of scissors is nevertheless likely to provide insight into many household activities.

6

Findings Notions, Accessories, and the Artifacts of Textile Production

Thus far I have attempted to show how seemingly simple and commonplace artifacts that everybody readily recognizes and ‘‘knows’’—pins, needles, thimbles, and scissors—have complex histories and even more complex and varied social meanings than we might at first think they do, and I have offered ways to enrich our interpretations of these humble finds. In this chapter I consider items related to sewing and textile working that are far more likely to go unrecognized and hence unremarked and unstudied. For this reason I have compiled something of a grab-bag, or workbasket, if you will, of artifacts associated with such activities as spinning, weaving, and lace-making as well as with the production of finished garments—sewing accessories and the ‘‘findings’’ or small details that give a garment or curtain or other piece of work a finished look and help make it fit and hang correctly. An early-twentieth-century manual on home sewing, published by the Woman’s Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania, opens with the observation that ‘‘in dressmaking and home sewing, there is always need for finishing helps, some of which are essential to the completion of a garment or article and others of which are merely conveniences. These items are known as findings. They include all sorts of notions, such as snap fasteners, elastic, tape, and so on, without which a garment usually cannot be satisfactorily finished.’’ Like the home sewer, the archaeologist needs to ‘‘be thoroughly familiar with what is available along this line.’’ 1 T E X T I L E PRODUC T I ON

As Elizabeth Barber points out in Prehistoric Textiles, ‘‘cloth seldom survives the millennia’’—indeed, only under unusually propitious conditions do textiles of any age survive archaeologically. The chief evidence for textile production in

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Findings

prehistoric times comes in the form of tools, or parts of tools, used in spinning and weaving, as well as in artistic depictions of these activities or of individuals wearing garments fashioned from string or woven fibers. Considerable attention has been given to these sorts of evidence in the published literature, and because Barber’s book is such a marvelous synthesis and culmination of archaeological research on ancient textiles, I do not attempt a comprehensive coverage of early spinning and weaving here. Nor do I discuss the types of industrial machinery, such as power looms and spinning mules, used in factories. Rather, I focus on items likely to be found at farmsteads or household compounds where smallscale domestic production took place. An archaeological case study of homebased weaving helps us to understand how the processes and equipment used in home-based textile production changed in the medieval and early modern eras as demand for new types of textiles encouraged the adoption of new technologies to produce them.2 spinning equipment The first type of tool used for spinning was a simple stick, or spindle, onto which yarn was wound, to which at some point in prehistory a weight, known as a whorl, was added. This allowed the stick to act as a flywheel. Spindles were usually straight sticks made of wood or bone, sometimes with a hook or notch at the upper end; whorls were made of varied materials—wood, stone, fired clay, and so on—and could be placed anywhere on the stick but in most instances would be fitted at one end or the other. Barber provides the best survey of the evidence for the use of spindle whorls in prehistoric times. Nine bone spindle whorls were among those found in late Saxon (late-ninth to early-twelfth-century) deposits in the City of London; these were made from the hemispherical fused femur heads of cattle ranging in weight from twelve to twenty-seven grams; stone whorls from similarly dated deposits were conically shaped of a local calcite mudstone weighing between fifteen to twenty-three grams. The weight of the whorl affected both the thickness of the thread and the amount of twist imparted to it.3 Spindle wheels placed the spindle between uprights at one end of a benchlike platform that had a large, hand-turned wheel upon which the yarn was turned and given a twist as it was fed to the spindle. There is considerable debate about when and where this simple machine was invented; some textile historians believe it was invented in China between ad 500 and 1000, whereas others consider India the likely place of origin. The Chinese seem to have a solid claim to the invention of a type of treadle-powered spinning wheel by the fourteenth century, although this differed quite a bit from the treadle wheels used later in Europe. The spinning wheels listed in early probate inventories recorded in

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139

North America are of two types, both of them invented in Europe sometime around 1600. Probate inventories list spinning wheels among the furnishings of almost every seventeenth-century household, often distinguishing ‘‘lint’’ or linen wheels from wheels for spinning woolen or cotton yarn (table 6.1). The former type of wheel was also known as the Saxony or flax wheel and was used for spinning both worsted and linen yarns. It was relatively small and could be worked continuously because it had a flyer of wood or metal attached to the spindle, along with two whorls, one attached to the spindle and a second of smaller diameter forming part of the bobbin. The spinner could be seated while doing this sort of work. The other type of wheel was called a great wheel or wool wheel and was, as its name implies, used to spin woolen yarn. It required the spinner to hold the carded roll of fiber in one hand, attaching some fiber to the spindle while turning the wheel by hand or with a little wooden peg while she walked backward to effect a twist on the fiber, then walk back toward the wheel while turning it in the opposite direction so that the yarn was taken up on the spindle.4 The archaeology of textile production often extends beyond artifacts and households to the broader landscape. In parts of England the remains of flaxretting pools sometimes survive as features of the medieval landscape; the retting process, which allowed the hard outer portion of the flax plant to decay so that the fibers inside could be separated and prepared for spinning, often involved complex feature systems of watercourses, pools, and sluices. Local place-names or field names often provide clues to the location of places where this activity took place. It is possible that similar landscape features survive elsewhere, for instance, in places where colonial settlers established textile industries and that have not since been subjected to intensive development.5 Households that produced their own yarn often began with the raw product, and it is quite common for inventories with linen wheels to list as well various tools for processing flax (hackles or brakes, for instance) and for those listing wool wheels to include cards or, occasionally, wool combs. Combing was an earlier method than carding, in which wool passed through the teeth of a comb, which removed short fibers, aligning the rest. Spun combed fibers lie close and flat, producing a smooth, hard yarn known as worsted yarn. Carding, by contrast, resulted in fibers that were only roughly aligned, leaving in short fibers; carded fibers were ‘‘mixed and criss-crossed’’ and when spun retained air pockets that made for a warm and soft yarn known as woolen yarn. Combing was considered a specialized task and was often done by men; wool combs were large and heavy (weighing about seven pounds), with three to nine rows of teeth made of varying lengths of tempered steel set into horn at an angle of about 80 degrees. Scandinavian wool combs or togcombs came into use in the eighteenth century; they had

Table 6.1 Seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, probate inventory evidence for carding and spinning Date

Decedent

Residence

Relevant entries

Estate value

Source

1644 1644 1644 1644 1646

Mrs. Margaret Pease Joanna Cummings John Talbey Isabel West Mrs. Mary Hersome, widow

Salem Salem Salem Salem Wenham

£19.2s.8d. £33. ? £54.12s. not totaled

PR 1:40 PR 1:36 PR 1:39 PR 1:41 PR 1: 7

1646

Mrs. Emme Mason, widow

Salem

£25.16s.

PR 1:57

1648 1648 1653

Thomas Firman John Balch Mrs. Margery Knowlton, widow

Ipswich Salem Ipswich

not given not given £158.15s.3d.

PR 1:95 PR 1:97 PR 1:163

1653/1654 1654

Mrs. Elinor Treslere George Burrill, Sr.

Salem Lynn

£26.19s. not given

PR 1:211 PR 1:180

1654/1655 1655

William Knight Mrs. Abigail Averill

Lynn Ipswich

one whele, 2s.5d. whell, 4s. one wheele to spin with, 4s. a whele, 8s. 2 wheles & a reele, 6s.; a parsell of tow, 2s.; one Bundell of lyning yarne, 5s. hatchell, 2s.6d., 6s.; one hake 3s.6d.; one lining wheele, —; one Cotton wheele, 2s.; in yaron, 16s.8d. In Kitchen, a whelle & 5 ould Chairs, 7s. yearne, flakes & hempe, 1li.4s. white thred & a remnant of new cloth, lots of cloth, flax, towe; 2li.1-4 of yarne at 2s.4d., 5s.3d.; lennen yarne 1s.2d. spinning wheels a pcell of linnen, yearne, & winding blads, 4s. 6d.; 2 linnen wheeles 2 churnes & other lumber pinns, needles 1li. 4s. thre spininge whealls, a pare of woll cards, 8s. linen wheel 3s.; pair of tow cards, 1s.; an ould tunill with a spindle and a peece of ould linin, 6d.

£154.15s. £77.4s.11d.

PR 1:214 PR 1:201

1655 1655 1658 1659

Henry Fay, weaver Rebecca Bacon Susan French, widow Mrs. Jane Lambert, widow

Newbury Salem Ipswich Rowley

1660 1662 1663 1663 1664 1670 1671 1672/1673 1673 1675/1676

Humphrey Reyner Mrs. Anne Lume Martha Harrield Mrs. Mary Smith, widow Mrs. Grace Sallows Mrs. Elizabeth Stacey Mrs. Abigail Wells Ann Burt Mrs. Elizabeth Mansfield Mrs. Margaret Kimball

Rowley Rowley Ipswich Marblehead Salem? Ipswich Ipswich Lynn Lynn Ipswich

1676

Miell Lambard

Salem?

1676

Samuel Putnam

Salem?

a wheel and Iron spindle, 3s. 12lb. of wool & 5 lb. of yarne, 1li.13s. a linen wheele & 2 chaires, 5s. whelles and Cards, 4s.; Cotton wool, yearn and hemp, 10s. thred tape & sycers, 1li.5s.6d.; whele & cars, 5s. whelle and cards, 4s. tooe old whels and tooe old chayers, 5s.; 3 yds of Cotton, 7s.; 2 wheles, 7s. 6 pare of stockins & a spinning wheele, 12s. two ould wheeles lennen wheele, 4s.6d.; misc. textiles 2 wheeles, too cheirs & other lumber, 1li. a whelle and Lumber 1li.5s. Cotton wooll, two pare of Cards, basket, Combe parsell bellows, one pear candlestick, Trunckes, one linnen wheele, 2li.3s. at Hampton one ould spinin whell, 1s. 20 pound of woll, 1li.; 1 tabel and 2 whells and cards, 1 kneding trof, 15s. 26 pound of yarne, 2li.9d.; 20 pound woolle, 1li.; one wheell & Chair, hors takell, 7s.6d.

£18.7s. £195.8s.6d. £12.11s.6d. £539.16s.4d.

PR 1:216 PR 1:227 PR 1:272 PR 1:300

not given £49.2s.6d. £49.16s.6d. £144.3s.6d. £113.13s.3d. £29.2s. £63.18s.5d £47.2s.6d. £184.18s. £98.10s.9d.

PR 1:322 PR 1:371 PR 2:115–120 PR 1:410 PR 1:444 PR 2:172 PR 2:241 PR 2:361–362 PR 2:382–383 PR 3:46

£2.10s.10d. not given

PR 3:46 RF 6:230

£191.7s.3d.

RF 6:230

Table 6.1 Continued Date

Decedent

Residence

Relevant entries

Estate value

Source

1676

John Huchinson

Salem

£273.5s.6d.

RF 6:231

1677 1678 1679 1679 1680

John Haomons Mrs. Ann Condy Samuel Mansfield, weaver Nathaniel Parker, carpenter William Sutton

Gloucester Marblehead Lynn Newbury Newbury

£20.16s. £0.4s.6d. £154.8s.6d £161.6s. £30.19s.6d.

PR 3:201 PR 3:281 PR 3:306 PR 3:316 PR 3:371

1681 1681

Mrs. Jane Williams Mrs. Margaret Bishop, widow

Ipswich? Ipswich

£33.5s.6d. £710.0s.1d.

PR 3:406 PR 3:411

1681

Mrs. Rebecca Howlet, widow

Newbury

one wheell, tow pare pillowberes, 10s.6d; woollen yarne & woolle, 2 li. one chest & 2 wheeles, 8s., 1li.18s. 1 old spinning wheel, 2s.5d. See text bedstead, sledd and reele, 1li. wheele for spining, 4s.; five pound of cotton yarne a payer of cards and a coten wheele, 6s. 2 silver spons thimble & clasps, 1li.19s.; 2 spinning wheeles, trenchers, sives, scales & qurens, meal tub & meal trough, 1li.,16s. twelve pounds of cotton yarne, 1li.10s

£64.8s.6d.

PR 3:416–417

Sources: PR 1: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1916; PR 2: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1917; PR 3: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920; RF 6: Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1917

Findings

143

only one row of teeth and in fact resemble a pitchfork with extra tines and a very short handle. Cards were large, flat, square or oblong wooden paddles bristling on one side with teeth formed of dozens of small wire hooks set in leather; they were used for combing the woolen (or cotton) fibers until they ran roughly parallel to one another. In early cards the wires were quite straight, whereas later they were bent or hooked towards the handles. It is possible that the teeth of such cards might be found archaeologically, depending on the preservation conditions at a site, but it seems likely that if the teeth were badly corroded the archaeologist would most likely assume they were the tips of corroded nails or tacks.6 Spinning wheels were made almost entirely of wood, with metal for the spindle and wheel axle only, and leather for the bearings, so they do not survive archaeologically, although a spindle for collecting the spun yarn made of metal, such as Henry Fay’s ‘‘wheele and Iron spindle’’ listed among his weaving equipment (table 6.1) might be recovered.7 The spun yarn would be rewound onto the spools or shuttles used by the weaver to project the weft threads across the warp (note in table 6.1 Henry Fay’s ‘‘spooleing wheele’’), and it is possible that some portion of the winder might be of metal: ‘‘the bobbin is pushed on to a slightly tapered spindle, usually made of metal or wood, turned by a driving wheel’’ (fig. 6.1). Bobbin winders often closely resemble spinning wheels, but normally the winder would be used in conjunction with a swift, a more or less ‘‘cone-shaped form that rotates as the yarn is wound off and guided on to the bobbin by one hand held close to it, the other hand turning the wheel.’’ 8 weaving equipment Early looms were often of a type referred to as warp-weighted because the warp threads were held parallel and in tension by tying them in small bunches to weights of stone, pottery, or metal. Such looms were upright, perhaps set into the ground on posts or leaned against a wall, and the weaver(s) would stand before them and work from the top downward. In Europe such looms were in use during the Neolithic era, and examples continue in use today in some parts of the world. The warp-weighted loom continued in common use in England on both urban and rural sites throughout the Saxon period; references to other sorts of looms being used in London do not appear until the twelfth century. In the City of London evidence of weaving ‘‘is restricted to the occurrence of loom weights and pin-beaters, both of which were used with warp-weighted looms (although pin beaters were also used on other sorts of looms).’’ 9 Pin beaters or thread-pickers were used to beat in the weft on a loom. These are simply short, straight lengths of turned bone or antler tapering to a point at

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Fig. 6.1 A nineteenth-century handloom weaving and spinning workshop. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

either end, and they took on a high polish from use; they are rarely found in posttenth-century contexts. In areas where the two-beamed vertical loom (versus warp-weighted loom) was used—pre-Roman Denmark, for example—the weaving tools found include pin beaters, sword beaters, and weaving combs. Sword beaters were about ten inches to twenty inches in length and are found on sites as early as the Bronze Age; they were sometimes made of wood or of iron as well as of bone (including sea mammal bone). Pin beaters (sometimes called dagger beaters) were shorter than sword beaters and vary in shape from ‘‘cigar-shaped’’ (circular or ovate in section and tapering to a point at either end from an intermediate swelling, found in large numbers on Roman sites both on the Continent and in Britain); single-pointed, curved-section beaters made from limb bones (Anglo-Saxon and Viking period); and single-pointed with a flat chisel-like butt at the opposite end (Late Saxon). In Northern Britain from the Iron Age onward, long-handled bone weaving combs were used instead of pin beaters.10 The City of London Saxon loom weights tended to be found in groups of two

Findings

145

to four and most were charred, leading the archaeologists to speculate that they represent the remains of burned looms. Weights used on the same loom tend to look alike, because they would have to have been carefully balanced to provide even tension for the warp. The groupings of loom weights from the London deposits, therefore, are close in size, shape, and weight, while the overall assemblage of weights from Saxon deposits fall into three weight categories, heavy, medium, and light. This evidence is congruent with findings from deposits of similar date in Winchester and Chichester, and it seems likely that the heavier weights affected the type of cloth being woven and the spacing of the warp ends.11 Loom weights, then, provide for the archaeologist solid and long-lasting evidence of the weaver’s craft; the horizontal treadle loom that seems to have come into use in Europe by about ad 1000 and the later drawloom, which was in use at least by the seventeenth century, were constructed almost entirely of wood and hence leave less of an archaeological signature than do earlier types of looms. So it would seem that archaeologists working at later medieval and early modern sites would recover little in the way of evidence for weaving (except for the rare scrap of fabric), but some elements of looms and their accessories can and do survive to be unearthed and interpreted.12 Before the nineteenth century, a region that might boast a textile ‘‘industry’’ was not characterized by factory production but by small-scale domestic production that was carried on in people’s homes or workshops in towns and villages and on farmsteads in rural areas. A good example is Barnsley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Barnsley became a major center of British linen production, and by the early eighteenth century certain entrepreneurially minded residents initiated attempts to organize the industry. Not until the end of the eighteenth century, however, did linen entrepreneurs like Foljambe Wood add to their flaxprocessing works, warehouses, and bleachgrounds ‘‘factory residences’’ of the sort that soon became typical of the industry. ‘‘Factory residences’’ were tenement rows where weavers both lived and wove. Rents were cheap enough to lure families away from farms, and the concentration of weavers into the residential developments proved advantageous for the capitalists because it meant that almost all members of the family could participate in various aspects of the weaving process while under the owner’s watchful eye. The power loom was introduced in the mid-1830s, and this development eventually put an end to the family system of production that for so long had characterized the handloom weaving industry. Despite the predominance of home-based handloom weaving over several centuries, surprisingly little is known about the lives of cottage weavers.13 At Houndhill, near Barnsley in Yorkshire, England, the Elmhirst family practiced ‘‘cottage weaving’’ from the mid-sixteenth century until the early seven-

146

Findings

teenth century, and at the same residence, new owners took up weaving again in the late eighteenth century. The family seat had consisted of a two-winged house with associated farm buildings, one of which was referred to locally as a ‘‘weaving house,’’ none of which survived above ground. Excavation of the building gave every indication that it had been a weaver’s workshop, for the finds included not only pits that may have served for operations such as dyeing and preparation of wool and possibly flax but also several items clearly associated with looms. Denis Ashurst notes that apart from the workshop structure and the documentary record, the early phase of weaving was not represented archaeologically; rather, the finds all seem to date to the second half of the eighteenth century, when the weaving of white linen and twill and fine-quality damasks was the major source of prosperity in the area. The finds are in keeping with this sort of production.14 Among these finds were two sizes of lead weights, known as lingoes, a large one weighing seven and a half ounces and a smaller one weighing five and a half ounces.15 These would have functioned in a drawloom. In medieval looms the depression of a foot pedal caused a series of string healds to lift up alternate warp threads, thus producing a gap or shed through which the shuttle might pass; for weaving complicated designs such as damasks, certain of the warp threads had to be raised out of sequence. The drawloom made this possible: its use in Europe began with the Italian silk industry, although it was known earlier in China and the East. Although most Western scholars had assumed that the drawloom was introduced to China in medieval times, Dieter Kuhn, noted scholar of Chinese textile technology—especially silk weaving—has demonstrated through his analysis of Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220) textiles and texts that an early form of drawloom was among the types of looms used to produce figured fabrics in the later Han dynasty. From Italy the drawloom found its way into France and England, where it was used until around 1800. The drawloom possessed a healdharness by which the weaver controlled the majority of the warp threads that bound the cloth together, as well as a figure-harness with which the draw-boy, the weaver’s assistant, drew up selected threads to make the design. Each warp thread used in the design was encircled by a small loop, or mail, from which a cord coupling passed upward over a series of pulleys to the draw-boy. He drew up the threads as required, following a squared and colored chart as a guide. In order to bring the threads back into position after being raised, each mail had a lingoe hung below it.16 The form of lingoes did not change over time; they were elongated, solid lead cylinders, about five to six inches long, widened and flattened at the top, where a hole was punched through which the thread could pass. At Houndhill the archaeologists also found an iron weight (one pound, three

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147

ounces), about six inches long, that worked in conjunction with a counterbalance consisting of an iron can with a lead-weighted bottom, which would have been filled with enough sand to match the opposing iron weight. The weight served as a friction brake to maintain tension in the warp threads.17 Another artifact pertaining to weaving found at Houndhill was a reed, which consists of a number of metal strips a few inches long, each one gripped at the top and bottom by a binding of pitched linen or hempen thread determining the distance between each strip. The reed, which replaced the pin beater, was used to beat the trailing weft thread back into the warp threads after the shuttle had passed across the loom. The example from Houndhill probably dates to between 1750 and 1800; it had either seventeen or twenty-three strips to the inch, the metal strips being held in pine battens.18 A plate from a nineteenth-century German book illustrating various types of hand work and the tools used in each process depicts a cottage handloom weaving and spinning shop in which a man and two women are employed (fig. 6.1). In the right foreground, a woman is spinning yarn for use by the weavers, and another spinner sits behind her, facing the large window lighting the room; a woman is operating the loom in the background while a man weaves in the foreground. Two weights holding tension in the warp are clearly visible. There is no evidence of mechanization of any sort, even though the workshop is a ‘‘factory’’ of sorts because it incorporates multiple stages in the process of cloth production. The loom weights are the most likely evidence to be recovered from the archaeological record; little else here would survive. A similar scene of a handloom weaving operation shows spinning wheels operated by women and a handloom operated by a male in the foreground (fig. 6.2). In the background, however, we see into a second room that has been equipped with power looms connected to a leather-belt main drive, overseen by a female operative. This larger, partially mechanized shop with its cast-iron machine parts would have a more robust archaeological signature than the shop depicted in fig. 6.1, though its most distinctive signature would arise in the form of evidence for power generation and power transmission (that is, a dam and mill pond or a fastrunning stream with sluiceway leading to a pit for a waterwheel, or a mounting for a steam engine and the coal ash and clinkers left over from stoking the engine’s boiler). There is ample evidence for handloom weaving in the seventeenth-century probate records of Essex County, Massachusetts. I have summarized the entries pertaining to weaving from the published volumes of Essex County inventories as well as entries listing what the inventory takers tended to refer to as ‘‘homemade’’ cloth (table 6.2). Although most inventories of weavers’ shops lack detail,

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Fig. 6.2 A partially mechanized nineteenth-century handloom weaving and spinning workshop. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

there are exceptions, such as the inventory of Samuel Mansfield of Lynn, who died in 1679 of smallpox, leaving a widow and three small children. He was identified as a weaver by the inventory takers, and the items listed in his estate inventory reveal that he had a weaving shop equipped for producing both fine linen and coarser woolen cloth (kersey, spelled phonetically in the inventory).19 A loome & weavors tackling belonging to it, 31i. 19s 6d., 41i.15s. 6d.; raisir Hone, siser, 6s. 6d., 16s. 6d.; wool, 10s.; Lyning yarne, 11i. 10s.; a reele & wheele, 10s., 3 li.; A Loome, Lathe & blocks, tridles, stretchers & irons belonging to it, 21i. 5s; 2 pare of temples, 2s.; a pare of Blocks & wheels, 1s. 6d.; 2 pare of shafts, 2s., 5s. 6d; woolen yarne, 9s.; 10 dozen buttons, 5s.;

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2 Lamps, 2s., halfe a coverlid, slea & Harnis, 19s.6d; A sheep rack, 5s., a rave, 3s., a shitle, 2s. an ould slea, 3s., 13s.; a forke & rake, 2s. 6d, 2 ell sleas & harniss belonging to them, 11i. 10s., 11i. 12s. 6d.; 1 yard slea for carsye & harnis belonging to it, 8s., 2 sleas & harnis for them for Lyning, 10s., 18s.; total 1541i. 8s. 6d.

Mansfield seems to have had a small workshop where yarn was spun as well as woven into fabric much like the shop depicted in fig. 6.1; the listings also hint at basic processing of flax to produce linen thread. He had at least two looms fully assembled and operational at the time of his death, and those plus the other items associated with his craft comprised a sizeable portion of his estate’s value. The second loom mentioned in Mansfield’s inventory was equipped with ‘‘irons,’’ which may have been weights similar to those found at the Houndhill site mentioned above (although those were of lead); if so, we can infer that he was producing a linen damask or other fancy weave on a drawloom. If we were to consider Mansfield’s house and workshop (though there is no indication that the two were not one and the same) as furnished in his probate inventory as a potential archaeological site, we would quickly conclude that little of the equipment for spinning and weaving would survive. Looms, like spinning wheels, were made of wood, with few if any parts made of metal or other material that might survive well archaeologically. The lead and iron weights used in specialized drawlooms survive, as we have seen, and one might find heddles of wire, although many were made of string.20 The only persons named as weavers in seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, were men, and most of the male weavers seem to have worked solo rather than run a workshop. Weavers’ accounts indicate that they acquired spun yarn from local women who spun at home; payment for the yarn often involved a complex system of barter rather than cash. Although historic house museums and Colonial Revival notions of early industry tend to envision women at looms as well as at their spinning wheels, it seems that in seventeenth-century New England weaving was considered a skilled occupation that was done mainly by men. This changed, however, as over the course of the eighteenth century weaving as well as spinning came to be identified with the ‘‘womanly arts’’ to such an extent that household cloth production became ‘‘powerfully emblematic of all women’s work.’’ Archaeologist Joyce Clements investigated a loom house, possibly originally constructed in the eighteenth century, that was an outbuilding at

Table 6.2 Seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, evidence for weaving in probate records Date

Decedent

Residence

Relevant entries

Estate value

Source

1636 1638

Mrs. Sarah Dillingham Thomas Payne

Ipswich Salem

£385.14s.5d. not valued

PR 1:3 PR 1:37

1647 1648

Luke Heard, linen weaver Michael Hopkinson

Ipswich Rowley

not given £116.19s.8d.

PR 1:81 PR 1:253–254

1655

Henry Fay, weaver

Newbury

£18.7s.

RF 1:406–407

1655 1656 1666 1670 1675 1676 1676 1678

Robert Long, weaver Hugh Smith, weaver Frances Lawes Mrs. Elizabeth Stacey John Witt, Sr. John Littlehal ‘‘slain in war’’ Richard Kenball, weaver Amos Stickney

Newbury Rowley Salem Ipswich Lynn Ipswich? Wenham Newbury

n/a not given £192 £29.2s. not given not given £980.16s.6d. £248.10s.

RF 1:407 PR 1:236 PR 2:51 PR 2:172 PR 3:56 PR 3:22 PR 3:73 PR 3:243

1679

Samuel Mansfield, weaver

Lynn

6 yds. of Loomworke, 5s. ‘‘Item I give Thomas my son Loomes & Sluices with there my appurtenances concerning his trade as weaver.’’ (will) shopp Tooles, 6li., linen 2li.9s. one payre of loomes, 1li.; one shutel 3sh, one tenipel, 1 warping woof, one rings and one payre of heels, 7s., one ridel, 1li.12s.; three slayes, 9s.; three wheels, 2s.8d; Cotton woll and yarne, 5li.10s.; five slayds, 12s.6d.; red Corsay three yards, 15s a loame and warping beame, a spooleing wheele, sleyes and harnesses and other appurtenances, 2li.10s; a wheele and Iron spindle, 3s. appointed attorney of Hay’s estate payre of looms & tacklings weaving tackle 7 yards of home made cloth & two ould wheeles [no loom] A Loome for to weave in, sleas & Harness &c., 5li. a loome and gares to it, 5li.10s. a weavers loom and taclend, 2li.5s. wooll in the house, 3li.; a Loame with all tackling for weaving, 10li., parcel of new homemade cloth, 3li.10s. See text

£154.8s.6d

PR 3:306

Sources: PR 1: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1916; PR 2: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1917; PR 3: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920; RF 1: Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1911

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a farmstead in Bedford, Massachusetts. Documentary evidence linked the property to the Abbott family and indicated clearly that the loom house was part of the domain of Allice Abbott, who was bequeathed the ‘‘whole of the loom or chaise house’’ on the husband’s death in 1802. Cloth manufacture became critical to Allice’s ability to continue to support herself and her children in her widowhood. The loom house or room was an important element of the working farm, and it seems likely that it housed the two spinning wheels and a clock wheel for measuring spun wool into skeins, stored in baskets, and the loom and tackling mentioned in Allice’s husband’s household inventory. Archaeological investigations proved that the building was L-shaped, although its dimensions could not be determined with certainty. The eastern portion of the building contained the loom room; the abundance of window glass in the fill of the building’s cellar indicates that it was well lighted with many windows. Unlike the slightly earlier cottage workshop excavated at Houndhill, however, the loom house at the Abbott Farm site produced no artifacts related to the cloth production that took place there.21 L AC E M AK I NG Nineteen little round holes gaping for a wire, Every pin that I stick in, gets me one the nigher. —Children’s lace-making rhyme (Spenceley 1976:167)

There are many kinds and several ways of making lace. By the nineteenth century in both England and the United States machine-made lace had become common, gradually supplanting the cottage industry of handmade lace. Handmade lace of the sort known as bobbin lace, pillow lace, or in some cases ‘‘bone’’ lace required special implements or accessories beyond pins. Indeed, there is a special assemblage that characterizes bobbin lace–making, and only when the elements of the lace-maker’s toolkit are found together can the archaeologist confidently interpret excavated material as evidence of on-site lace-making.22 Lace was long a luxury item, and wearing lace was once a privilege of the wealthiest members of society. In the early modern era, as the fashion for wearing lace became more widespread and the demand for lace increased, regionally based lace-making industries developed that kept large numbers of women, children, and some men at work for long hours in less than ideal conditions. In recent times, as handmade lace has again become a rare and expensive luxury good, our notions of lace have grown increasingly romantic, nostalgic, and unrealistic. Most lace was produced under circumstances far different from the image most people hold in mind: that of well-dressed, genteel ladies exhibiting their femininity through their prowess at the delicate art of lace-making. As one

152

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scholar unequivocally states, ‘‘The production of hand-made lace was a far cry from the rustic bliss which many contemporaries and lovers of lace imagined. . . . [T]he conditions and effects of the employment of children in this industry must be equated with some of the most notorious of industrial occupations in nineteenth-century England.’’ 23 Lace-making was an important cottage industry in certain areas of the Continent and in the British Isles from very early times until well into the nineteenth century, and it should come as no surprise that lace-making was also done by people who emigrated to Europe’s colonies. The earliest pillow lace was made in Italy in the early sixteenth century, but the technique quickly spread to Belgium, where several centers of production arose. In the eighteenth century, the French town of Valenciennes was for a time a commercial center of lace production. Here the lace industry was for the most part initiated and controlled by the entrepreneurial Tribout family; the Valenciennes lace-workers were mainly women, many from poor families, and they received their training in local workhouses. Few of these women managed to rise out of poverty, but the lace-makers did occupy a distinct social category above that of the poorest folk. In England, ‘‘the development of the Midland pillow-lace industry is usually attributed to the influence of Flemings who fled from the Netherlands . . . bringing their lacemaking skills with them.’’ Four counties in the English Midlands became centers of lace production: Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire. Of these, Buckinghamshire was the most important, and much of the lace made in the English Midlands was known as ‘‘Buckinghamshire lace.’’ Another center of lace-making emerged in Devonshire, England, in and around the town of Honiton, sometime in the sixteenth century and was well established by the early seventeenth century. Contemporary commentators compared Honiton lace favorably with that produced in Antwerp and Flanders, and in the seventeenth century Honiton lace sold for four times as much as Buckinghamshire lace, so it was recognizably different from lace made in the Midlands.24 The names given to different types of lace are based on the notion that ‘‘the name denotes the technique and not the actual place where any given lace was made’’—in other words, the commonest means of naming a type of lace is by giving it the name of the place where it was first known to have been made. ‘‘Buckinghamshire lace’’ and ‘‘Honiton lace’’ were in fact produced over a wider geographic area than the names indicate; what the names do imply is that the laces were produced with somewhat different techniques and patterns. What is important for the archaeologist to know is that the different techniques required different styles of bobbins: this is the key to interpreting from archaeological finds what sort of lace was being made.25

Findings

153

By the eighteenth century, lace-making centers also developed in North America. In Ipswich, Massachusetts, for instance, a lively cottage industry caught the attention of the new United States government. A report submitted to the secretary of the Treasury in the 1790s noted that in Ipswich bobbin lace was made for cash as part of an extensive putting-out industry in which more than six hundred women participated. And Rolla Milton Tryon, in his Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640–1860, declared, ‘‘In the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, from August, 1789, to August, 1790, there were 28,496 yards of lace and 13,483 yards of edging manufactured in the family way. The population of the town at this time was 4,562.’’ 26 Even in areas in which lace-making was never a major cottage industry, it was a valuable supplement to family income, especially in rural agricultural communities. The evidence for lace and possible lace-making from seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, shows how both the ownership of lace and the production of lace functioned in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (table 6.3). From the estate values listed for owners of lace, we see that these were people at the upper end of the social scale. The only entry for someone who may have been a lace-maker, that of Jane Gaines, widow of Lynn, shows us that she was not wealthy, though women’s estates were generally valued much below that of men’s because they usually consisted of only their clothes, linens, and personal portable possessions. Household production involved women and children (and the occasional male). In Oxfordshire, England, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, women from the villages brought their completed work for sale to buyers from London or High Wycombe who set themselves up to receive goods once a month at the Nag’s Head Inn in the town of Thame. On average a woman received the equivalent of a shilling to one shilling, six pence, for a day’s work, although of course the price paid varied according to the quality and intricacy of the work. It is extremely difficult to construct an accurate demographic profile of cottage industries such as lace-making, not just because the work was carried out at the household level but chiefly because eighteenth- and nineteenth-century census takers tended to neglect to record occupations pursued by women and children. A month’s worth of lace-making, however, could result in a significant supplement to a household’s income. Indeed, in Puerto Rico during the early twentieth century there was a revival of bobbin lace–making when women who could not follow their husbands who found work in the United States attempted to support themselves and their children by producing lace for sale to American buyers. The Puerto Rican case serves as a cautionary tale for those who assume that the rise in the nineteenth century of the machine-made lace industry sup-

Table 6.3 Seventeenth-century Essex County, Massachusetts, probate inventory entries regarding lace and possible lace-making Date

Decedent

Residence

Relevant entries

Estate value

Source

1641 1644

Frances Hawes Joanna Cummings

Salem Salem

not given will, not valued

PR 1:46 PR 1:35

1644

Margery Wathin

Salem

£39.13s.5d.

PR 1:39

1645 1648 1653 1654 1654 1661 1672

Mrs. Jane Gaines, widow Thomas Firman John Cogswell, Jr. George Burrill, Sr. George Willims Thomas Wiles Mrs. Margaret Lake

Lynn Ipswich Ipswich Lynn Salem Salem Ipswich

£43. 5s. 7d. not given £247.5s.8d. £848.10s. not given not given £141.7s.

PR 1:44 PR 1:95 PR 1:157 PR 1:179 PR 1:198 PR 1:382 PR 2:291

1676 1677 1678

John Cole(died Marblehead) Nathaniel Mighell, merchant? Deacon Thomas Howlett

Pemaquid Salem Ipswich

half an ell of lase [bequest] ‘‘I give goody ffeld one of my lase han carchefes wich is at good bornes’’ 4 necke handkerchiefes laced, 5s.4d.; 3 laced neckclothes at 18d. & 2 at 6d. pr, 5s.5d.pr. bonelass & thread & a pinn coshen, 1s. [in parlor] 6 boxes & 8 thred lases & some small things, 8s. in lace 5li. a pcell of lace, 2s. Lace & Filletten, 2s. 1 Child blanket, silv. lace, 1li. 10s. a small box with seavarrall Samplers, lases and broidred works, 10li. 1 parcell statute Lace, 2s.6d bone lace 13s. silke & bone Lase, 5s. 9d.

not given £224.7s.3 1/2d. £452.11s.4d.

PR 3:121 PR 3:173 PR 3:252

Sources: PR 1: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1916; PR 2: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1917; PR 3: Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920

Findings

155

planted lace-making by hand as an income-producing opportunity for women; handmade lace has never lost its cachet as embellishment for elegant attire. It is a mistake to assume without supporting contextual evidence that lace bobbins found in nineteenth-century archaeological deposits reflect a leisure pastime pursued solely by wealthy women.27 In the lace-making districts, lace-makers began to learn their craft at a young age, and many children were taught to make lace at special lace schools. Such schools were normally run by a woman in a single, unventilated room of her own cottage, into which twenty or thirty children were packed. Children of five or six worked from between four and six to eight hours a day, while older children worked from six in the morning to eight or ten at night.28 In the lace schools each lace-maker had to provide her own pillow (a hard, round cushion stuffed with straw); these were usually made by specialist pillowmakers. The pillow was supported on the worker’s knees or on a three-legged pillow-horse. The lace-maker affixed a strip of parchment pricked out in holes with the lace pattern, then placed a pin through each hole. The thread from which the lace was made was wound onto bobbins, which before the nineteenth century were often made of bone (later examples are made of wood or other materials—the Ipswich lace-makers used bobbins made of what they called bamboo though they are, in fact, made of a variety of materials). A bobbin is usually about the size of a pencil; on the end opposite the part of the bobbin holding the thread the lace-maker often placed a wire strung with several beads, known as spangles, to add weight and thus maintain tension on the threads while the work was in progress.29 Lace pins had to be good-quality pins of brass so they would not rust, and they tend to be slightly longer than ordinary pins; these could prove quite expensive for lace-makers in North America, who had to import both pins and thread for their work. The professional lace-makers of Ipswich used as few pins as possible both to save money and to make the work go faster. Of the surviving samples of Ipswich lace, many have rather large openings that seem to reflect this economy with pins; the lace is also uneven in texture because the bobbins used in Ipswich were too light to produce adequate tension on the threads.30 The lace was made by twisting and crossing the threads to form a ground and the pattern, or gimp, was formed by interweaving a thread thicker than the ground threads according to the pattern pinned out through the parchment. The lace-maker was forced into a stooping, almost crouching, position as she worked at her pillow; many women attempted to avoid the neck and back pain such stooping caused by wearing stiff busks in their corsets. This practice constricted the ribs and sternum and eventually caused disfigurement and made the women

156

Findings

more susceptible to the disease that plagued and killed most lace-makers, consumption. All lace-makers, even children, were said to suffer from dyspepsia.31 The most diagnostic element of the lace-maker’s equipment is the bobbin upon which a supply of thread was wound; ordinary bobbins average about three and a half to four inches in length (not including the spangle; see below). The thread was wound around the neck and looped with a half-hitch around the head; the shank could be inscribed or decorated. Bobbin shanks were sometimes elaborately carved, and as a result, some bobbins constitute small masterpieces of folk art in and of themselves, although one author makes it clear that ‘‘the very elaborate bobbins . . . were no better, from a practical point of view, than the plain, ordinary and commonplace ones.’’ 32 The materials from which bobbins were most often made were wood or bone, because both were cheap (wood being the cheaper of the two, although it was more subject to wear than bone) and readily available. Horn was not an appropriate material for making turned bobbins. The wood chosen for bobbin-making was normally a close-grained hardwood or a fruitwood; bone could be obtained from a butcher or a slaughterhouse. Types of wood included damson, maple, spindlewood, yew, blackthorn, may, oak, bog-oak, walnut, boxwood, cherry, plum, and apple; some ‘‘betterclass’’ bobbins were made of ebony. One source indicated that bone bobbins were made of chicken bones, though, being hollow and quite brittle when dry, chicken bones seem highly unsuitable for this purpose. Bone bobbins I have seen, like needlecases and other objects, were made from cow metapodials or other dense mammal bone.33 In lace-making districts, bobbins were produced by full-time bobbin-makers, who turned the wood or bone on a small lathe powered by a foot-treadle. Marta Cotterell Raffel has conducted a study of two thousand surviving Ipswich lace bobbins, which were very plain, light, and hollow and made from five different materials indigenous to late-eighteenth-century New England. They are, essentially, tapered tubes produced cheaply and in great numbers for industrial use; none bear weights or spangles. It is fortunate that so many of these bobbins survive in museums because they surely would not last long in archaeological contexts.34 Often lace-makers attached to the nonworking end of a bobbin a weight in order to hold the tension on the treads so that the resulting lace would be tight and even. These weights, known as spangles, consisted of a series of beads, usually of glass, strung on a wire. Lace-makers needed good light, which is why paintings and photographs so often depict lace-makers working out of doors. Most of the work was done indoors, however, and lace-makers employed a number of ingenious devices for

Findings

157

maximizing available light. Among these were lace-makers’ lamps (these were made from about 1780 to the mid-nineteenth century) and lace-makers’ candlestools. A lace-maker’s lamp resembled an ordinary candlestick but was made of glass, with a hollow glass sphere with a hole at the top; the sphere would be filled with water to condense the light.35 A Mrs. Roberts of Spratton in Northamptonshire described candlestools and how they were used to provide light for a large number of lace-makers in the school she attended in the early nineteenth century: In the evenings eighteen girls worked by one tallow candle, value one penny; the ‘‘candle-stool’’ stood about as high as an ordinary table with four legs. In the middle of this was what was known as the ‘‘pole-board,’’ with six holes in a circle and one in the centre. In the centre hole was a long stick with a socket for the candle at one end and peg-holes through the sides, so that it could be raised or lowered at will. In the other six holes were placed pieces of wood hollowed out like a cup, and into each of these was placed a bottle made of very thin glass and filled with water. These bottles acted as strong condensers or lenses, and the eighteen girls sat round the table, three to each bottle, their stools being upon different levels, the highest near the bottle, which threw the light down upon the work like a burning glass.36

Another artifact that may serve part of a lace-making assemblage, at least in nineteenth-century English contexts, where its use is well documented, is what was called a ‘‘dicky pot.’’ Normally lace-makers avoided having a fire in the grate or fireplace in the lace schools both because the students were packed in so closely that a fire would be unsafe and because soot from a fire might soil the lace. One solution for keeping warm was to fill a small, unglazed earthenware pot with hot ashes or charcoal. The lace-maker would keep this dicky pot close to her feet, beneath the hem of her dress. Dicky pots were shaped rather like chamber pots, but it would be a simple matter to distinguish fragments of unglazed earthenware dicky pots used to hold ashes or coals, which undoubtedly would show evidence of interior sooting, burning, or heat-spalling, from those of a glazed chamber pot.37 Parents felt compelled to ‘‘put their children to lace’’ by sending them to lace schools by age four or five out of economic necessity. Farm laborers earned very little, and far from enough to support a large family, so the additional income from the lace-making efforts of a mother and her children could help a family secure a ‘‘modicum of comfort.’’ Even so, most families in lace-making districts remained poor, in part because they were often caught in a cycle of selling their lace either to dealers who forced them to buy all the raw materials from them

158

Findings

and deducted the cost from the purchase price or to local grocers or shopkeepers who forced them into a credit arrangement in which little cash ever changed hands. In the 1840s, Oxfordshire lace-making families subsisted on a meager diet of bread and butter or potatoes, with meat perhaps once a week.38 In addition to serving as a supplement to family income in rural agricultural communities, lace-making was often seen as a form of poor relief. In the eighteenth century the overseers of the poor in various Bedfordshire parishes attempted to organize lace-making enterprises. Workhouses had specialized lace-making rooms (these doubled as sleeping rooms as well as workrooms), the furnishings of which included pillow-horses. An inventory from 1774 of the lacemaking room at Bedford St. Paul’s workhouse lists two chairs, a lace horse, a flask stool, a bedstead, a bed, two blankets, a large coffer, a quilt, a pillow, and the parish pall. In the adjacent room were two bobbin wheels.39 The vicissitudes of the lace market affected a lace-maker’s income as much or more than her skill at the trade. When lace-makers received less for their work during times when demand was slack, they often faced a stark choice: they could enter the poorhouse or supplement their lace-making income by turning to prostitution. Artifacts associated with lace-making have been found at many sites, ranging from rural to urban, though in each instance the evidence points to small-scale, household-level production by one person, probably a woman. This is especially true of the lathe-turned bone lace bobbin found at the Triplex Middle cabin at the Hermitage in Tennessee found along with many other sewing and needlework tools at this dwelling, occupied by an enslaved seamstress. It may be that this lone bobbin was not used for its intended purpose, for the neck portion, where the thread would have been wound, was broken off and the edge filed flat. Many pins were found at the Triplex Middle, and some of these could have been used in lace-making, but spangle beads that would have been attached to lace bobbins do not seem to have been found.40 At both the Five Points in New York and the Cumberland/Gloucester Street sites in Sydney’s Rocks neighborhood there were deposits that produced all of the elements of a lace-making assemblage: bobbins or fragments of bobbins, pins, spangle beads, and, in a cesspit behind a shop on Gloucester Street in Sydney, many parts of a bobbin winder used for loading thread onto the bobbins. At Five Points bobbin fragments were from the tips of long, baluster-type bobbins commonly used in making Buckinghamshire-style (also known as Midlands) or torchon lace. The bobbin tips had holes to receive wires with spangles on them, and the bobbin tips were found in association with seventeen multicolored beads (blue, black, clear, and green). Rebecca Yamin notes that ‘‘every type of bead’’

Findings

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Fig. 6.3 Fragment of a bone lace bobbin found at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm, Newbury, Massachusetts. The portion that would have held the thread is missing, but the short, bulbous shank resembles those of bobbins used in making Honiton-style lace. (Photograph by Michael Hamilton)

used in a spangle was recovered: top bead, square cuts, and large bottom beads. The sites in the Rocks produced a variety of bobbin types, mostly of the elongated, baluster type that, like the Five Points bobbins, would have held spangles; indeed, several intact bobbins and a tip or ‘‘spangle head’’ were found. But another site in the Rocks produced a short, bulbous bobbin of the sort referred to as ‘‘South Bucks,’’ ‘‘Huguenots,’’ or ‘‘thumpers’’; it resembles a bone bobbin found at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts, which has been interpreted as a bobbin used to produce Honiton-style lace, although Honiton bobbins tend to be quite slender (fig. 6.3).41 SEW I NG AC C ESS O R I ES

Aids to assist the needleworker are varied and numerous, with far more examples surviving in collections and museums than in archaeological sites. There are, nevertheless, many sewing aids that are likely to survive in archaeological contexts; some are relatively easy to recognize, others are not. Here I discuss selected sewing accessories that are likely to be found by archaeologists, albeit not commonly reported, as well as ones that are reported fairly regularly in the literature. Much of the information on archaeologically recovered sewing items is published in hard-to-find find sources or remains ‘‘buried’’ in artifact catalogs or in obscure site reports. I have been fortunate that many colleagues have sent me copies of their reports and articles and thus have made the task of locating materials that have very limited circulation less daunting.42

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thread winders, spools, and similar objects Thread winders are small, flat objects, with a series of points between which thread or silk could be wound. They were made in a wide variety of shapes: square, slight rounded, rectangular, star-shaped, and so on. They range in diameter from less than an inch (for fine silks) to about two inches for heavier weights of thread, even larger for very thick wools and silks. They also varied considerably in material and were made of ivory, wood, mother-of-pearl, bone, glass, straw-work, and horn. Winders were a necessity at a time when thread was spun at home or purchased from a merchant or peddler in skeins or hanks; it had to be wound onto something before sewing commenced so that it would not become tangled or soiled. I have not come across mention of thread winders in the archaeological literature apart from a modified lice comb from Five Points, interpreted as a silk winder. I suspect that some star- and animal-shaped thread winders are thought by archaeologists to be gaming pieces rather than items related to sewing.43 Spools for thread are not common finds on archaeological sites dating before the nineteenth century because spools as we know them were not made before the nineteenth century, when machine-twisted and finished thread was first manufactured. Before that time, thread was kept on winders, as noted above, or on spindles or reels (sometimes called bobbins) or in cotton barrels. A lateseventeenth-century wooden spool or spindle from the Katherine Nanny Naylor privy in Boston is, therefore, a most unusual find, whereas the large numbers of wooden spools for commercial thread found at late-nineteenth-century sites in West Oakland, California, during excavations before the Cypress Freeway Relocation Project, are not in the least surprising. Excavations in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco produced a wide array of hand-carved bone objects that were probably once part of matching needlework sets made up of a spool or reel, needlecase, waxer, tape measure, emery, or pincushion, or perhaps even elements of combination stands. Combination stands, popular in the Victorian era, consisted of multiple needlework tools (for example, emery-tape measure-pincushion or emery and spool holder) connected to one another and to decorative bases via screw threads. Portions of such stands were often made of vegetable ivory and other substances besides bone. Archaeologists are likely to find only the independent elements of combination stands, but the screw threads are a clue to their service as elements of a multipart assembly of sewing accessories.44 needlework clamps Clamps of various sorts were used by needlewomen to hold fabric fast while being stitched or thread taut when being wound; the clamp served as an extra

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hand. Although a clamp can be basic and utilitarian, those made for home sewing were often quite fanciful and hence are prized by collectors. To permit the clamp to be firmly attached to a table, it possesses a thumbscrew-operated slipvise. Affixed to the top of the vise might be a sewing bird or hemming clamp, a pincushion to which fabric could be secured by pinning, or a reel or cage onto which thread could be wound.45 For the sake of clarity, therefore, it is best to refer to the different sorts of clamps according to their intended function, for example, winding clamp, netting clamp, or hemming clamp. Needlework clamps, like most other sewing tools and accessories, were made of varied materials. Many early examples were carved in ivory, wood, or bone, while later ones tended to be made of metal, though often combining a variety of materials, including fabric, shell, and so forth.46 The netting clamp has a netting hook at the top, though it may be capped as well with a pincushion and reel to render it a multipurpose clamp. A winding clamp has only a reel or a cage atop the vise. A hemming clamp can take various forms; most popular in Europe during the nineteenth century was the pincushion clamp. The pincushion alone would not grip the fabric, but instead the material would be gripped against a surface by the clamp itself. In America, clamps topped by animal figures were popular in the nineteenth century. Animals of all sorts were depicted (for example, fish, butterflies, dolphins, and mythical creatures), most of them gripping the fabric in their mouths, the mouth being opened by squeezing the animal’s tail, which, when released, clamped down again tightly by means of a spring mechanism. By far the most popular were ‘‘sewing birds.’’ Thousands of these, made of steel, iron, bronze, brass, silver, tin, pewter, base metal, and plated metal, were sold in the United States. American sewing birds were first made in Meriden, Connecticut, where Charles Waterman took out a patent to manufacture the device in 1853. Waterman’s patent included specific features: ‘‘the bird grasps the fabric in its bill which opens when the tail is pressed downward . . . has a feather pattern only on top of the bird . . . [and] there is an emery ball cup on the back of the bird.’’ The only other decorative touch on the early Waterman clamp might be a pierced thumbscrew; the stand and clamp itself are undecorated. Other manufacturers quickly entered production by changing details of the sewing bird and clamp, and seemingly endless decorative variations and embellishments appeared. This was a simple matter because the components of sewing birds were produced by die-casting and molding; molds could be changed readily, and parts produced in the molds could be assembled in many combinations. As a result, highly decorated examples, including ones with die-cast clamps bearing floral or other motifs, were in wide distribution. The thumbscrews, too, were often ornate, whether solid or pierced, often taking the form of a heart, though pierced four-lobed openings or even

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star-shaped thumbplates are known. Archaeologists who find a thumbscrew separated from its clamp might consider the possibility, especially if the item is quite decorative, that it was once part of a sewing bird or other needlework clamp.47 Because sewing birds had nationwide distribution via stores, mail-order catalogs, and itinerant peddlers, examples have been found at archaeological sites in far-flung parts of the United States. A splendid, nearly complete example of a cast copper-alloy sewing bird was found at the Chinese Mining Camp site north of Warren, Idaho, occupied from about 1880 to 1910. The upper portion of the bird is missing (though part of the spring mechanism survives), but its lower portion is decorated in a feather pattern (indicating that it is not a Waterman clamp). The clamp is cast with trailing vines and flowers, and the thumbscrew bears a similar pattern of trailing vines around a four-lobed pierced opening. Unlike the little animated sewing bird that served as mentor to the young lady depicted in in chapter 1 (see fig. 1.1), who spent ‘‘hours in the sewing room,’’ the sewing bird from the Chinese Mining Camp cannot be interpreted as part of an idyllic domestic sewing scene because the occupants of the camp were male. The investigators infer that the sewing bird was used to hold canvas being repaired for use in lining miners’ trenches.48 quilt stamps and quilt patterns Quilting, the process of sewing together three separate layers of fabric (top, filling, and backing), made use of few implements that would survive archaeologically or which could be linked directly to quilting as opposed to other forms of sewing. Quilters did, however, sometimes use special tools that permitted them to quilt regular stitched patterns. Among these were marking stamps (pewter castings that could be fixed into a wooden handle), used to mark quilt squares and household textiles; these were introduced in the nineteenth century after the discovery of an ink that would last and not rot fabric. These pewter castings could be found in archaeological contexts. Those cast in the form of letters and numbers might be mistaken for pieces of printer’s type unless one examined them closely, but other castings in the form of lovebirds, leaves, and hearts are likely to be recognized as quilters’ stamps.49 Quilters also made use of patterns or templates of paper or tin for cutting out fabric that would be used as appliqués on the quilt top (an appliquéd quilt is one in which the top layer, usually of one piece, has fabric cutouts sewn onto it). The Winterthur Museum has in its textile and needlework collection a large number of tin quilt patterns. The shapes are variable and imaginative, depicting the human form (usually women), stars, birds, farmyard animals, and so on (fig. 6.4). They have the charm of folk art but were in fact mass-produced. Examples

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Fig. 6.4 An assortment of quilt patterns; despite their charming folksiness, these are mass-produced cutouts of sheet tin. (Courtesy The Winterthur Museum)

of these patterns of sheet tin could survive in some nineteenth-century or other archaeological contexts. stilettos Stilettos are pointed implements used to make holes in stiff fabrics such as canvas, felt, or leather or to prepare a hole in a fabric for a needle to pass through. In this capacity they are, in essence, upscale versions of awls for home sewing, often made of precious metal, ivory, or bone in fancy shapes and designs—although at the lower end of the price scale many stilettos, of plain steel, some with handles of wood or other inexpensive material such as celluloid or plastic, look for all the world like awls. Stilettos’ sharp points also served well to pull out tacking threads or unpick stitches. Stilettos became common elements of ‘‘sewing kits’’ by the early eighteenth century. They were often included in workboxes along with other matching tools or, when sold separately, came with matching cases both to ward against loss and to protect the user from injury. They differ from bodkins and other sorts of needles by lacking an eye through which thread, yarn, tape, or ribbon could be threaded.50 An object handcrafted of bone that could have served as a stiletto or an awl was

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recovered from the Triplex Middle cabin at the Hermitage in Tennessee; archaeologist Jillian Galle notes that its ‘‘small, thin point could have been used in the creation of cutwork or for pushing thread through white work’’ or that, alternatively, it could have been used as a drizzler, a specialized tool for unpicking silver and gold threads from worn fabric. From a shallow, stone-lined privy in the back lot of a tenement in New York’s Five Points neighborhood came an impressive array of fancy needlework tools, among them a lathe-turned bone stiletto. Heather Griggs interprets these finds, which included such items as a bone comb altered to serve as a silk winder, a bone handle for an embroidery or crochet hook, parts of lace bobbins, and a fragment of a folding ruler, as representing the ‘‘contents of a sewing box’’ filled with tools for mending petticoats and stockings and for embroidering handkerchiefs while its owner waited for ‘‘gentlemen’’—clients of the brothel located at this address—to call. Although the assemblage is impressive because it contains such unusual, varied, and evocative items, these were not matching needlework tools from a fancy sewing box but objects assembled to suit the owner’s tastes, needs, and income; they in fact may have served as an alternative income strategy. Rebecca Yamin suggests that the needlework tools and other artifacts recovered from the brothel privy reflect a ‘‘middle-class signature,’’ an attempt in the midst of squalor to project to clientele a sense of luxury and respectability.51 K N I T T I NG AC C ESS O R I ES

Knitting needles, either a pair or in some cases three or four needles, were, of course, the primary implements required for the knitter, but as with so many other activities, pastimes, and crafts, all sorts of devices were developed to help the knitter improve her efficiency and to protect her needles from breakage and loss. knitting sheaths Knitting sheaths are not in common use anymore, but in earlier times it was quite usual for knitters to attach to their belt or apron strings a sheath into which one needle, or one end of a two-ended curved needle, could be supported. Wooden sheaths have a history of about 250 years; they usually show signs of wear indicating long use. Small heart-shaped devices in metal come from West Cumberland, England; many date to 1785–1820. Ceramic knitting sheaths are rare. They were possibly given as ‘‘love tokens’’ or bought as souvenirs—they are not suited to their purpose so probably were never used. Although large numbers of knitting sheaths survive in museums and in private collections, I have not

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come across any mention of knitting sheaths recovered from archaeological contexts. But their very abundance as surviving artifacts leads me to think that some, at least, should have found their way into the archaeological record in conditions favorable for their preservation.52 knitting gauges Miss Lambert, in The Hand-book of Needlework, refers to a filière or gauge, a steel instrument, as an item developed ‘‘by wire-drawers for ascertaining the sizes of their wires,’’ noting that a similar device with graduated notches around its edge, is used for measuring the diameters of netting and knitting needles. Knitting needle gauges made it possible to measure the diameter of needles, which did not bear size marks, to match pairs for sale or use and to make certain that the right needles were used for a knitting project. Gauges were made in many shapes, bells and circles being most common, although over two dozen varieties have been recorded; most are steel, but examples in ivory and other materials are known. Gay Ann Rogers illustrates a late-nineteenth-century bell-shaped steel gauge bearing the legend ‘‘h walker london’’ along with a trademark depicting an archer with drawn bow. A nearly identical gauge in my own collection bears the name of the famous needle manufacturer Abel Morrall, with the trademark symbol of a unicorn ‘‘rampant’’ bearing an arrow. Both gauges are about two and three-quarter inches long. Along the outer edges of each is a series of graduated circular cuts, each numbered, and in the center there are additional holes for measuring large needles. Although I am unaware of knitting needle gauges from archaeological contexts, it seems highly likely that they could be found, especially in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sites, given the relative durability of steel, which might rust yet nevertheless retain its unmistakable shape, and the wide distribution of these items as handy advertising for manufacturers of needles and sewing notions.53 knitting needle guards These small items, sometimes called ‘‘needle ends,’’ are made in pairs and were connected by a ribbon, chain, cord, or elastic so that they could be tightly affixed over the opposite ends of a pair of knitting needles. Examples exist in collections of guards joined by a coiled copper-alloy spring, though this type of guard is relatively rare. The guards, ranging from about one-half inch to two inches in length, were made in a variety of materials, including ivory, bone, horn, mother-of-pearl, wood, gilded metal, brass, silver, and gold. In form they are often small, caplike tubes with a hole or attached loop near the top through which the connecting band could be tied. But knitting needle guards also took a variety of imaginative

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forms such as boots, fish, shoes, animal feet, keys, acorns, and so forth. Archaeologists seldom report finding knitting needle guards at their sites, but a very fine, albeit relatively plain, pair of mother-of-pearl knitting needle guards was found at the Triplex Middle slave cabin at the Hermitage in Tennessee and two nonmatching guards were found in a privy behind an 1840s brothel at 12 Orange Street in New York’s Five Points.54 knitting needle cases Cases for storing needles were considered more sophisticated than needle guards. Knitting needle guards were effective at keeping stitches from slipping off a needle, but cases had to be specially designed to hold needles that held stitches of a work in progress. Hence they tend to look like elongated needlecases but have a slit down the middle through which to hang the knitting in progress. They also have a removable end to allow the needle with knitting on it to slide into the case. The cases are thus quite distinctive, but the removable ends, if found archaeologically, might be mistaken for just about any sort of needlecase closure. I am unaware of any archaeological examples of knitting needle cases.55 A I DS FO R M ENDI NG A ND DA R N I NG

Sewing manuals and training schools for girls and boys stressed the importance of forming the habit of careful mending of garments and linens as a regular task, one that demonstrated the qualities of thrift, industry, and economy: ‘‘every woman and every girl should take pride in knowing how to darn a pair of stockings, to patch a worn garment, and to mend a tear.’’ 56 The most important mending technique was darning, ‘‘by which is meant the repairing of a tear or a hole by weaving a thread back and forth.’’ Patching was considered a last resort when holes were too big to be darned. Darners or darning balls, commonly shaped like eggs or mushrooms on stems, were placed under the hole while a repair was made, preventing the darning threads from drawing too tight so that they would remain open enough so that every other thread could be picked up when the weaving process began. Glove darners came in somewhat different shapes, some having round balls at each end of a handle of wood, metal, bone, or ivory, others having a single ball. Obviously, these finger-sized darners are smaller than ones used for mending stockings and the like.57 Although the vast majority of darners were made of wood and are unlikely to survive in archaeological contexts, other, more expensive materials were also used. The Sears Roebuck catalog of 1897 advertised highly ornamental darners with white enameled balls and silver handles that, at a dollar and seventy-five

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Fig. 6.5 Cast lead hem weight of the sort that was mass-produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The bar through the center of the weight allows it to be sewn securely into a hem. (After Women’s Institute 1936:Findings 9)

cents, were at the expensive end of the price range for darners. Broken darning eggs were found in 1880s and 1890s deposits associated with no fewer than thirteen households in West Oakland, and with five households in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, giving some idea of how ubiquitous such items would have been in the days when home sewing was common and when ‘‘relatively little stigma was attached to buying secondhand and repaired garments’’ or to repairing one’s clothing. All of the West Oakland and San Francisco darners are handleless, egg-shaped, and made of handblown white glass with a pontil mark on the narrow end of the ‘‘egg’’; the same items in other contexts served as setting or nesting eggs to encourage hens to lay. Indeed, an example recovered at George Washington’s Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia, has been identified as a ‘‘nest egg.’’ 58 HE M W E IGH T S

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, small lead weights were sometimes placed within the hems of men’s coats to keep their coattails from flapping. Early hem weights are difficult to distinguish from pieces of lead sprue or flattened lead shot, unless context makes their purpose starkly apparent; by the nineteenth century hem weights were fashioned so that they could easily be sewn onto the fabric and stay in place (fig. 6.5). These ‘‘regulation weights’’ or ‘‘coat weights’’ were used ‘‘to give weight to the lower edges of suit coats, to hold a cowl neckline drapery in place, and in panels, and so on’’; they came in four sizes, the largest about the size of a half dollar.59 In 1989 the burials of eleven young adult males were accidentally encountered during road construction between the Eye Peninsula and Stornaway at Braigh, near Aignish, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The men buried here, outside the nearby town cemetery, were probably not from Lewis but likely were shipwreck victims; it seems that their bodies washed up and were buried

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by local folk sometime around the year 1700. Finds of coins, buttons, cloth, and other artifacts suggest that the men were buried in their clothing and with whatever personal effects they had been wearing or had in their pockets when they drowned. One man had worn an iron whittle tang knife suspended from his waist belt; this had probably been sheathed, although the sheathing material did not survive. Archaeologists also found two small lead artifacts, one of which was probably a button. One of the skeletons had a semicircular lead sphere between his thighs, and this item was likely a hem weight.60 The variety of needlework accessories is nearly endless, and here I have discussed only some of the items most likely to be recovered by archaeologists. In the next chapter I put these and other implements of needlework and sewing into a broader context of the cultural and social ‘‘worlds’’ of weavers, lace-makers, tailors, and seamstresses.

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Stitching Together the Evidence

Artistic and popular images of women, alone or in groups, occupied contentedly and industriously at their sewing or needlework, along with histories of needlework and sewing tools, have created a lasting impression of sewing as the ultimate feminine domestic art. Although this carefully crafted nostalgic vision has more than a grain of truth, it is nevertheless a narrow perspective that overlooks other settings for sewing as well as the range of attitudes that needlewomen held toward their work. Until recent times, almost all women were expected to master the skills of sewing and mending, and many were expected to learn the arts of refined needlework. As a result, sewing and needlework and the artifacts associated with such work often came to stand as icons for femininity and feminine industry. Indeed, sewing or ‘‘work’’ baskets often appear in paintings or other depictions of women as symbols of industry and perhaps even of charity and womanly virtue. The tomb of Englishwoman Maria Wentworth, erected at Toddington, Bedfordshire, after her death in 1632, consists of a sculpture of Maria seated on a cushion beneath a canopy supported by pillars, a stone workbasket at her feet. Carved as part of the basket are scissors and other implements. This powerful depiction tells us just how closely associated the workbasket was with the desirable qualities of womanhood. Just as women from early times carried their work with them so that they could take it up at any opportune moment, so Maria Wentworth’s workbasket accompanies her into the afterlife.1 This would have been as true for nineteenth-century women traveling by steamboat to the American West as it was for a highborn woman in seventeenthcentury England. It helps explain why, in her study of the material culture of steamboat passengers who sailed on the last voyage of the sternwheeler Bertrand, which sank in 1865 after hitting a snag in the Missouri River, Annalies Corbin

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found fewer sewing tools in the below-decks stored baggage linked to women than she expected. Two of the baggage ‘‘assemblages’’ she studied were linked to women who escaped the sinking but lost all their baggage; from their stored boxes Corbin cataloged sewing supplies. Box 72, which belonged to the John S. Atchison family, contained many items that Mrs. Atchison may have intended to use in making clothing and other items, including plaid silk dress pieces, silk and velvet ribbon fragments, 148 buttons, 818 beads, fragments of beadwork, seventyfive copper-alloy and steel straight pins, twenty-one hooks, and seventeen eyes. The box belonging to Annie and Fannie Campbell, who at ages nineteen and sixteen, respectively, were intending to join their family in Montana, contained 118 buttons, 131 beads, two Chinese boxes that may have been intended as sewing boxes, seventeen copper-alloy hooks, nineteen eyes, and sixty-seven copperalloy straight pins. The stored baggage, then, held sewing supplies for projects that the women intended to undertake after they reached their destination; the fact that no sewing implements (that is, needles, scissors, thimbles, and so forth) were found in the containers in the hold of the steamship is far from surprising. Women travelers would have carried their sewing tools with them, in a portable workbox or workbasket, so that they could sew or knit or mend to occupy their hands and minds while traveling. It is easy to imagine that Mrs. Atchison and Fannie and Annie Campbell carried their workbaskets with them as they stepped from the doomed Bertrand to safety.2 Whether as participants in establishing colonial settler colonies, moving to newly opened frontiers, or following their husbands to military postings or new places of employment, women were expected to bring with them the useful skills of sewing and home dressmaking. Wives of army officers in the nineteenthcentury American West, most of whom were adept at fine needlework but had little or no training in dressmaking, relied on their ingenuity and the company of other women for support and information about fashions, patterns, and cutting and sewing techniques. Often the work was rewarding, but even though ‘‘sewing bees and special occasions occasionally lightened the burden, . . . sewing was hard, never-ending work.’’ Army women shared much the same experiences as their sisters elsewhere when they could not turn to professional seamstresses or purchase ready-made clothing for themselves and their families, for until late in the nineteenth century home dressmaking tended to be confined to fairly simple garments. Women of humble means could not afford the fabrics required to produce fashionable garments nor the tools—scissors or shears—required for cutting out the material; ‘‘even some poor dressmakers could not afford all the equipment they needed.’’ Women who could afford not to sew preferred to turn

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to professional seamstresses, sometimes servants or enslaved Africans, and for their husbands to have their clothes produced by tailors. An eighteenth-century engraving of a tailor’s shop shows the shop as an exclusively male domain, fully professionalized and clearly separate from domestic life (fig. 7.1).3 It is important to consider what Barbara Burman calls both the ‘‘hardware’’ and the ‘‘software’’ of home sewing and dressmaking to understand the nature and scale of home and professional sewing in differing contexts, which is precisely what some archaeologists have been at pains to do. Burman makes the important point that unwaged needlework in the home was not necessarily differentiated . . . in terms of value or status. Women have sewed curtains, knitted jumpers, embroidered household linen, made dresses, darned and redarned, turned collars, mended and remodelled all manner of things for themselves and for their families, all within a range of domestic tasks deemed part of the household economy. Equally, women with enough will and hours in the day to do so have often used their needle skills purely for pleasure in the making of utilitarian and non-utilitarian items or in making a range of goods for sale for charity or as gifts. Many of the same women have reapplied the same variety of skills to sew for a network of neighbours or workmates for money, or taken in sewing as waged piece-work on a regular basis.4

Taking in sewing as piecework could only supplement a family’s income and would seldom have permitted a single woman to support herself. Archaeologists tend to classify buttons and hooks and eyes as part of a household’s sewing equipment and, if they recover large numbers of buttons, to assume automatically that this indicates that an exceptional amount of sewing took place at a site. Other interpretations consider that buttons might be lost during laundering activities or that buttons functioned somehow as trade tokens, especially in a closed community such as a women’s prison. Eleanor Conlin Casella, for instance, interprets the large number of buttons found in certain areas of the Ross Female Factory, a convict settlement in Tasmania, Australia, as trade tokens used to secure such illicit goods as alcohol and tobacco. In her study of Delaware free black tenant farmers’ homes, Lu Ann De Cunzo interprets large numbers of buttons, other clothing fasteners, straight pins, and sewing tools (one site, for example, produced more than a dozen thimbles, a needle, and two bodkins) as evidence that women such as Rachel Stump—assisted, perhaps, by her daughters—took in clothes to mend and launder as a strategy to supplement income from the farm. This ‘‘flexibility and freedom of working at home allowed them to accommodate

Fig. 7.1 Scene from an eighteenth-century tailor’s shop from F. A. de Garsault’s Art du tailleur (1769). Note the large table used for cutting out and the other large table upon which tailors sit cross-legged, busily sewing. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

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their housework, their family’s needs, their economic circumstances, and their own work practices and rhythms’’ while avoiding to some extent the racial and social stigma of domestic service with roots in slavery.5 In her study of sewing tools and textile remains from the late-seventeenthcentury Boston privy associated with Katherine Nanny Naylor, who was a wellto-do and well-born woman, Kelly Britt speculates that Naylor may have sewn to support herself after she divorced her abusive husband. Seldom, however, could women earn enough money by doing needlework in the home to support themselves and their children; indeed, even professional seamstresses, for whom ‘‘the spectre of the sweated trades [was] never very far away,’’ often found it difficult to make ends meet, especially in urban contexts where competition for jobs in the needle trades was intense and pay for such work was very low.6 As a result, although skill in needlework was often the only qualification for earning a living that many Victorian girls possessed, it was nearly impossible to ensure a steady income from such work. So many women in nineteenth-century London and elsewhere were forced to supplement their earnings by turning to prostitution, which was a ‘‘necessity as it was virtually impossible for a woman to support herself solely with her needle,’’ that society came to connect dressmaking with prostitution. The only other alternatives women had when dressmaking paid too little to live on were petty crime or the workhouse. The problem was deemed so severe in London that in 1849 Sidney Herbert established a Fund for Female Emigration, aimed to clear the streets of prostitutes by sending ‘‘needlewomen’’ to Australia. Despite the stated intentions of Herbert’s scheme, in 1856, of the 7,268 single women transported to Australia, only ninety-eight were seamstresses.7 The link between the needle trades and the sex trade reflects women’s income strategies that juxtaposed seemingly domestic tasks of sewing and needlework with sex work. This explains why urban historical archaeologists find seemingly contradictory evidence of needlework at sites that documents identify as former brothels, as in New York’s Five Points neighborhood. The Five Points was for a time at the center of New York’s clothing industry, and men dominated the ready-made and secondhand markets. Both the sweating system, in which work, in the form of cut pieces for garments, was parceled out by the piece to men and women, and the factory system, in which people labored under one roof in an ‘‘inside shop,’’ were prevalent in nineteenth-century New York; presumably this was the case for other contemporary cities, though perhaps not on the same scale. Both men and women labored in these systems, but women were paid far less than men. Hence at Five Points the evidence for dressmaking and tailoring is abundant and comes from a range of sites, not just from brothels. But it

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Fig. 7.2 A nineteenth-century tailor’s shop illustrated in Johann F. Schreiber’s 30 Werkstatten von Handwerken (late 1800s), showing tailors engaged in measuring a gentleman for a pair of trousers, cutting out, and sewing. Tools of the trade are illustrated in the margins; note capless thimble and large tailor’s shears. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

is likely that needlewomen who lived in brothels pursued the needlework and lace-making, for which there is ample evidence, to supplement their incomes, not merely to idle away the time between clients or for personal gratification.8 Burman points out that up until recent times, for boys and men there was a different clothing code or protocol: manhood was equated with consumption of ready-made and tailor-made clothing, femininity with home sewing. These differential protocols underscored the ‘‘deep, old divide between male tailoring and female dressmaking. . . . there has been little tradition for female tailors in shops . . . a part of achieving adult masculinity has normally involved relinquishing direct contact with the female maker of clothing’’ (fig. 7.2). Marla Miller found that the success of women employed in the tailoring trade in eighteenth-century Hartford, Connecticut, led one male tailor to reproach gentlemen through a notice in the local newspaper for hiring women to cut their clothes. Women

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Fig. 7.3 A plate from Garsault’s Art du tailleur, illustrating an eighteenth-century workshop in which both tailors and seamstresses are engaged in producing women’s bodices. (Courtesy The Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection)

tailors thrived in eighteenth-century Northampton, Massachusetts, and Miller’s study of female tailors of men’s clothing is aimed at unsettling and rethinking the categories that have shaped scholarship on women’s work and our understanding of the ‘‘shifting gender divisions of labor in the early modern Atlantic world.’’ 9 The world of sewing has long extended well beyond the domestic sphere. Home sewing was a universal phenomenon, a source of pride as well as at times a tedious chore. Seamstresses were women who produced clothing professionally, as did tailors, but tailors were men, and their cultural milieu was very different from the ‘‘feminized’’ domestic sphere (see figs. 7.1, 7.2). A depiction of an eighteenth-century bodice shop shows both men and women engaged in the production of women’s bodices (fig. 7.3). Normally the only other workshops in which women might work in a professional capacity were those of mantuamakers (dressmakers); the ‘‘shop’’ in most instances was clearly demarcated from the home, underscoring the distinction between home sewing and professional tailoring and dressmaking. But, as Miller points out, although it was perfectly acceptable for women to engage in producing women’s clothing, men guarded closely the province of tailoring, which they saw as exclusively their own.10 Men of course sewed in contexts other than tailors’ shops, both by necessity and for pleasure. Nowhere was this more the case than among sailors, who spent long months or years at sea, away from their loved ones. On a voyage, sailors were

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forced to perform all of the domestic tasks normally done by women, among them cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and sewing. Sailors had to be adept at sewing and mending the heavy canvas sails of ships before the days of steam, but they also produced and mended their own clothing, and many embroidered their clothing with elaborate decorations or produced needlework pictures or ‘‘woolies’’ as presents for family members. Other sorts of all-male enclaves, for instance, Chinese mineworkers’ camps in the American West, were also contexts in which men were forced to take on both heavy sewing tasks, such as mending canvas, as well as everyday tasks with the needle.11 Archaeologists find small thimbles intended for use by children often enough to be aware that not just men and women were expected to sew. Sometimes archaeologists identify the diminutive objects as ‘‘toy’’ thimbles, but this is not accurate. They might more properly be thought of as training thimbles, used as young girls and, at times, boys were taught proficiency in the basic skills of hemming, darning, and so forth. For many, training took place at home, but young girls of well-to-do families were sometimes sent to ‘‘female’’ academies where they were taught sewing and needlework as part of a formal education. The best known of the schoolgirl needle arts are samplers and embroidered pictures, the creation of which ‘‘taught more than reading, sewing, and art; they also reinforced gender roles and prevalent ideas about morality, cultural values, and religion.’’ This was true as well for girls and boys who were trained in charity schools and free kindergartens. In nineteenth-century London, for example, the Central School was established ‘‘in order to provide suitable work for the lower classes’’: ‘‘As the beauty of needle-work consists in its regularity and cleanliness, every child must be taught to wash her hands before she begins, to make her stitches exactly the same size, and to set them at a regular distance from each other.’’ What is more, the instruction manual for the school stipulated that ‘‘no child can work neatly without a thimble.’’ 12 A publication of 1884 descried the conditions under which children were forced to live in the poorer districts of San Francisco and Oakland, California, praising the provision of kindergartens ‘‘for the neglected little ones of such localities.’’ The description of two Oakland free kindergartens, ‘‘one down near the wharves on the lower part of Broadway, the other in the northern portion of the city on Market Street,’’ indicates that both church-sponsored kindergartens offered instruction in sewing to boys and girls: ‘‘the little ones are learning the need of cleanliness and carefulness of dress. Many of them now wear garments sewed by themselves.’’ Sewing was seen as an activity that would help mold the characters of these youngsters, imparting useful skills while inculcating in them middle-class values. There was also instruction in religion, for students were per-

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177

mitted to ‘‘purchase’’ garments after performing well at several weeks of sewing instruction and memorizing Bible verses. The kindergartens contrast with West Oakland’s mid-nineteenth-century New Century Club’s sewing classes for neighborhood girls, where sewing ‘‘was an integral part of the industrial curriculum for girls, giving them a marketable skill that could supplement the family’s income.’’ Sewing instruction, then, served in some instances to reinforce gender roles, in others as an extension of missionary zeal aimed at Americanizing immigrant children, linking patriotism with Christianity and middle-class values.13 Sewing and needlework, then, took on many meanings depending on when and where it was done, by whom it was done, and why it was done. Even though archaeologists might find nearly identical sewing implements in a variety of site types—domestic, institutional, religious, industrial—that date to different times, they do not ‘‘mean’’ the same thing in each instance, nor were they necessarily used in quite the same way. It is critical, therefore, for archaeologists to delineate the specific historical and cultural context of individual sites in which sewing tools are found and to develop their case studies with care before offering interpretations aimed at elucidating wider cultural contexts. I have sought to provide a way for archaeologists to identify the material culture of needlework and sewing accurately and fully and to provide examples of contextual analysis that permit the archaeologist to interpret how women and men and children used such objects in both practical and meaningful ways.

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Notes

1. i n t r o d u c t i o n 1. The context for interpreting the Spencer-Peirce-Little lace bobbin fragment is presented in Nelson 1995; see also Beaudry 1998:30, fig. 9. 2. Noël Hume 1970; Deagan 1987, 2002; Karklins 2000; Brauner 2000; see also White 2005. The Left Coast Press has announced the inauguration of a series of guides to material culture found at historical sites. 3. Metonymy is a process of substitute naming whereby, through close association or contingency, one thing (or the name for it) is made to stand for another; see Beaudry 1988:47. 4. Luedtke 1996:1. 5. Parker 1984:11. 6. Parker 1984:2, 3, 5, 11–14. 7. Barber 1994. 8. Nylander 1992; Swan 1977; MacDonald 1988. In the 1790s, for example, bobbin lace was made for cash as part of an extensive putting-out industry based in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Vincent 1988:3, 17. 9. Benes 1986:67. 10. Douglas 1982; Douglas and Isherwood 1979. The ‘‘active voice’’ ethnographic approach has been applied by historian Rhys Isaac, who was strongly influenced by Douglas’s work; see Isaac 1980. For a concise and cogent presentation of interpretive archaeology, see Gamble 2001:34–39. Like many of my colleagues who practice interpretive archaeology, I analyze material culture as it is employed in negotiation and discourses of identity (see, e.g., Beaudry, Cook, and Mrozowski 1991; Beaudry 1996; Loren 2001; Loren and Beaudry 2005; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001; Yamin 2001; and White 2002, 2004, 2005). 11. Beaudry 1995:4; Wylie 1999. 12. Barber 1994; Swan 1977. For archaeological studies linking women and sewing equipment, see Galle 2004; Jackson 1994; McEwan 1991. 13. See White 2005 for a guide to buttons and other artifacts of personal adornment.

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Notes to Pages 10–13 2. t h e l o w l y p i n

1. Linda Eaton, curator of textiles, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, pers. comm. 2001; her observation is borne out by the fact that guides to tailoring never mention pins (see esp. Garsault 1769; see also Queen and Lapsley 1809; Wyatt 1822). Longman and Loch 1911 devote several chapters to pin lore and beliefs about special properties of pins. A pin was mentioned in one instance as the instrument employed as a cure for being ‘‘hag-ridden’’ (the victim of a witch’s nocturnal assaults); one women recounted that she used a pin to scratch and draw blood from the woman she suspected to be the witch (Davies 1996–1997:46–47). I limit my discussion to practical uses of pins and refer the reader to other sources for details about folklore and superstitions pertaining to pins (see note 2, below). Archaeological finds of pins in buried bottles, for example, have been interpreted as ‘‘witch bottles’’: in the City of London, at Dukes Place, seventeenth-century ‘‘made-ground yielded a ‘Bellarmine’ containing corroded metal pins probably used by someone who believed themselves to be bewitched to counter the spell’’ (Cherry 1978:112; see also Becker 1980; King 1996). 2. Longman and Loch 1911:pl. 2. The Thebes find dates to the twelfth to fourteenth dynasty, or c. 2000–1560 bc. Whiting 1928:134–135; Longman and Loch 1911:pls. 4, 5; there is no special feature to distinguish early hairpins from pins of other sorts; it has been suggested that bronze pins were used for dress and sewing and that larger, broader pins of jet, ivory, and bone were for the hair (Andere 1971:42–43). 3. Barber 1991:61, 63. 4. Longman and Loch 1911:pls. 3, 6, 8, 9. For discussion of elaborate dress pins from Anglo-Saxon sites in Britain, see Wilson 1964. Barber 1991:121. 5. ‘‘Brooches and pins are common finds on civil sites’’ because ‘‘the civilian costume [for men] of the later Roman period seems to have consisted of a dress or tunic caught in at the waist by a narrow girdle, apparently tied, and cloak or mantle fastened at the shoulder by a pin or brooch’’ (Hawkes 1961:32–33). Andere 1971:42. Dahl 1970:65; this type of pin appears only in Scotland and the Viking lands in the West and dates to the tenth century. For details on ring-headed pins recovered from medieval layers in Dublin, Ireland, see Fanning 1994. Wallace 2000. 6. Earwood 1993:29, 120. Pins made of yew, for instance, were recovered, along with wooden combs, from late-fifteenth-century contexts at Narrow Quay in Bristol, England (Good 1987:108, 109); bone pins have been found in Viking-age sites such as a house excavated at Drimore, South Uist, Scotland (Wilson and Hurst 1957:156); they were exceedingly common at Anglo-Saxon sites throughout Britain (cf. Addyman 1964:64); and ‘‘bone was widely used for making such small objects as knifehandles, spindle-whorls, pins and hair-combs’’ at Irish raths—small, usually circular earthworks enclosing farmsteads—of the twelfth century (Proudfoot 1961:116). Andere 1971:43–44; Egan and Pritchard 1991:291–303. 7. Egan and Pritchard 1991:222, 297, 298, fig. 198. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries huge numbers of pins were imported into England from the Netherlands, both in bulk consignments as well as in smaller quantities for individual customers (Egan and Forsyth 1997:222). Egan and Pritchard note that it is highly likely that pins

Notes to Pages 13–17

8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

181

were used similarly in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but no evidence has been found to confirm this. Egan and Pritchard 1991:299, 297; Margeson 1993:10–11, fig. 4, nos. 25–30. Margeson illustrates and discusses a number of bone pins, all of them save one rather simple and crude. She posits that the cruder versions, each of which has a hole drilled through its wide end, are homemade dress pins, used ‘‘with a thong or cord through the pierced head, and tied to the point once it had passed through the fabric’’ (1993:9, 13, fig. 4, no. 24, fig. 6). It is also possible that they were used as needles in coarse work such as netting. Cunnington and Cunnington 1966:52, who quote from Ben Jonson’s Tale of a Tub (1633): ‘‘He had on a pair of pinn’d up breeches like pudding bags’’ (54). S. Rowlands, Doctor Merry-Man (1616), quoted in Cunnington and Cunnington 1966:17. This even though nineteenth-century folk custom on the Isle of Wight warned expectant mothers to remove all pins from the layette pincushion, in keeping with the local proverb ‘‘More pins, more pain’’ (Cunnington and Lucas 1972:40). Cunnington and Lucas 1972:24. A doctor writing in the Lady’s Magazine in 1785, as quoted by Cunnington and Lucas 1972:24. By the eighteenth century some gowns had rows of hooks and eyes to effect an edgeto-edge front closure over the bodice (Cunnington and Cunnington 1957:122). Cunnington and Cunnington 1966:82, 101, 177, 179–11. Cunnington and Cunnington 1957:116–118. John Gay, The Pin and the Needle (1728), quoted in Cunnington and Cunnington 1957:118, 326. ‘‘Songs for Little Misses,’’ from John Marchant, Puerilia; or, Amusements for the Young (1751), quoted in Longman and Loch 1911:136. Quoted in Longman and Loch 1911:131. Proctor 1966:53. It is worth noting that women’s fashions changed dramatically beginning in the 1790s, until Victorian times requiring far less in the way of layering and fasteners. See, e.g., Loughridge and Campbell 1985:12, 14. Groves 1966:49; such pin-suites, as they are called, of gold, silver, and bronze are often found in seventh-century Anglo-Saxon women’s graves in parts of England such as the Peaks District (Ozanne 1962–3:27–29). Longman and Loch 1911:pl. 10; MacGregor 1985:171, fig. 89; Ponsford and Jackson 1996:267; Egan 1990:206; Cherry 1972:104; Margeson 1993:177. Egan (2005:138, fig. 131) reports that pinner’s bones are relatively common finds from sixteenth-century deposits in London, particularly at religious sites postdating the Dissolution. MacGregor 1985:171; Groves 1966:49–50. The medieval pins found in London had both solid and wound-wire heads; the solid heads were hammered into spherical or hemispherical shapes, with some being flattened on the top and decorated with quadrants and dots (Egan and Pritchard 1991:299, 300, figs. 199, 203). Egan and Pritchard 1991:301, figs. 200–202. Proctor 1966:53; Tylecote 1972:183; Groves 1966:51; Andere 1971:45; Egan and Pritchard found, however, that the decorated pins recovered from medieval sites in London tended to be of English manufacture. They suggest there was a certain type of

182

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

Notes to Pages 17–22 pin associated with England and question the frequent assertion that all pins were imported into England during this time, noting that even a Parisian pinner in 1400 took an order for five hundred pins de la façon d’Angleterre (Egan and Pritchard 1991:299, 302–303). For the Diderot engravings, see Gillispie 1959:vol. 1, pls. 184–186. Sprague 1937:1. This early date is at odds with Phillips’s statement that the brass pin was not introduced into England until 1543 (Phillips 1818), but there is ample evidence that iron or steel pins were in use between 1404 and 1455, and it seems highly unlikely that Henry VIII would have issued regulations to control British pin-making in 1543 if brass pins had appeared for the first time in that year (see below). Illustrations of stages in pin-making often show not just men but also women and children engaged in various tasks; Rivington’s Book of Trades (London, 1827), for instance, shows a young woman heading pins by operating a drill press. See also Tomlinson 1858. Quoted in Proctor 1966:53. Andere 1971:45, 46; Atkin 1987:3, 16; Tylecote 1972:185–186. Sprague 1937:1, quoting Greeley et al. 1873:1286. J. Leander Bishop notes that a Nathaniel Robbins, who billed himself as a ‘‘wyer draer,’’ had petitioned for aid to carry on his trade at Lynn (Saugus Ironworks) in 1666 but, unlike Jenks, had been turned down (Bishop 1966:478). Rogers 1983:140, 141; Sprague 1937:1–2; Bishop 1866:504, 616. Smith 1776 [1910]:4–5. Tylecote 1972:184, 185, fig. 82, illustration of annealing furnace at Gloucester Folk Museum; 186, fig. 83, illustration of a drop-stamp bench in the collections of the Gloucester Folk Museum. Sprague 1937:2; Egan 2005:130–131. Tylecote 1972:184; Phillips 1818, cited in Tylecote 1972:184; Proctor 1966:54; Rogers 1983:140; Smith [1776] 1910:5. Proctor 1966:55. Proctor 1966:54. Rogers 1983:141. Sprague 1937:1. Tylecote’s metallurgical study of dated pins proved that pins dated as early as 1551 had spiral wound globular heads (1972:187). Tylecote 1972:190; see also Deagan 2002:194; Proctor 1966:53; Whittemore 1966:14; Tylecote (1972:185– 186) notes that giving pins a conical head shape was accomplished simply by using a differently-shaped cavity in the heading ram die. Tylecote 1972:90. For a recently published archaeometallurgical study of copper alloy pins and needles from the site of Tepe Yahya (c. 5500–c. 1400 bc) in Iran, see Thornton et al. 2002. Longman and Loch 1911 illustrate a round-headed pin found fastening a manuscript dated 1570 (pl. 10); Tylecote analyzed pins that had been fastened to English documents and letters dated 1548, 1551, 1576, and 1669. He stated, ‘‘There is no reason to believe that these documents have been re-pinned since they were put away but of course the pins may have come from an earlier period and been re-used. So the date ascribed to them represents a terminus ante quem for their manufacture’’ (Tylecote 1972:187). Deagan 2002:194. The authors of the study of eighteenth-century Fort Stanwix in Rome, New York (Hanson and Hsu 1975), conclude correctly that the long pins they recovered from

Notes to Pages 24–27

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

183

late-eighteenth-century strata at the fort had something to do with women, but they incorrectly identify the pins as hat pins when they were probably either corkins or blanket pins, wig pins, or perhaps lace pins. Women’s headgear at this time could be quite elaborate, but fashionable hats, although commonly worn, would be secured either with ribbons or ties or with elaborate, decorative hat pins, not straight pins (Cunnington and Cunnington 1957:343–368). Deagan 2002:194. Woodfield and Goodall 1981:91. Woodfield and Goodall distinguish among the 1,575 pins recovered from sixteenth-century contexts at the Free Grammar School at Whitefriars, Coventry, according to wire thickness or gauge: ‘‘very fine ‘dressmaker’ pins,’’ general-purpose pins with a gauge of just under a millimeter, and thick pins of 1.5-mm gauge (Woodfield and Goodall 1981:91, 92, fig. 5, nos. 35a–j). Ruffs were not typically worn by any besides the ‘‘better sorts’’ and were, of course, one of the many elements of prominent social display characteristic of men’s clothing before the nineteenth century. Woodfield and Goodall posit that some sewing or instruction in sewing took place at the school because both a thimble and a thimble ring were found along with the pins. Egan and Forsyth 1997:223–224. Proctor 1966:51; Sprague 1937:3; The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘‘minnekin’’ (hereafter cited as Compact OED). Andere 1971:49. Compact OED, s.v. ‘‘middling.’’ Cox 1966:256, fig. 197; Yamin 2000:132, fig. 66. Compact OED, s.v. ‘‘corkin’’; many spelling variations are listed. Sprague 1937:3; Andere 1971:48. Addyman and Marjoram 1972:92, 91, fig. 41, nos. 17, 18. One of the ‘‘coated’’ pins was 2.52 inches long, the other 1.26 inches in length; the second (no. 18) is of fine wire gauge and most likely was used in pinning veils or ruffs. Also found at St. Neots were two sixteenth-century copper-alloy pins with decorative heads, one gilded and one silvered, an early-sixteenth-century copper-alloy pin with a slant head, and more than fifty common straight pins with wound-wire heads. The latter were all from mideighteenth-century contexts. For the Free Grammar School finds, see Woodfield and Goodall 1981:91. Taylor 1983:97, 248–262; in earlier times all attendants at a funeral and all members of a household (including servants), not just the immediately bereaved, were expected to conform to a greater or lesser degree to conventions governing mourning attire. Loughridge and Campbell 1985:2; Flanagan 1982:46–47. Loughridge and Campbell 1985:14 illustrate a box of U.S. Civil War–era black steel mourning pins in conjunction with a veil for deep mourning. Longman and Loch 1911:pl. 11.4; Joan Unwin, pers. comm. 2001. Proctor 1966: 55; Joan Unwin, pers. comm. 2001. Longman and Loch 1911:pl. 11.1; Campbell 1969:120; Whiting 1928:140. Cox 1966:120, 113. For discussion of wig styles and hair ornaments, see White 2005: 111–119. Cox 1966:250–251; Garsault 1769:22; Cox 1965:16; pl. 4 from The Wigmaker’s Art

184

50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56.

57. 58.

59. 60.

Notes to Pages 28–32 illustrates both needles for sewing the wig and tacks for holding the thread or ribbon in place. Tattershall, discussing wigmaking in eighteenth-century Williamsburg, Virginia, refers to ‘‘small nails, called ‘wig points’’’ (1959:22). Cunnington and Cunnington 1957:374, 377; Garsault 1769:28. He advocates instead securing an extra ribbon to the mounting ribbon by driving in a small nail; the ribbon runs under the ‘‘chin’’ of the block and is affixed on the other side of the wig, holding the wig securely in place while the wigmaker made his finishing touches. Royal Pennsylvania Gazette, Mar. 13, 1778. I thank Carolyn White for bringing this reference to my attention. Cunnington and Cunnington 1957:374, 377. Berbecker and Son n.d.:5. Sprague 1937:3. Huggins 1969:91; the description of this find does not specify that paper was found but states that the pins were found together in a manner that suggested a paper of pins. This may be what the archaeologists ‘‘saw’’ because it was what was expected; sadly, there is no illustration of these pins either in situ or out of the ground in their ‘‘paper,’’ so it is difficult to say that here is evidence of ‘‘sticking’’ of pins before the practice was documented as being common. And, of course, anyone who had pins they wished to keep together could as easily stick them into a piece of paper as they could place them in a pin poppet or needlecase. Proctor 1966:56. Proctor 1966:56. Almost every author on needlework tools offers some speculation on the origin of the phrase ‘‘pin money,’’ for which there seems to be any number of potential explanations. The main issue of concern is that at one time ‘‘pin money’’ represented a not inconsiderable sum of money, but once mass production made high-quality pins widely available at exceedingly low cost, the phrase ‘‘pin money’’ came to refer to a paltry, insignificant sum (see, e.g., Andere 1971:50; Proctor 1966:56; Groves 1966:51). I have been told of a wholly different folk explanation for the derivation of the phrase by Al Luckenbach, archaeologist for Anne Arundel County, Maryland; he recounted that a friend of his showed him examples of colonial currency that had been torn and repaired with colonial straight pins. The practice of pinning torn currency notes back together, Luckenbach’s friend believes, is the source of the phrase ‘‘pin money.’’ Sources on pincushions, of varying use to the archaeologist, include: Colby 1975; Taunton 1999; McConnel 1997; Rogers 1983; Proctor 1966; Groves 1966; Longman and Loch 1911; Gillingham 1924; and Whittemore 1966. Taunton, McConnel, Rogers, Proctor, and Groves are lavishly illustrated and can prove highly useful to anyone searching for an item comparable to a specific archaeological find. Groves 1966:51. Groves 1966:55; Shaffer 1973:234–235. Swan 1977:128, fig. 67, shows a rectangular pincushion with a flower design and words formed by tiny pins placed so that the heads spell out ‘‘Welcome / Little / Stranger / Here.’’ The piece is dated 1795. Proctor 1966:56; for further illustrations of fancy-worked pin balls, see Swan 1977:191, fig. 49. Proctor 1966:58; Longman and Loch 1911:pl. 12. Proctor 1966:60; Swan 1977:129 explains that needlework gifts consisted mainly of accessory pieces, such as pincushions, hand towels, needlebooks, and so on. Proctor 1966:58.

Notes to Pages 32–35

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61. Proctor 1966:58, 60. 62. Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1916:178–180. 63. Cherry 1977:94. For example, a bone pincushion mount was recovered at Appleton Roebuck, England (MacGregor 1985:186, fig. 101, no. 28). Examples similar to the Boston find are illustrated in Rogers 1983:155, pl. 121 (two silver baskets, c. 1820) and in Taunton 1997:93, pl. 98 (two silver filigree basket English pincushions, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century; these are also illustrated in Taunton 1999:51). McConnel 1999:170, 177, illustrates two silver chatelaines (no date given) each with small bucket-shaped containers on one of their chains; these could be either pincushions or thimble holders. Longman and Loch 1911:pl. 41.4 illustrate a small pin-basket of carved bone, dating to 1816–18. Lewis 2001:39. See also Cook 1998; Heck and Balicki 1998; Simons 2005:182–183. 64. Deagan 2002:195, fig. 10.4; White is not convinced that these objects are pin sheaths (Carolyn White, pers. comm. 2004), and I have seen similar objects identified as knitting needle covers or as tips for the spokes of parasols. 65. Cunnington and Lucas 1972:157; Hurry 2001:38–39; Riordan 1997:35; Riordan 2000:2-2–2-3. I was intrigued to note some disagreement in the archaeological literature over the dating of shroud pins; at Christ’s Kirk on the Green, Leslie, Scotland, the archaeologist suggested that ‘‘although medieval pottery was recovered from graveyard soil, shroud pins associated with the graves suggest a seventeenth- or eighteenthcentury date for some of these burials’’ (Ponsford 1994:123), but at St. Nicholas Parish Church in Lanark, Clydesdale, Scotland, burials inside the church had shroud pins possibly dating to the thirteenth century, or at least predating the seventeenth century: ‘‘the shroud pins are earlier than the seventeenth century as the practice of church burial had ceased by then’’ (Ponsford and Jackson 1995:119). Many of the burials recovered from along the outside walls, within the walls, in the floor, and even in the masonry of All Saints’ Church, Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, England, which was in existence from the twelfth through the sixteenth century, had shroud pins (Wilson and Hurst 1966:188). We know from Tylecote’s study of wound-head wire pins that such pins could have been used for fastening shrouds from at least the sixteenth century, if not earlier, and that it would be nearly impossible to tell earlier pins of this sort from later ones without supporting contextual evidence. Cunnington and Lucas 1972:156; the Woollen Act of 1660 prohibited use of any material other than wool for shrouds, as a measure to prop up the sagging British woolen industry (Cunnington and Lucas 1972:157); it stayed in force until 1815. Although rich people could pay a fine of five pounds if they wished to bury their dead in funerary garments of linen or other material, excavations of the vaults at Christ Church, Spitalfields (where interments dated c. 1700–1850), revealed that, at least among the ‘‘middling sorts,’’ most abided by the law (Cox 1996:112). The law does not seem to have extended to England’s colonies, however. 66. Cox 1996:115; it was also increasingly common by the eighteenth century for even ordinary people to be buried in their own clothes, although the Spitalfields study revealed that a ‘‘wide range of burial attire was acceptable’’ (Cox 1996:115). Riordan notes that the confinement of the legs and feet resulting from this sort of treat-

186

67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

Notes to Pages 35–38 ment ‘‘should be recognizable archaeologically when a skeleton has its lower legs close together and the feet, rather than collapsing, are preserved in anatomical position’’ (2000:2-15, see also 5-12). Riordan 2000:2-15. Riordan notes that there is a wealth of archaeological evidence for the pinning of shrouds and burial clothing and that no special pin sizes were set aside for such purposes; rather, any given burial might have a range of pin sizes. Deagan attributes the variability in pin sizes found in a single late-sixteenth-century or early-seventeenth-century burial in St. Augustine, Florida, as evidence that the deceased was buried in clothing fastened with an array of differently sized pins (Deagan 2002:195, fig. 10.3), suggesting that the burial customs in the Spanish colonies differed from those of the English. Indeed, Riordan remarks on the high degree of difference between the burial customs evidenced at seventeenthcentury St. Mary’s City, Maryland, from those of the Spanish missions during the same period, noting that ‘‘these differences reflect ethnic rather than religious characteristics and while the Marylanders may have been Catholic, they were also English’’ (2000:6-2). Yet another use of brass pins in a mortuary context was discovered during recording of a burial vault in North Dalton Church, North Humberside. Here one coffin lid was decorated with a double band of staggered brass pins around the edges and in the center of the lid pins had been laid out to form the outline of a shield, in which pins spelled out the inscription ‘‘R:B/Aeta 59/1748’’ (Mytum 1988:185). One suspects that these pins were like very small tacks rather than common straight pins, which could not readily be hammered into a resistant surface. King and Ubelaker 1996; King 1996:38–43. Indeed, pins are often the only or at least most common artifacts found in historicalperiod graves; this was the case at the eighteenth-century African Burying Ground in Manhattan, although here the archaeologists also found evidence that ‘‘some African customs were maintained in the culture that enslaved people of African descent constructed for themselves’’ (Cantwell and Wall 2001:289, fig. 16.6). The Spitalfields study serves as something of a cautionary tale, however, against the uniform assumption that grave goods signify non-Christian or ethnically exotic burials: ‘‘That is a fallacy and is clearly demonstrated at Christ Church where grave goods included jewellery, pennies, and combs’’ as well as a copper coin (to pay for the final passage?), a small wooden barrel [a cotton barrel?] containing two adult molars (not those of the deceased), a holdfast, and a medicine bottle (Cox 1996:116–117, quotation on 116). At the seventeenth-century cemetery at St. Mary’s City only three graves had artifacts other than pins in them; these included a small loop of copper alloy wire (possibly an earring), fifteen black glass beads from a palm rosary, and a perforated disk of lead or pewter (Riordan 2000:5-15–5-17, fig. 5.2). King 1996:38–40, 42–43. Coffins did not survive but their use was indicated by the presence on and around the burial of iron nails and soil stained dark from rotted wood. Riordan 2000:2-16; Litten 1992:76; Gittings 1984:112. Riordan’s survey of the available data reveals that, in general, the majority of pins found in colonial Chesapeake graves concentrate around the head area (Riordan 2000:5-13), and, indeed other seventeenth-century Chesapeake burials have pro-

Notes to Pages 38–41

72.

73.

74.

75.

76.

77. 78.

187

duced good evidence for the use of face cloths and chin straps, for instance, the burying ground at the Clifts Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia (Neiman 1980: 132), and some of the interments around the perimeter of the c. 1667 Brick Chapel at St. Mary’s City, Maryland, where the placement of the pins during the early period suggested use of face cloths, a practice seemingly superseded in later burials by the use of caps and chin straps (Riordan 2000:5–14, fig. 5.1). A group of burials thought to be shipwreck victims were buried in their clothes; in that instance the archaeologists suggested that the reason the clothes were left in place (along with a purse full of coins carried by one of the men) was that the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition at the time they were discovered (McCullagh and McCormick 1991:87). Perhaps this is a feasible explanation in the Patuxent Point case as well. Riordan’s careful analysis of the frequency of pins in burials from the St. Mary’s City cemetery revealed that pins were more common in infant burials than in those of adults, adults averaging 3.5 pins per grave, infants 8.8 (2000:5-13). My discussion earlier of the high numbers of pins used to swaddle infants, especially around the head area, accords with these findings. Ubelaker, Jones, and Turowski 1996a:90. The man also had an anomaly on his seventh cervical vertebra (Ubelaker, Jones, and Turowski 1996b:151) as well as Schmorl’s nodes (Ubelaker, Jones, and Turowski 1996a:60). The anomaly seems to be a congenital defect, while the nodes indicate abnormal body use, probably heavy lifting; neither condition seems to have been caused by a life of tailoring: tailors tended to sit cross-legged on a table and make use of their knees as blocking surfaces for shaping the shoulders, etc., of garments. It is possible that this habitual posture would have produced some sort of skeletal anomaly, but that does not seem to have happened here. Jillian Galle interprets the large number of pins (n=347) found at a cabin associated with an enslaved African-American seamstress at the Hermitage in Tennessee as an indication that ‘‘the residents of the Triplex Middle were engaged in the production of the elaborate dress required by the Jacksons’’—i.e., high-style clothing embellished with pleats, tucks, etc. (Galle 2004:51). Thus it is worth considering whether large concentrations of common straight pins at a single locus might reflect their use in complex specialty work. Deagan 2002:193 recommends screen mesh of less than an inch or smaller to ensure recovery of small items like pins. Differential recovery rates are highly problematic for an archaeologist attempting to conduct any sort of detailed interpretation of the subassemblage of pins from a site. Many Chesapeake archaeologists have been handed down a legacy of stripping off plow zone deposits and eschewing the use of screens altogether, and I suspect that the low rate of straight pin recovery at many sites (see table 2.4) results from these practices. Egan and Forsyth 1997:224. See Stone 1982 for a detailed study of the St. John’s site. Hurry 1980:1–3. What table 2.4 does not reveal about the sample of pins from Jordan’s Journey is that a high proportion of them are very thin—that is, made from exceedingly fine-gauge wire. This observation (based on my own inspection of the pins) leads me to conclude

188

Notes to Pages 42–49

that the majority of pins from site PG307 at Jordan’s Journey were used as ‘‘dress pins’’ for fastening fine fabrics like those used for women’s veils or men’s ruffs. 79. Moore 2000; Moore and Reed 2000:68, 71.

3. t h e n e e d l e 1. Deagan 2002:195; Noël Hume 1969:255; Hurry 1980:2. I note that few archaeologists report finds of needles made of steel. Most seem to be made of copper alloy, not all of them post-1500, perhaps because copper alloy preserves better than iron (or steel). Murray and Murray recovered five copper-alloy needles from thirteenthto fifteenth-century Rattray in Aberdeenshire, Scotland (1993:192, fig. 42, nos. 214– 218), and Fox and Barton illustrate an iron needle from a fourteenth-century context at Oyster Street in Portsmouth, England, as well as two of copper alloy from earlyand mid-eighteenth-century levels (1986:234, fig. 150, nos. 6, 8, and 10); Outlaw illustrates a broken needle of iron found at seventeenth-century Governor’s Land near Jamestown, Virginia (1990:148, fig. A3.17, no. 202). Only two identifiable needles were recovered from the St. John’s site at St. Mary’s City, Maryland, one of iron in an undated context and one of copper alloy from Phase I (1638–1665), both broken at the base of the eye, as was the example from Governor’s Land (Hurry 1980:2). 2. Harper’s Bazar 1874:137, referring to Lola Montez’s dedication in her Book of Beauty. 3. Barber 1991:51; Wilson and Hurst 1962–3:308; Wilson and Hurst 1968:181; Thornton et al. 2002:1453; Crowfoot 1954:413; Forbes 1964:175; C. Milward n.d.:i–ii; Barber 1991:39. 4. Andere 1971:57, 58. 5. Groves 1966:17. For example, a seventeenth-century probate inventory from Essex County, Massachusetts, lists pack needles among the goods of Edward Wharton, a fur trader (Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920:206–207). 6. Carus-Wilson 1962–1963:199–200. 7. Groves 1966:18. 8. Jones 1973:355; Elizabeth Barber (1991:176–177) notes that ‘‘skillful and elegant’’ embroidery with some sort of needle appears in northern Europe on both incongruously coarse and faulty cloth and netting by the beginning of the Scandinavian Bronze Age (c. 1800 bc). 9. Forbes 1956:75. 10. Groves 1966:19–21. 11. Jones 1973:354. 12. Proctor 1966:12; Groves 1966:21–23; Proctor 1966:12–13; Jones 1973:355. Henry Milward and Sons (n.d.:10) informed their customers that ‘‘we cannot illustrate the temper of a needle, but it is of paramount importance since it is in this quality that the strength of the needle really lies.’’ 13. Proctor 1966:12. 14. Groves 1966:21–23; Jones 1973:355. 15. Jones 1973:355–356. 16. Jones 1973:359–360.

Notes to Pages 50–60

189

17. Jones 1973:358. 18. Bishop 1866:616. 19. Jones 1973:360–361, 365; Rollins 1981; Proctor 1966:12; Rogers 1983:59; Gaffney and Robertson 1986. 20. For example, Good 1987:106–107 reports on both iron and copper-alloy needles from Narrow Quay, Bristol; Egan 1988:195 presents information on excavations at Merchants Road, Galway, Ireland, where ‘‘a bronze needle’’ was found. 21. Rogers 1983:58; Groves 1966:25. The discussion of needle types is drawn largely from Milward and Sons n.d.:2–6. 22. Chenille is a yarn with protruding fibers like a caterpillar’s tufts, used for embroideries and fringes and woven into luxurious carpets as well as for knitted or crocheted accessories (Wilcox 1969:70). Milward and Sons n.d.:1. 23. Morrall 1865:44. Morrall produced two types of needles that fell between sharps and betweens: short sharps, ‘‘for coarser work . . . for Tailors, but is often used for household work’’; and ground downs, also for tailors, shorter than short sharps but longer than betweens. 24. Groves 1966:25–26; Proctor 1966:23. 25. Rogers 1983:59. 26. Whitechapel is a London district where high-quality needles were manufactured beginning in the mid-eighteenth century (Morrall 1865:13). Rogers 1983:59. 27. Gimp is a term typically applied to a heavy thread or cord used for outlining or trim (Gove 1965:958). 28. Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920:206. Since the quantity of sewing needles is not given in Wharton’s inventory, it is a bit tricky to calculate their unit cost, but it would make sense that the larger pack needles were more expensive than the sewing needles. It also seems logical to assume that because the items listed in Wharton’s inventory are goods intended for sale, the values assigned are more likely to be wholesale rather than retail prices. I infer that Wharton was involved in the fur trade because goods listed as among his possessions in New England are ‘‘Furrs,’’ including forty-nine raccoon skins, thirty-eight fox skins, two wolf skins, a cub bearskin, thirtyone otter skins, four woodchuck skins, twenty-one martins and sables, seven ‘‘mushquash’’ [muskrat?], and about fifty pounds of beaver pelts (207). The site of Grand Portage, also known as the Great Carrying Place, lies at the eastern end of Lake Superior; it was a central node in trade networks long before the British traders set up an establishment here in around 1768 (Woolworth 1982:111). In 1970 and 1971 Alan Woolworth conducted extensive excavations of the Great Hall and the kitchen behind it, recovering thousands of artifacts related both to domestic life at the depot and the trade conducted from there (Woolworth 1982:115); Gilman 1982:32. 29. See Gilman 1982:102 for an illustration of a mid-nineteenth-century matting needle from a historic-period Native American site in the Great Lakes region; Jenkins 1965: 151. 30. MacDonald 1988; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland 2001:72–75; Staniland 1997: 245–248; Østergård 2004.

190

Notes to Pages 60–66

31. Østergård 2004:111; Crowfoot, Pritchard, and Staniland 2001:75; Walton 1989:341– 345; the sock is illustrated in the online exhibit ‘‘Secrets beneath Your Feet’’ on the Web site of the York Archaeological Trust (York Archaeological Trust 2005). 32. Whiting 1971:93–94; Ryan 1979:385–386. I took the measurements for English standard gauge from an English knitting needle gauge in my collection. 33. Barber 191:122; Andere 1971:114. I note that collectors express little interest in knitting needles, which on their own are not considered collectibles. Rather, knitting accessories figure prominently in the collectors’ literature. 34. For a detailed online discussion of this issue, see Living History: Preserving the Past. 35. Sydney: Iacono 1999:62. West Oakland: Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004:158–162, table 5.5. Mary Praetzellis kindly provided me with a copy of the database of sewing items from the West Oakland sites, which lists diameters for some of the knitting needles. 36. Andere 1971:118–119; Yamin 2000:132–134, fig. 66; Galle 2004:48–52, fig. 2.5. 37. Lambert 1849:9; Barber 1991:121, n. 24; Andere 1971:121. 38. Ryan 1979:31–32. 39. Niellon and Moussette 1985:fig. 87, no. 12, 517, 418 (caption). 40. Galle 2004:50, fig. 2.5. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge West Approach Project was conducted in 2001 and 2003 by the Anthropological Studies Center at Sonoma State University for the California Department of Transportation; analysis is in progress. Further information at http://www.sonoma.edu/asc/sfarchaeology/default .shtml. I examined the sewing-related finds in January 2005. 41. Barber 1991:17, 40. 42. They were also made in horn, ivory, and tortoiseshell; Andere 1971:117. 43. In my search through the archaeological literature I have not seen any mention of bone or wood netting implements from waterlogged or cessy sites where organic preservation is good, although I have seen illustrated—and identified as netting needles —many eyed bone needles as well as double-pointed bone ‘‘pins’’ that I would be tempted to identify as netting meshes or gauges were it not for the absence of netting needles in the same contexts (see, e.g., Addyman 1964:61, fig. 16, nos. 21, 22). Long 1975:30, 29 (ill.), fig. 10d; Oswald 1962–3:130, 131, fig. 51.31; Mills 2000:97, figs. 78a, 78b. 44. Dryden describes a woman wearing a large hat over a close-fitting white cap (quoted in Cunnington and Cunnington 1966:180). Proctor 1966:23; Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 1965, s.v. ‘‘bodkin,’’ lists the following primary definitions: ‘‘1 a, dagger, poiniard, stiletto; b, a small slender instrument with a sharp point for making holes in cloth and leather and for picking out bastings; c, an ornamental hairpin shaped like a stiletto; 2 a blunt needle with a large eye for drawing tape or ribbon through a casing, beading, or hem.’’ Next to definition 1b is an illustration of an instrument identical to an awl. Groves 1966:25. A further use of the term bodkin comes from the printer’s art: the compositor’s equipment in printing, before mechanization, included a bodkin, tweezers, and composing sticks for assembling lines of type (Singer et al. 1957:394). The compositor’s bodkin was used to position type on the composing stick.

Notes to Pages 66–70

191

45. Sullivan 2004:74–75. The French distinguish between two types of bodkin: poinçon, a punch, stiletto, or small dagger, and a passe-lacet, a bodkin for fastening clothing with drawstrings, ribbons, cords, or laces (Andere 1971:61–62). 46. Jenkins 1965:51, 233. 47. Dulley 1967:228, fig. 65, no. 11. A number of medieval implements with earscoops at one end (oorlepeltjes) from the Van Beuningen–de Vriese Collection in Rotterdam have either very distinctive, small eyes for threading, looking very much like netting needles, or none at all (Ter Molen 2000:22, fig. 10), or are included in small ‘‘toilet kits’’ that include a tongue scraper, toothpick, and so forth (see also Ruempol and von Dongen 1991:144 for an illustration of a sixteenth-century copper-alloy example with tongue scraper [tongsschrapper] and pp. 218, 219 for seventeenth-century bone ear scoops with toothpicks [oorlepel en tandenstoker]). Some ear scoops, it seems, served as toilet items or elements of ‘‘cosmetic sets’’ and not in any way as sewing aids; several examples of combined ear scoops and toothpicks of metal, in at least six different forms, were recovered from medieval sites in London (Egan and Pritchard 1991:379). 48. Groves 1966:25; Proctor 1966:23; Rogers 1983:62. 49. Jamestown bodkins: Beverly Straube, pers. comm. 1996; a bodkin from Jamestown is illustrated at http://www.apva.org/ngex/c10bodk.html; Jordan’s Journey: Mouer and McLearen 1991, 1992; Norwich: Margeson 1993:8–9, items 21–23, pls. 2, 3. More than one silver bodkin was found in a midden deposit at the site of a well-to-do household at the seventeenth-century Colony of Avalon (http://www.heritage.nf.ca/avalon/arch/ mansion.html), one of these has an ear scoop at one end and is inscribed with the initials ‘‘SK.’’ No doubt this belonged to Lady Sara Kirke, who as a widow maintained control of the profitable fishing plantation at Ferryland (Pope 2004:273–274, pl. 12; 300–303). A small silver bodkin, only two and a half inches long, was recovered in 2005 from a plow-zone context at the St. John’s site at St. Mary’s City, Maryland (Specimen no. ST1-23-456C/GM; Silas Hurry, pers. comm. 2005). 50. Judith Leyster (1609–1660) was probably a pupil of Frans Hals; she worked in Haarlem and Amsterdam. Joyful Company, also known as Carousing Couple, is owned by the Louvre, Paris (see Web Gallery of Art: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/ leyster/index.html). Sullivan 2004:74; Holme 1688; Horn 1972:109, fig. 4; Sullivan (2004:72) reproduces a painting by a follower of Ludoph de Jonge of a woman sewing by candlelight (1650–1655) with a bodkin tucked under her cap serving temporarily as a hair needle. 51. The bodkin is distinctively Dutch; its tip bears decoration resembling overlapping fish scales, and it has a teardrop-shaped eye. Janowitz 2001, 2004, 2005; Ballard 1965; see also Cantwell and Wall 2001:173–175, 278–279, 281. The Roelofs bodkin was found in 1964 at the Quarry Site in Munsville, New York. Other excavated seventeenth-century Dutch bodkins include one found by Paul Huey at Dutch Fort Orange, plain but with a hooked end, and a highly decorated example recovered by Joe Diamond at the Persen House Site in Kingston, New York (Paul Huey to Meta Janowitz, 8 Sept. 2004). 52. Hornum et al. 2001:49–51, 556, 567, fig. 197. Archaeologists from Christopher Goodwin Associates mistakenly identified the bodkin as a sewing needle made of copper alloy. I have not examined the ‘‘SS’’ bodkin myself, but when I saw color photographs

192

53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59.

60.

Notes to Pages 70–74 of it I thought it might be made of silver. Howard Wellman, conservator for the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab), kindly undertook a minute inspection of the object, which had been conserved by Goodwin Associates, on my behalf. (The object has been treated and coated, rendering metallographic analysis infeasible.) Wellman decided that it is probably made of copper alloy with silver or tin plating, and he agreed with me that there may be some sort of registry mark on the object but that wear, time, and previous conservation has made this mark illegible. He explained to Sara Rivers Cofield, curator of Federal Collections at the MAC Lab, that even ‘‘sterling’’ is a silver alloy containing between 10 and 12 percent copper; copper would deteriorate more quickly in the ground than silver, so a silver bodkin might be covered with a corrosion product that makes it look like a copper-alloy one until it has been properly treated by a conservator (Sara Rivers Cofield, pers. comm. 2004). Mill Pond Site: Balicki 1998; Seasholes 1998, 2003:75. Bodkin: Lewis 2001:33. I am conducting further research on the ‘‘inscribed’’ bodkins from Maryland and Boston as part of a project I’ve titled ‘‘Bodkin Biographies.’’ Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1916:70. Andere 1971:19. Egan and Pritchard 1991:384. Per Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 1965, a chatelaine is ‘‘an ornamental chain, pin, or clasp usu. worn at a woman’s waist to which trinkets, keys, a purse, or other articles are attached.’’ The custom of suspending needlecases from the waist is traceable in England to sixth-century Kent, where the grave of an Anglo-Saxon woman contained a cylindrical copper-alloy needlecase in which two bronze needles and a small piece of linen cloth were preserved; this can be taken as evidence that women were at times buried wearing their chatelaines with needlecases and other items, such as toilet sets, suspended from them (Brown 1974:152–153; see also Chadwick 1958:31, 35– 36). Cases intended for suspension from a chatelaine or waist girdle always had some sort of loop for attaching a chain or cord (Proctor 1966:54). For further discussion of chatelaines, see White 2005:129–130. Ó Rîordáin 1971:73, 79, fig. 21b; Brown 1974:152. Egan and Pritchard 1991:384. The similarity of the London example to earlier ones from the Continent led to the speculation that perhaps it was older than the filling date for the pit. A lathe-turned bone needlecase and a rough-out were found in thirteenth-century context at Hitzacker, Elbe, Germany (MacGregor 1985:59). A fourteenth-century needlecase found on the Thames waterfront at Billingsgate had fragments of linen cord preserved in its side slots; examples in the collections of the Museum of London that retain their caps make it clear that both the case and the caps had side slots so that the cord could be strung through both in order to hold the cap and container together, permitting the cap to slide up and down without being separated from its container (Egan and Pritchard 1991: 386). Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1917:300–301. Compare Cumbaa 1986; Klippel and Schroedl 1999; Hinks 1995; White 2002. In Britain more attention has been given to the working of cattle horn cores (for a summary, see Robertson 1989) than to manufacture of objects from long bone (but see Armi-

Notes to Pages 74–77

61.

62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

67.

68.

193

tage 1982; MacGregor 1985). Klippel and Schroedl 1999; Kelso 1982; MacMahon and Deagan 1996:19; Klippel and Schroedl 1999:228–229. Quantities of button backs and blanks as well as debris at the site of New York City’s first almshouse (c. 1730) suggest that ‘‘button making may have been one of the tasks required of Almshouse residents’’ (Cantwell and Wall 2001:276, fig. 15.9). See, e.g., Armitage 1982:98, 102–104; Robertson 1989; West 1995:31. Armitage 1982: 104; Armitage does not, however, mention use of these bones for fashioning tubular needlecases. The eighth-century site of Saxon Hamwih, in Southampton, England, produced abundant evidence of bone working as a cottage industry: ‘‘bone objects, including combs, pins and knife-handles, were found in every state of manufacture and there was much waste material’’ (Wilson and Hurst 1970:157). Another site of the Anglo-Saxon period in Southampton produced similar evidence of a limited bone industry producing awls and combs (Webster and Cherry 1975:222). MacGregor 1985:44–54, 59; MacGregor illustrates a fifteenth-century rosary bead maker using a bow-driven lathe or drill (1985:fig. 35). Some of the later lathes incorporated steel leaf springs instead of simple poles. See MacGregor 1985:203–205 for discussion and illustration of bone hinges; these are mostly from Roman sites. One example from Verulanium that he illustrates has screw threads at either end, in this regard closely resembling some of the needlecases from the Chesapeake, but the tube also has holes drilled in it to receive wooden pegs or inserts (MacGregor 1985:204, fig. 110a). Holdsworth 1976:45; the middle Saxon occupation levels in the Six Dials area of Southampton produced a large amount of bone- and antler-working debris across the whole site (Youngs and Clark 1982:184). Holdsworth 1976:45, 47. Lauwerier and van Heeringen 1995:71, 74–80, 81–88. Radley 1971:51–52, 55–56; Ó Rîordáin 1971:75. Neillion and Moussette 1985:fig. 86, no. 5, 516; the caption (418) reads ‘‘etuis à aiguilles (?) en os (151QU-IIIH2-793 et 151QU-6S2-795),’’ indicating perhaps some doubt that these pieces are from a needlecase, but I do not question the accuracy of this identification. Moorhouse 1971:59, fig. 25, nos. 182–184, 61; Goldstein 2002:18. Gadd and Dyson 1981:75; West 1995:33. A remarkable use of animal bone turned up at a postmedieval site in Bermondsey, England. At the 8 Tyers Gate property, a timber floor had been replaced in the eighteenth century by a ‘‘knuckle bone floor’’ made by shoving broken shafts of sheep metapodials into the ground, leaving the distal ends above grade to serve as the surface of the floor. It appears that the practice of constructing ‘‘knuckle bone floors’’ was not uncommon in southern and southeast England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (see Divers, Killock, and Armitage 2002:71–73), but I am unaware of any knuckle bone floors at early colonial sites in North America. MacGregor 1985:193; he further mentions a fragmentary cotton barrel (‘‘thread box’’) of late-eighteenth- or nineteenth-century date from excavations in Plymouth, England, which he illustrates along with a bone needlecase from Birka, Sweden, and a bone pincushion mount from Appleton Roebuck, England (MacGregor 1985:193, 186, fig. 101, nos. 27, 23, 28).

194

Notes to Pages 77–90

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

Andere 1971:65, 66. Pogue 1981:71, fig. 23; David B. Landon, pers. comm. 2001. Thompson, Grew, and Schofield 1984:120, 127, fig. 63, nos. 113, 114. See, e.g., Swan 1995:213; Groves 1966:23, 24; Proctor 1966:64, 68, 71. Andere 1971:117–118. Murray and Murray 1993:109, 192, 193, fig. 42, nos. 214–218. Fox and Barton 1986:31, 230, 234, 235, fig. 150, nos. 6, 8, 10. Lapointe 1998:41. Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1914:239–242. Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1917:70. Ulrich 1982:62–63. Ulrich 1982:64. I do not assume from the fact that the bodkin was inscribed with Hunt’s name or initials that Hunt was fully literate; she may merely have been able to sign or recognize her own name. Nevertheless, monograms, ‘‘small affirmations of literacy’’ asserting ownership at a time when literacy was rare, as Peter Pope notes, proclaimed ‘‘ ‘I am literate,’ and, therefore, in the context of the time and place, ‘I have power’’’ (Pope 2004:272–273). 81. St. George 1998; Ulrich 2001:418.

4. t h e u b i q u i t o u s a n d o c c a s i o n a l l y ordinary thimble 1. Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1913: 280 (emphasis added), case of Grace Stout, 279–283. 2. Lutestring refers to a plain glossy silk also known as lustring. 3. She received money ‘‘for work’’ or ‘‘for work . . . and for a pair of gloves,’’ and for knitting stockings. Essex County, Massachusetts, Quarterly Courts 1913:280. 4. Rogers 1983:80. Shipwreck sites are the main exception—thimbles from wrecks are usually identified as being from a specific vessel such as the Margarita or the Bertrand though details on the context of the find within the wrecks are not given (cf. Zalkin 1988:39, 82). See, e.g., Holmes 1976, 1985; Von Hoelle 1986:23–24; Holmes 1985:17–18. 5. Noël Hume 1969:255–257; Hill 1995. 6. Shaffer 1973:236; Von Hoelle 1986:25, referring to Cuming 1879 (Von Hoelle reproduces Cuming’s paper on pp. 305–309). As noted above, Edwin Holmes, who has also published extensively on thimbles, finds much of the archaeological evidence adduced by Von Hoelle dubious, or, at the very least, ‘‘not conclusive’’ (Holmes 1976:1). Although Von Hoelle fails to cite sources, his line of reasoning as to the origins of thimbles seems reasonable from this archaeologist’s vantage point, and I have sought out original sources insofar as possible. I nevertheless realize that interpretations are open to revision as new evidence accumulates. See Von Hoelle 1986:305. 7. See, e.g., Janet Spector’s What This Awl Means (1993), esp. 30–39. 8. Von Hoelle 1986:17; Greif 1984:9.

Notes to Pages 90–96

195

9. Barber 1991:xxi; Bahn 2001; Kehoe 1990, 1991; Soffer, Adovasio, and Hyland 2000a, 2000b; Barber 1991:39. 10. Barber 1991:15; Von Hoelle 1986:19. No term denoting a thimble is known from ancient times despite survival of variants of terms denoting needles (Von Hoelle 1986:21; Barber 1991:263n); Von Hoelle 1986:19; the El Lisht find is published in Hayes 1953: 411–412. 11. Von Hoelle 1986:19. Since here I am interested in the development of thimbles I have deliberately omitted discussion of the complexity of the crafts of weaving, embroidery, etc., during these eras; for a more detailed perspective please consult Barber 1991, especially pp. 283–382. 12. Von Hoelle 1986:21. 13. Von Hoelle 1986:23. 14. Holmes 1985:19; Davidson 1952:178; Von Hoelle 1986:25. The Naqada thimbles are in the Petrie Collection at University College Museum at the University of Manchester. 15. Von Hoelle 1986:27. 16. Zalkin 1988:34. It should be noted that Zalkin’s rather arbitrary pronouncement is contradicted by the fact that she illustrates examples of the Iles patented ventilated thimble on pp. 108–109 of her book. But her point is that most holes that one sees on old thimbles were caused by needles and hard use. 17. Von Hoelle 1986:29. 18. Von Hoelle 1986:29. 19. Von Hoelle 1986:33; Holmes 1985:24, 25. 20. Von Hoelle 1986:33. 21. Note that most contemporary collectors have called the latten examples ‘‘brass thimbles’’; in this book I use the nonspecific term copper alloy to characterize the composition of copper-based metal thimbles found in archaeological contexts; Von Hoelle 1986:33. 22. Von Hoelle 1986:35; dap: to produce cup-shaped forms (in sheet metal) by use of special dies and punches (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 1965). 23. Holmes 1985:25; Von Hoelle 1986:35–36. 24. Holmes 1986:3. 25. Von Hoelle 1986:37. 26. Von Hoelle 1986:41. 27. Von Hoelle 1986:82; for a detailed account of the Vingerhoeds, see Greif 1984:42–47. 28. Holmes 1985:37; Holmes notes that the earliest variant of the English word for thimble, themel, appears in a source dating to the year 1412 and refers specifically to a ‘‘[th]emel of lea[th]er.’’ Holmes 1987:4; Holmes 1985:39; Von Hoelle 1986:87. 29. Holmes 1986:2. 30. Pinchbeck is an alloy of five parts copper and one part zinc, invented by Christopher Pinchbeck (1670–1732); the gold-colored metal was often substituted for gold (Von Hoelle 1986:147); Von Hoelle 1986:87, 135.

196 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57.

Notes to Pages 96–108 Holmes 1985:53; Von Hoelle 1986:87. Holmes 1987:4; Von Hoelle 1986:47; Holmes 1985:55. Holmes 1985:55. King and Miller 1987. Grief 1984:47 illustrates a seventeenth-century Dutch thimble of unspecified metal (probably silver) bearing the motif of running dogs on its narrow band. Hill 1995:87– 88, fig. 4; Hurry 1980. Holmes discusses the advertisements found in colonial newspapers at some length (1985:56–57); for a complete treatment of the Richardsons of Philadelphia, see Fales 1974. Von Hoelle 1986:47–48. Holmes 1985:41. Holmes 1985:50; Von Hoelle 1986:120. Von Hoelle 1986:255. Holmes 1985:21, quotation on 22; Andere 1971:101–102; Groves 1966; Holmes 1976: 122–134; Proctor 1966. The link between sewing, especially embroidery, femininity, and gender can be seen to work not just for women but also to be the source of the creation of a stereotype of effeminacy for tailors, men who sewed for a living. Sources to consult on silver thimbles and marks on silver thimbles include Holmes 1976:44–47, 57–79; Rogers 1989; Zalkin 1988:248–251 illustrates marks for base metal and other thimbles. Hill 1995:85. This was the phrase a craftsman used to describe his work when he demonstrated thimble spinning at the Abbeydale Museum in Sheffield, England, when I visited there in 1995. Holmes 1985:22. Holmes 1985:21, 22. Holmes 1985:40; Holmes 1987:9; Hill 1995:87–88. Anon. 2000:8, 10; Holmes 1985:51, 190–191. Silver keeps cleaner than copper alloy, which readily gets dirty, or iron, which rusts; silver is also ‘‘kinder to the finger’’ (Holmes 1985:106). A pennyweight is equal to twentyfour grains; fifty-five pennyweights are roughly equivalent to 85.525 grams, 0.300711 avoirdupois ounces, or 0.274095 troy ounces. Holmes 1985:106–110. Proctor 1966:71; Holmes 1985:39. Zalkin 1988:19; Proctor 1966:71; see also Deagan 2002:205–206. Rogers 1983:85; Proctor 1966:15. Beaudry 1998:30, fig. 8; Yamin 2000:132, fig. 66; Iacono 1999:61–62, 93, fig. 5.12. Holmes 1985:59. Holmes 1985:61. A number of advertising thimbles were found at the Cumberland/ Gloucester Streets site at the Rocks in Sydney, further evidence of the pervasive nature of mass-produced consumer goods intended to promote contemporary social constructs (Iacono 1999:62; Lydon 1993:132–133). Zalkin 1988:20. Holmes 1985:62. Holmes 1985:61.

Notes to Pages 109–116

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58. Holmes 1985:54; Hill 1995:86–87, 89; see also Deagan 2002:201–205. 59. Zalkin 1988:248–251; I have not gone into detail on these here because archaeologists find relatively few marked thimbles. Holmes 1985:45–46 provides an illustration and a chart of hallmarked silver thimbles; Rogers 1989 provides discussion throughout of marks on American silver thimbles. 60. Holmes 1985:207. Also called galuchat, shagreen was a material tanned from fish skin and usually dyed green (Holmes 1985:207). Clearly shagreen is unlikely to survive in archaeological sites, though there are several interesting specimens with Essex County family provenances in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Derived from the hardened albumen of the seed of a South American tree (Phytelephas macrocarpa), which is called the corozo or ivory nut, vegetable ivory, because it is light cream to brown in color, resembles bone, horn, or real ivory but is rather oily to the touch and has a vegetable appearance when left unpolished. Small items made of vegetable ivory were very much in vogue between c. 1840–1880 (Holmes 1985:129). Coquilla is the hardened albumen of a Brazilian palm tree known as the Piassaba (Attalea finifera); it is very hard and dark in color (Holmes 1985:129). Holmes 1985:207–215. See also Andere 1971:101–102. 61. Fiske Center 2003; Herbster 2005; Garman and Herbster 1996; Sulzman 2003; Cogley 1999; Bragdon 1988. 62. Thomas 1991:18. 63. Parker 1984. 64. Thomas 1991:84.

5. s h e a r s a n d s c i s s o r s 1. Grew 1987:viii. Most archaeologists’ tendency not to differentiate among types of scissors became apparent to me when I was conducting research on excavated material, as curators of archaeological collections cheerfully brought out all manner of scissors when I requested access to sewing implements. Thus it occurred to me that in the present chapter it would be useful for me to discuss scissors of all types rather than limit coverage to sewing scissors. 2. Cowgill, Neergaard, and Griffiths 1987:106, 114. The J. Wiss and Sons Company of Newark, New Jersey, commemorative history (published in 1948 for the company’s one-hundredth anniversary) includes a ‘‘Prefatory Note’’ explaining that the derivations of the terms shears and scissors are quite different. Shears originated from the Teutonic root sker, which changed from skeresa and then to skaerizo before entering Old English as the word scear. The word scissors derives from the Latin word cisoria, meaning a cutting instrument, and the spelling results from a confusion between this term and the Latin word scissor, from the verb scindere, to cut. The term took on variant forms in Old and Modern French as well as in late Middle English. Bow is the term I have chosen to use for the finger holes of scissors. See, e.g., Himsworth 1953:154; Noël Hume 1970:267; quotation from Neergaard 1987:56. 3. Himsworth 1953:151; Elizabeth Barber notes that the Akkadian language has terms for both plucking and shearing, indicating that both methods of fleece collection, pluck-

198

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

Notes to Pages 117–120 ing and cutting, were already known in the Bronze Age (Barber 1991:29); Neergaard 1987:58; Wiss and Sons 1948:n.p. Forbes 1956:100; Neergaard 1987:58; Barber 1991:21, 28–29. I have seen shears of ‘‘traditional’’ appearance in use in the Scottish Outer Hebrides, for example, where crofters continue to shear their sheep manually because they believe that electronic shears can harm the animals. It is not a matter of being backwards about technology; mobile phones, when they became available, were quickly put into use to enlist neighbors in the identification of sheep that had strayed too far away for their markings to be recognized through binoculars—sparing the crofter the occasional unnecessary walk of many miles in pursuit of the wrong sheep. Finds of shears at Irish rath sites from around the twelfth century ‘‘provide satisfactory archaeological evidence for the rearing of sheep for their wool’’ in Ireland by this time (Proudfoot 1961:110). Grew 1987:ix, table 1. Wiss and Sons 1948:n.p. One archaeological source uses the phrase ‘‘cranked handles’’ to describe a pair of iron scissors with one bow larger than the other, without offering an explanation for this possibly vernacular term (Hayfield 1988:54, 55, fig. 17, no. 48). These scissors are about 5.9–6.3 inches long and were found in a courtyard farm in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, that was abandoned in the late seventeenth century. See, e.g., Himsworth 1953:152; Carus-Wilson 1957:104 ff. A pair of shears and a bone weaving-tool were found in a seventh-century woman’s grave at Finglesham, Kent (Wilson 1960:135); another pair of iron shears was included in the grave goods interred with an Anglo-Saxon woman at Sarre cemetery, Thanet, Kent, along with an iron weaving sword, jewelry, and amulets (Chadwick 1958:31). Iron weaving swords are exceedingly rare and probably were not fully functional weaving beaters (beaters or battens were usually made of wood) but instead served as symbols of the rank and social status of the owners (Chadwick 1958:35). A pair of iron shears and a glass bowl had been carefully placed at the feet of a Saxon woman interred in a cemetery at Thurrock, in Mucking, England; she had gone to her grave wearing several brooches, a string of ninety-one beads, and a silver finger-ring (Wilson and Hurst 1968:157). Similar iron shears were found in a hut (grubenhauser) in the nearby Saxon village (Wilson and Hurst 1967:264). Himsworth 1953:152. Himsworth 1953:151; Neergaard 1987:60, quotation on 61. Andere 1971:105; Smithurst 1987:3. Smithhurst 1987:3, 5; Hey 1972:8, 13–14; see also Symonds 2002; Himsworth 1953: 47–49, 57, 59; see also Crossley et al. 1989. ‘‘The increasing number of settlers in the New World were already providing a profitable market by the late seventeenth century, and the ‘Attercliffe group’ had Thomas Fell [a sales agent] resident in Jamaica from 1699 onwards’’ (Hey 1972:51). By 1810 up to half of the cutlery being produced in Sheffield was exported, the vast majority of it to the United States (Hey 1972:52). Himsworth 1953:189. Himsworth 1953:189, 190. A rather bizarre, undated, and unpaginated trade publication, The Clauss Primer: Mother Goose Up-to-Date, in the Rare Book Collection of the Henry Francis Dupont Winterthur Museum, seems geared to children—however

Notes to Pages 120–124

15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

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inappropriately—because it presents the glories of Clauss knives, shears, and razors in a cartoon format complete with short jingles, some paraphrasing Mother Goose rhymes (no prices or model numbers are provided). The rhyming (and the reasoning!) are at times a bit jarring, as in ‘‘Needles and pins, / Needles and pins, / When a man marries / his trouble begins / Needles and pins / and a pair of / Clauss shears / All of his trouble/at once disappears.’’ Wiss and Sons 1948:n.p. Indeed, J. Wiss and Sons claims to have taken out the first national advertisement for scissors and shears, which appeared in the Ladies Home Journal in 1906. Wiss and Sons 1948:n.p.; Cowgill 1987:11. Himsworth 1953:92; by the late eighteenth century, however, many smiths rented space in large tenement workshops or factories that began to appear in Sheffield (Smithhurst 1987:13). Unwin 2002:106–112. Smithurst 1987:5–6; Unwin 2002; see Cowgill 1987:10, fig. 5, for an illustration of methods of combining iron and steel in edged tools. Most scissorsmiths marked their products; the list of London marks does not survive, but those of the Sheffield scissorsmiths have been archived on a computer database at the Hawley Collection, Archaeological Research School, University of Sheffield. Unwin 2002. Cowgill 1987:11. Unwin 2002; Cowgill 1987:11. Himsworth 1953:92, 154; Wiss and Sons 1948:n.p. If not criminal, then violent: some scissors made in Sheffield in the nineteenth century for what was then known as the Persian market were designed quite deliberately to do double duty as daggers (Himsworth 1953:152, 153 [ill.]). Lapointe 1998:33. Moore 2000; Reed and Moore 2000:66, 65, fig. 46, no. 183. They also recovered several fragments from ‘‘two types of scissors of a similar size’’ dating roughly between 1550 and 1750 (Reed and Moore 2000:66, 65, fig. 46, nos. 179–181); these closely resembled the ‘‘domestic’’ scissors found at Ardingly fulling mill (Bedwin 1976:61, fig. 92, nos. 8–10; see note 32, below). Neergaard 1987:58. Neergaard 1987:58, 59; Ponsford and Jackson 1995:149. A handsome pair of iron shears with silver inlay, about eight inches long, was found in layers dating c. 1200– 1230 at the site of Weoley Castle, Birmingham (Oswald 1962–3:129, 131, fig. 51.4), while another interesting pair of iron shears with an inlaid bronze strip was recovered from a well filled during the sixteenth century in Trondheim, Norway (Long 1975:28, fig. 10v 29). Neergaard 1987:58–59; quotation from Bedwin 1976:46; Carus-Wilson 1957:106. The larger shears took two hands to operate, however (Carus-Wilson 1957:106). Carus-Wilson 1957:107. Archaeologist Owen Bedwin speculates that fragments of three nearly identical pairs of scissors (Bedwin 1976:60, 61, fig. 9a, nos. 8–10) found in strata associated with the abandonment of the eighteenth-century fulling mill at

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31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

Notes to Pages 124–138 Ardingly in The Weald of southern England may have been used in fulling: ‘‘if teazling was carried out on this site, it could perhaps explain the number of scissor fragments found’’ (Bedwin 1976:50). This seems to imply that by the eighteenth century scissors, rather than shears, might have been used for trimming nap after cloth was felted and teazled, but ‘‘great shears’’ were still in use at mills such as Haggart’s Mill in Aberfeldy in the 1930s, and as we have seen, it is precisely at the fulling mills that we should expect to find large shears (Carus-Wilson 1957:106). Bedwin notes that the people who ran the forge that preceded the fulling mill on the same site may have collected all sorts of iron scrap to melt down for re-use and that some of the scrap iron may have gotten mixed into the later strata. The relatively small scissors from Ardingly seem more likely to have been designed either for general domestic use or for cutting cloth than for trimming wool that had been fulled and teazled. Drewett 1976:26, 27, fig. 13, no. 9; Outlaw 1990:127, fig. A3.7, no. 80. Bolingbroke: Drewett 1976:26, 27, fig. 13, no. 8; Aldgate: Thompson, Grew, and Schofield 1984:98, 99, fig. 50, no. 29; the bows of the scissors found at Aldgate had been made separately from a thin strip and forged onto the shanks, which were decorated with a small baluster. Porstmouth: Fox and Barton 1986:231, 232, fig. 145 nos. 7, 12. Number 12 has a small baluster knop at the junction of the shank and the blade, whereas no. 7 has a plain shank. Anon. 1829:13; Andere 1971:110–112; the folding knives were also used to trim writing quills and hence have become known as penknives. Andere 1971:103. Andere 1971:110. Himsworth 1953:157, fig. 59, top right. Wiss and Sons 1948:n.p.; Andere 1971: 104. Arminjon and Blondel 1984:242, 243, figs. 1203, 1204. Arminjon and Blondel 1984:242, 243, figs. 1205–1207. Hornum et al. 2001:543, 545, fig. 187. One blade fragment from the site is so large that it may well be from a pair of shears, but all that remains is the tip of the blade so it is difficult to extrapolate from the tip to the entire object. Hurry 1980:3–4. A well at the Rocks in Sydney produced ‘‘a complete pair of tailor’s scissors’’ that, along with other sewing materials, led the investigators to infer ‘‘the presence of a tailor and/or seamstress’’ (Iacono 2001:62). The scissors are not illustrated so it is impossible to know the criteria upon which the identification was made, but there are historical references to both men and women doing sewing, darning, and patching, as well as to male tailors, in the Rocks (Karskens 2001:110).

6. f i n d i n g s 1. Woman’s Institute 1936:Findings 1. This book restarts pagination with each chapter so I have included chapter titles to avoid confusion. 2. Barber 1991:3. For further information on textiles and textile production, see such general works as Wilson 1979. Publications on New England textiles include Parslow 1949, Bogdonoff 1975, Benes 1999, 2001, and many others. A good starting place for

Notes to Pages 138–151

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

201

understanding industrialization of the American textile industry is Wilson 1979:251– 285 (see also Sheridan 1987), although beyond this there is a vast literature on the topic with sources too numerous to list here. Baines 1977:40; Ryder 1968; Lemon 1968; Barber 1991:51–68, 299–310, and app. A; Pritchard 1984:63. See MacGregor 1985:185–187 for a discussion of spindles and whorls made of bone and antler. Baines 1977:42–58, 69, 82; Wilson 1979:241; Lemon 1968:89. See, e.g., Higham 1989. Baines 1977:31–33; Lemon 1963; Gudjónsson 1979:207–208. Baines 1977:69. Baines 1977:16. Broudy 1979:23–25. Pritchard 1984:66; see also Holdsworth 1976:47; MacGregor 188–189, figs. 101, 102. Pritchard 1984:64–66. Broudy 1979:102, 130; Wilson 1979:241; Hoffman 1964:258–261; Pritchard 1984:66. The exact dates for the introduction of these new loom types is a matter of considerable debate and conjecture. Palmer and Neaverson (2003), e.g., discuss nineteenth-century purpose-built weavers’ housing in Wiltshire and Gloucester, England. See also Palmer and Neaverson 2005. Goodchild 1982:251–252, 257, 260–261. Goodchild illustrates handloom weavers’ cottages built for Thomas Taylor and Sons in Barnsley in the early nineteenth century (figs. 3, 4). Ashurst 1979:230–231, 234. Ashurst 1979:234, 235, fig. 5, no. 2; Brears and Magson 1979:236–237. Kuhn 1995:77; Brears and Magson 1979:236. Ashurst 1979:234, 235, fig. 5, no. 3. Brears and Magson 1979:237. Essex County, Massachusetts, Probate Court 1920:306. Kersey, named after the village in Suffolk, England, where it was first woven in medieval times, refers to a coarse ribbed woolen cloth for hose and work clothes or to a heavy wool or wool and cotton fabric made in plain or twill weave with a smooth surface and used in uniforms and coats (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 1965, s.v. ‘‘kersey’’). Mansfield’s inventory does not list cotton yarn or thread, so his kersey was probably of the coarse woolen sort. The ‘‘pare of temples’’ refers to devices used in looms for keeping the web stretched transversely (ibid., s.v. ‘‘temple’’). Baines 1977:15. Larkin 1988:26; see also Ulrich 2001. Abbott Farm: Clements 1999:64, 46–47, 117– 120. A document from 1811 made it clear that the chaise house adjoined the ‘‘loom room’’ (Clements 1999:117). The section epigraph contains lines from a lace ‘‘tell’’ chanted by children in an English lace school to help relieve monotony and to establish a rhythm and count the stitches as they made the lace, quoted in Spenceley 1976:167. For a history of lace (the product), see Levey 1983; see also Morris 1926. Richard Candee has traced the transfer in the early nineteenth century of both the machine knitting industry and

202

23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

Notes to Pages 152–159 the machine-made lace industry from Nottinghamshire, in England, to New England (Candee 1998, 1999, 2000). Spenceley 1976:155. Kennett 1974:111; Guignet 1979:96, 98, 111; Horn 1972:100. Pillow lace–making was established in Bedfordshire by the late sixteenth century (Kennett 1974:111), although the founding of the industry by Flemish émigrés, especially in Devon, is not supported with any direct evidence (Yallop 1983:199). Yallop posits that Honiton lace was of the sort usually designated Point d’Angleterre, going on to say that the origins of Honiton lace are fiercely debated and that the issue probably can never be resolved without ‘‘fibre identification techniques developed for forensic science’’ (Yallop 1983:201). Yallop 1983:209. Joseph Dana to George Cabot, 24 Jan. 1791, Manuscripts Department, Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. This document is discussed in detail by Marta Cotterell Raffel in her work on the lace-makers of Ipswich (Cotterell 1999; see also Cotterell 1997, Raffel 2003). Tryon 1917:133. Horn 1972:100, 101–102; Guignet 1979:96; for a detailed study of the Nottingham Lace Market and the operations of the lace warehouses in Nottingham, see Oldfield 1984. Puerto Rico: Santiago de Curet and Kingsley 1994:94–95. Horn 1972:104. Horn 1972:104; Raffel 2003:43–47. Huetson 1973:84; Cotterell 1999:85, 88–89. Horn 1972:105, quoting a Northamptonshire surgeon; see also Spenceley 1976:161. Huetson 1973:93. Huetson 1973:93, 95; Vanderpoel 1924:3. Cotterell 1999:88-89. Horn 1972:101, fig. 1. Quoted in Horn 1972:106. Even in the home context, neighboring lace-makers tended to gather to socialize while working (Horn 1972:107). Lamps: Huetson 1973:86, 48–49, 87 (ill., bottom); engravers and watchmakers also sometimes employed such lamps. Dicky pots: Horn 1972:106. Horn 1972:107, 108. Horn cites comments offered in testimony to the Parliamentappointed Children’s Employment Commission about why parents forced their children to begin work at such an early age with lace-buyers like Thomas Gilbert of High Wycombe, who in 1862 bought lace from three thousand makers in South Buckinghamshire and the Thame area of Oxfordshire. Horn’s fig. 4 presents a well-to-do, refined Dutchwoman wearing jeweled earrings, a jacket trimmed in fur, and what appears to be a silver bodkin in her hair while she daintily works at her lace-making—a world apart from the situation of the lace-makers she discusses in her article! Buck 1966; Kennett 1974:111; see also Ballard 1992–1993:43; Kennett 1974:112. Galle 2004:49, 52, fig. 2.5. Galle reports that fourteen beads were found at Triplex Middle but classifies all of these as items of personal adornment (Galle 2004:56, table 2.3). Bobbins: Hopewell 1984. New York: Griggs 2000, 2001:296, fig. 86; Yamin 2005:11.

Notes to Pages 159–167

42.

43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

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Sydney: Iacono 1999:62–63, 93, figs. 5.12, 5.13; Karskens 1999:111, fig. 2.4. Karskens mentions that at one home site the archaeologists found many ‘‘older style ‘lacemaking’ pins’’ with ‘‘heads’’ located in the center of the pins’ shafts (1999:110–111; fig. 2.4 illustrates one of these pins), but I have not come across information linking such pins specifically to lace-making. Spencer-Peirce-Little: Beaudry 1998:30; Nelson 1995:16. Independent scholar Rachel Maines found that advertising in nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century women’s needlework magazines for ‘‘aids that every woman appreciates’’ regularly offered women access to ‘‘socially camouflaged technology,’’ juxtaposing ads for vibrators with those for sewing accessories and home appliances (Maines 1998). Andere 1991:127; Yamin 2005:11. Rogers 1983:127–129, 159; Britt 1998:37–38; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004:159–160, table 5.5. South of Market: Sonoma State University, Anthropological Studies Center, 2006, Archaeology of a San Francisco Neighborhood, http://www.sonoma.edu/asc/ sfarchaeology/default.shtml. A surviving set of nineteenth-century hand-carved bone sewing implements corresponding to the fragmentary examples from San Francisco contains a ‘‘sewing clamp with screw threaded domed finial screw . . . thread holder with a lid with a hold in the centre . . . thimble holder . . . [and] needle case with threaded crowned lid’’ (Fiona Kenny Antiques, http://www.trocadero.com/stores/ merday/items/260761/item260761.html). Rogers 1983:174. Rogers 1983:175–188. Rogers 1983:182–188, quotation on 183. Rogers 1983:186; Striker and Sprague 1993:6, fig. 2b; Roderick Sprague, pers. comm. 2002. An unusual find at this site was the copper-alloy portion of a sailor’s palm, used in sewing heavy canvas; though found far from the sea in the Warren mining district of Idaho, it bears the distinctly nautical motif of an anchor (Striker and Sprague 1993:6, fig. 2c). Swan 1995:225. Sullivan 2004:76; Taunton 1997:87–88, pls. 90–92; Rogers 1983:207. My description of ‘‘low-end’’ stilettos is based on inspection of items I have acquired for my personal collection from second-hand stores. Galle 2004:50–51, 52, fig. 2.5; Griggs 2000:295, 296, fig. 8.6; Yamin 2005:11. Despite plans to do so, I was unable to inspect the sewing tools from Five Points before they were destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers on 11 Sept. 2001. Simon 1984; Brears 1981–1982; Blakey 1994. Lambert 1851:93; Rogers 1983:218–219, pl. 186. Rogers 1983:201; Sullivan 2004:178; Galle 2004:49, 51, fig. 2.4; Yamin 2000:135; Griggs 2000:296, fig. 86. Sullivan 2004:184. Woman’s Institute 1936:Findings 13. A Lady [1838] 1986:4; Woman’s Institute 1936:Mending 2–3; Rogers 1983:223–225. Rogers 1983:225; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004:159–160, table 5.5, quotation on 158.

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Notes to Pages 167–174

A handle from a glass darning egg was found in a privy deposit at New York’s Five Points that also contained an abundance of material scraps from garment production and repair as well as many other sewing tools (Griggs 2000:294). South of Market: see Sonoma State University, Anthropological Studies Center, Archaeology of a San Francisco Neighborhood, http://www.sonoma.edu/asc/sfarchaeology/default.shtml. Ferry Farm: see George Washington’s Fredericksburg Foundation, Dig Diary, http://www .kenmore.org/foundation/dig diary/dig diary 08 15.html; the text alongside the illustration of the ‘‘nest egg’’ states that ‘‘glass eggs were first manufactured in 1883 by the Canton Glass Company of Canton, Ohio,’’ but does not cite a source for this information. 59. Woman’s Institute 1936:Findings 9. 60. McCullagh and McCormick 1991:73, 85; Falconer 1991:86. The age estimate is based on the dates on the seventeen coins that were found with one of the skeletons (Holmes 1991:81–83).

7. s t i t c h i n g t o g e t h e r t h e e v i d e n c e 1. Most books written by and for collectors focus on fitted needlework boxes (e.g., Rogers 1983:19–43). Workbaskets shown in artistic depictions of women and of the Virgin Mary: Schipper-Van Lottum 1979. Church monuments: Maule 1999:69, ill. on 71; Wilson 2003:69. It should be noted, however, that to some the workbasket held negative connotations. Karl Marx associated home sewing in the domestic context with ‘‘the poverty and insecurity of his own home life: ‘the rags and tatters of his wife’s sewing basket’ lying alongside his manuscripts and books, amongst an ill assorted jumble which included their children’s toys and broken crockery’’ (McLellan 1981:35 quoted in Burman 1999:11). 2. Corbin 2000:29–30, 44, table 4.3, 51. 3. Campbell 1999:129–130, quotation on 137; Arnold 1999:223–224, quotation on 224. 4. Burman 1999:2. 5. Casella 2001:112–115; De Cunzo 2004:251–254. In my research at the Philips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, I read a number of journals written by young women who worked as seamstresses in New England in the nineteenth century; they were expected to take up residence in the home of a client while working on clothing for the family. More than one commented on how much more pleasant it was to be able to do work at home. One is given to wonder if, in the years following Emancipation, residency was also expected of African-American women or if they had no choice but to work at home because, unlike young white women, they were not accepted into the households for which they worked. 6. Britt 1998:62. Britt also notes that the quality of the finds from the Naylor privy are in keeping with what we would expect of a member of polite society in seventeenthcentury Boston (1998:61), and I am inclined to agree with this interpretation. Quotation from Burman 1999:10. 7. Walkley 1981:2, 81, 109, 125. 8. Griggs 2000, 2001; Yamin 2000.

Notes to Pages 175–177

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9. Burman 1999:13; Miller 2003:743–744. Burman (1999:13) sees the re-costuming of boys from the baby clothes produced by mothers or female relatives to tailor- or readymade clothing as a masculine rite of passage. 10. Miller 2003. 11. Tolini 2001; Richter 2000:xiv–xv, 80–81, 84–85; Striker and Sprague 1993. 12. Richter 2000:xii; see also Swan 1977:44–91. Central School: Anon. 1829:4, 5. The school’s instruction manual includes as examples of the expected outcome of each lesson pages onto which are affixed tiny specimens of sample work produced by students, including a minuscule knitted stocking. See also British and Foreign Society 1816, 1821; Female Model School 1833. 13. Anon. 1884:55, 57–58; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004:158.

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References

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations Abbeydale Museum, 196n43 Abbott Farm, Bedford, Mass., 150–151 Academy of Armory, 68 acculturation, 114 ‘‘active voice’’ ethnographic approach, 179n10 acutrudia. See needle-pushers, finds of African-American archaeology, 38, 62, 158, 187n75 African burial ground, New York City, 186n68 Aignish, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland: burials at, 167–168 Alaca Höyük, Turkey, 11 Algonkian, 112 All Saints Church, Irthlingborough, England, 185n65 almshouses, 74, 193n60 American Revolution, 19, 50, 99 American Silver Thimbles, 97 American West, 169, 170, 176 amphibolite, 90 Anatolia, 90 Andere, Mary, 128 Anne Arundel County, Md., 184n55 Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma

State University, 190n40, 203n44, 204n58 Antioch, 46, 92 Antwerp, 152 Aphrodite, Temple of, 11 Appleton Roebuck, England, 185n63, 193n68 Aquidneck Island, R.I., 97 Ardingly Fulling Mill, Weald, England, 199n26, 200n30 Armitage, Philip, 74, 193n61 Art de l’épinglier, 17, 18, 23, 30 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 88 Ashurst, Denis, 146 Avalon, Colony of. See Ferryland awls, 45, 75, 90, 163, 190n44 Balinderry, Ireland, 12 Barber, Elizabeth, 137, 138, 188n8, 197n3 Barnsley, England, 145 Basing House, Hampshire, England, 76 Becket, Thomas à, 13 Bedfordshire, England, 152, 158, 202n23 Bedford St. Paul workhouse, England, 158

227

228

Index

Bedwin, Owen, 199n30 Bergen, Norway, 46 Bertrand, wreck of, 169–170, 194n4 Bible, 112, 113 ‘‘Big Dig.’’ See Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, Boston, Mass. Bilston-Batterseas (thimbles), 96 Bingen, Saint Hildegard von, 93 Birka, Sweden, 71, 76 Birmingham, England, 17, 20, 96, 99 Bishop, J. Leander, 182n23 bodkins 46, 66–70, 69, 70, 79, 81–85, 89, 90, 163, 190n44, 191n45, 191nn49–52, 194n80, 202n38 Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire, England, 124, 125 bone working, 73–79, 192n60 camel bone, 92 knuckle bone floors, 193n67 Book of Rates, Customs House Library, London, 95 Book of Trades, 182n20 Boston, England, 46 Boston, Mass., 33, 34, 98, 160, 173, 185n63 Mill Pond site, 70 See also Naylor, Katherine Nanny Breachacha Castle, Coll, Argyll, Scotland, 46 Bridgnorth, England, 49 Brimstone Hill Fortress slave quarters, St. Kitts, West Indies, 74 Bristol, England, 17 Narrow Quay, 180n6, 189n20 British Archaeological Association, 89 British North West Company, 59 British Standard Wire Gauge, 51 Britt, Kelly, 173, 204n6 brothels. See prostitution Buckinghamshire, England, 152, 202n38 Buckinghamshire-style lace, 158 Burman, Barbara, 171, 174 busks, 155 Byron, Lord, 15

Calvert family of Maryland, 35 Charles, 69 Candee, Richard, 201n22 Canton Glass Company, Canton, Ohio, 204n58 Carnarvon, Lord (George Herbert), 11 Carus-Wilson, Eleanora, 118 Casella, Eleanor Conlin, 171 Castle Raubritterburg Tannenger, Darmstadt, Germany, 93 Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, Boston, Mass., 33 Central School, London, 176 Charles’ Gift, St. Mary’s County, Md., 69, 70, 133–135, 134 chatelaines, 133, 192n56 Châtellerault, France, 119 Chelsea, England, 96 chenille, 189n22 Chester, Leonard, 19 Chichester, England, 49, 145 children, sewing by, 176–177 Children’s Employment Commission, 202n38 China, 46, 47, 64, 91, 138 Han dynasty silk weaving, 146 Chinese Mining Camp Site, Warren, Idaho, 162, 203n48 Chiusi, Tuscany, 11 Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, 185n65, 185n66, 186n68 Christianity, 112 ideology of, 113, 177 Christopher Goodwin Associates, 191– 192n52 Christ’s Kirk, Leslie, Scotland, 185n65 cire perdú, 92 Civil War, U.S., 120, 183n44 clamps, sewing, 160–162 Clauss Primer: Mother Goose Up to Date, 198n14 Clauss Shear Company, Toledo, Ohio, 120 Clements, Joyce, 149

Index Clifts Plantation, Westmoreland County, Va., 187n71 Cofield, Sara Rivers, 192n52 Colchester, England, 49 colonialism, ideology of, 113, 114 Colonial Revival, 149 Colonial Williamsburg, Va., 97 Columbus, Christopher, 22, 109 Compton site, Calvert County, Md., 41 table 2.4 consumption (tuberculosis), 156 context, 7 archaeological, 100 cultural, 5, 85 domestic, 39–43 ethnographic, 4 historical, 5 interpretive, 9 military, 42 Convento de San Francisco, Dominican Republic, 109 Corbin, Annalies, 169, 170 Córdoba, Spain, 47 Corinth, Greece, 92 crannogs, 12 Crusaders, 93 Ctesiphon, Iraq, 92 Cumberland, R.I., 19 Cuming, H. Syer, 89 Cutler’s Company of Sheffield, England, 117 Cypress Freeway Replacement Project, West Oakland, Calif., 61–62, 160, 167, 190n35 Damascus, Syria, 46 darners, 166–167, 204n58 Deagan, Kathleen, 2, 22, 34, 44, 88, 89, 186n66, 187n76 De Cunzo, Lu Ann, 171 Derby, Conn., 19 Derby, England, 96 Diamond, Joe, 191n51

229

‘‘dicky pots,’’ 157 Diderot, Denis, 17, 27, 182n19 See also Encyclopedia documents, use of in archaeology, 7, 73, 82 table 3.4, 139, 140–142 table 6.1, 151, 173 domesticity, 133 Don Juan (poem), 15 Dorcas (trademark) needles, 20, 21 thimbles, 104, 105 Dorchester, England, 49 dressmaking. See seamstresses Drimore, South Uist, Scotland, 180n6 drizzler, 164 Dryden, John, 66, 190n44 Dublin, Ireland, 180n5 High Street excavations, 71, 76 Duggleby Howe, Yorkshire, England, 12 Dura-Europus, Syria, 61 Dutch Reformed Church, 68 Dutch West India Company, 68 dyspepsia, 156 East Riding of Yorkshire, England, 198n7 Edge, Thomas, 17 Edward III of England, 13 Egan, Geoff, 181n17 and Frances Pritchard, 16, 181n19 Egypt, 11, 12, 90 el-Assasif, Thebes, 11, 180n1 el-Lisht, 91 Naqada, 92, 195n14 Eliot, John, 112 Eltonhead, William, 69 Emancipation, 204n5 embroidery and femininity, 4, 71 needles for, 53–54 scissors for, 135, 136 Empire Knife Company, West Winstead, Conn., 120 En Bas Saline, Haiti, 97–98 Encyclopedia (Diderot’s), 17

230

Index

Ephesus, 92 Eskilstuna, Sweden, 119 Essex County, Mass., 147, 149, 153, 188n5, 197n60 Farrar, Allethenia Fisk, 132–133, 132, 133 femininity, ideology of, 4–5, 113, 133, 169, 174–175 Ferryland, Newfoundland, 191n49 Fingelsham, Kent, England, 198n9 Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, 112 Flanders, 47, 152 flax. See linen production forensic analysis, 202n23 Forge Mill, Redditch, England, 50–51 Fort Mose, Fla., 74 Fort Orange, N.Y., 191n51 Fort Stanwix, Rome, N.Y., 182n33 Fox, Russell, and K. G. Barton, 188n1 France, 16, 21, 90, 92, 94, 106, 116, 118, 119, 146 Free Grammar School, Whitefriars, Coventry, England, 22, 26, 183n33, 183n41 Friedrick Dick catalog, 129, 130, 131 Fund for Female Emigration, 173 Gagiana, possible wreck of, 94 Galle, Jillian, 64, 164, 187n75, 202n40 Garsault, Monsieur de, 28 gender, 2, 111, 131 gender roles. See gender Genoa, Italy, 109 George Washington’s Ferry Farm, Fredericksburg, Va., 167 Germany, 80, 93, 96, 106, 109, 119 Gilbert, Thomas, 202n38 gimp, 189n27 Gloucester, England, 17, 20, 201n13 Folk Museum, 17, 182n26 Gnalic, Yugoslavia, 94 Goldsmith Stern and Company of New York, 108

Goodchild, John, 201n13 Good Wives, 84 Governor’s Land, Va., 124, 188n1 Grand Portage, Minn., 59, 189n28 Great Carrying Place. See Grand Portage Great Marlow, England, 96 Griggs, Heather, 164 Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America, 88 Gwent, Wales Old Market Street and Maryport Street site, Usk, 33 Haggart’s Mill, Aberfeldy, 200n30 Hallamshire district, West Riding of Yorkshire, 119 Hall Place, St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, England, 26, 46 Hals, Frans, 191n50 Halstead, Benjamin, 99 Hand-book of Needlework, 165 Handbook of Thimbles and Sewing Implements, 106, 110 Harris, Timothy, 20 Hartford, Conn., 174 Hawley Collection, Archaeological Research School, University of Sheffield, 199n19 Heinisch, Rochus, 120 hem weights, 167–168, 167 Henry VIII of England, 17, 182n20 Henry Milward and Sons, 51, 188n12 Herbert, Sidney, 173 Herculaneum, 89 Hermitage Plantation, Tenn. See Triplex Middle Slave Cabin High Wycombe, England, 153, 202n38 Hill, Erika, 88, 89, 97, 100, 109 Himsworth, J. B., 116 Hinsley, Apollos (Dr.), 19 Historical Archaeology (journal), 2 Historical Society of New Hampshire, 6 History of Thimbles, 100 Hitzacher, Elbe, Germany, 192n58 H. Muhr Sons, Philadelphia, 108

Index Holland. See Netherlands Holme, Randle, 68 Holmes, Edwin, 88, 95, 96, 99, 100, 101, 107, 108, 109, 110, 194n6 Honiton, England, 152 Honiton-style lace, 152, 159, 202n23 Horner, Charles, 104, 105 Houndhill, Yorkshire, England, 145–147, 149, 151 Household Manufactures in the United States, 153 Howe Manufacturing Company, 19 Huey, Paul, 191n51 Hunt, Seth, 20 Huntington, Mass., 99 Huntsman, Benjamin, 121 Hurry, Silas, 40, 41, 135 H. Walker London (trademark), 165 Iceland, 46 identity discourses about, 85, 179n10 feminine, construction of, 5–7, 131 gender, 2–5, 6, 85, 133 negotiation of, 88, 179n10 personal, 9, 85, 111, 133 social, 9, 111 Iles, Charles, 104, 195n16 Illustrated Dictionary of Hair Dressing and Wig Making, 27 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 19 institutional sites, 74, 111 interpretive archaeology, 7, 179n10 Ipswich, Mass., 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 153, 155, 156, 179n8, 202n26 Isaac, Rhys, 179n10 Isle of Wight, 181n10 Islington, England, 96 Italy, 119, 146 Jacobite Rising, 27 Jamestown, Va., 67 Janowitz, Meta, 68

231

Jarlshof, Shetland, Scotland, 77 Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, 35 Jenkins, Geraint, 66 Jenks, Joseph, 17, 19, 182n23 Joan of England, Princess, wedding of, 13 John Hicks site, Md., 41 Jonge, Ludoph de, 191n50 Jordan’s Journey, Hopewell, Va., 41, 67, 187n78 Jorvik. See York, England Joyful Company (painting), 67 Julius Berbecker and Son of New York, 56, 57, 58 table 3.2 J. Wiss and Sons, Newark, N.J., 117, 197n2, 199n15 kersey, 201n19 Ketcham and McDougall of Brooklyn, N.Y., 107 Kierstede, Hans, 68 kindergartens, 176–177 King, Julia A., 35 King’s Lynn site, Norfolk, England, 16 King’s Reach site, Md., 41 table 2.4 Kirby, Beard, and Company, 20 knitting, 59–62 accessories, 164–166 needles, finds of Roman, 61 Victorian, 61, 62, 190n35 Viking, 61 Kuhn, Dieter, 146 lace-making, 151–159 in Belgium, 152 in Devonshire, England, 152 in English Midlands, 152 in France, 152 in Italy, 152 in Netherlands, 152 pins, 27, 155 scissors, 126 types of, 27, 126 La Florida, Spanish colonial sites in, 22

232 La Isabela, Hispaniola, 22 L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, 121 La Tène, France, 116 latten, 93 Lea, William, 50 Left Coast Press, 179n2 Lewis, Wright and Bayliss, 29 Leyster, Judith, 67, 191n50 linen production, 90, 139, 145, 146, 149 literacy, 85, 194n80 Lofting, John, 96 London, England, 12, 16, 20, 49, 50, 71, 95, 105, 117, 119, 120, 123, 124, 138, 143, 144, 145, 153, 173, 176, 180n1, 181n17, 181n18, 191n47, 192n58 Aldgate, 78, 125, 200n32 Battle Bridge Lane site, 16 Billingsgate, 192n59 Bridewell Palace, 76 Orange Street site, 16 Royal Navy Victualling Yard, 76 Southwark, 95 Whitechapel, 189n26 Long Crendon, England, 49 Longman, E. D., and S. Loch, 27, 31 Longmeadow, Mass., 99 Louvre Museum, 191n50 Low Countries, 47 Luchenbach, Al, 184n55 Luedtke, Barbara, 4 lutestring, 194n2 Lynn, England, 46 MacGregor, Arthur, 74, 75, 76, 77 Magunco Hill, Ashland, Mass., 112 Maines, Rachel, 203n42 makers’ marks, 94, 135 manhood, link with tailor-made clothing, 174, 205n9 Margarita, wreck of, 194n4 Margeson, Sue, 181n8 Marx, Karl, 204n1 Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, 192n52

Index Mary Rose, wreck of, 95 Massachusetts, Commonwealth of, 112 Massachusetts Bay Colony, 112, 153 Mattapony site, Calvert County, Md., 41 table 2.4 Meissen porcelain, 96 Merchants Road site, Galway, Ireland, 189n20 Meriden, Conn., 161 Meriden Cutlery Company, Meriden, Conn., 119–120 metonymy, 179n10 Michigan, Upper Peninsula of, 77 Miller, Henry, 97 Miller, Marla, 174, 175 Miller Brothers of Southington, Conn., 120 missionaries, 112–114, 177 Missouri River, 169 Montgomery Ward catalog, 108 Monticello, Va., slave quarters at, 74 Moore, Peter, and Graham Reed, 42 Morrall, Abel, 44, 165 Moulins, France, 119, 128 Moulsham Street site, Chelmsford, Essex, England, 16 Mrozowski, Stephen A., 112 Much Wenlock, England, 49 Murray, H. K., and J. C. Murray, 188n1 Museum of London, 12, 40, 115, 192n59 My Crochet Sampler, 63 Nalchik, northeast Caucasus, 12 nålebinding, 60 Namur, Belgium, 119 Narragansett Indians, 97 narrative, 7 National Needle Museum, Redditch, England, 51 Native Americans, 112, 189n29 See also individual tribes Naylor, Katherine Nanny, 34, 34, 78, 78, 160, 173, 204n6 needlecases, 31, 71, 73, 73, 76–79, 78, 156, 193n61, 193n66, 193n68

Index medieval, 71, 192n58, 192n59 postmedieval, 76, 77–79 Saxon, 76, 192n56 Viking, 71, 77 needle-makers, wills of, 49 needle packaging, 70–79, 72, 73, 78 needle-pushers, finds of in Africa, 90 Bronze Age, 91 Byzantine, 91 in China, 90 Classical, 91 Iron Age, 91 Neolithic, 90 Ottoman, 91 Roman, 91 in Russia, 90 needle-rings. See thimble rings needles, finds of medieval, 46, 80 Mesolithic, 90 Neolithic, 45, 90 postmedieval, 80–81 Roman, 46 Saxon, 46 Upper Paleolithic, 45 needle-threaders, 52–53 Neergaard, Margrethe de, 118, 119 ‘‘nest eggs,’’ 167 Netherlands, 80, 95, 96, 106, 109, 152, 180n7 Amsterdam, 95, 191n50 Haarlem, 191n50 Hindelopen, Friesland, 67 Oost-Souburg, Zeeland, 75 Schoonhoven, 95 Utrecht, 95 Vianen, 95 New Amsterdam, 68 Newark, N.J., 99, 120 Newburyport, Mass., 45 New Century Club, West Oakland, Calif., 177 Newey Company, 21

233

Newey Goodman Limited, 21 New Netherlands, 68 Newport, R.I., 45 New York, 25, 62, 98, 99, 193n60 Broad Financial Center site, 68 Five Points neighborhood, 25, 62, 106, 158, 159, 160, 164, 166, 173, 203n51, 204n58 World Trade Center Towers, 203n51 Ninigret (Princess), 97 Nipmuc Indians, 112–114 Noël Hume, Ivor, 2, 88, 89 Norfolk, England, 67 Northampton, Mass., 175 Northamptonshire, England, 152 North Carolina, Provincial Congress of, 19, 50 North Dalton Church, North Humberside, England, 186n66 Norway, 46, 60, 65, 106 Norwich, England, 13, 16, 67, 68 Notley Hall, St. Mary’s County, Md., 77 Nottingham Lace Market, 202n27 Nottinghamshire, England, 202n22 Nueva Cadíz, Venezuela, 109 Nuremberg, Germany, 47, 75, 93, 94, 95, 109, 119 Oakland, Calif., 176 Oneida Indians, 68 Outer Hebrides, Scotland, 198n4 Outlaw, Alain, 188n1 Overseas Chinese, archaeology of, 162, 176 Oxfordshire, England, 152, 153, 158 Palestine, 90 Palmer, Marilyn, and Peter Neaverson, 201n13 Paphos, Cyprus. See Aphrodite, Temple of Paris, France 17, 119 Parker, Rozsika, 4, 5 Patuxent Point, Calvert County, Md., 35, 36 burying ground, 35–39, 187n72 Patuxent River, 35

234 Patuxent River Naval Air Station, St. Mary’s County, Md., 69, 133 Payter, John, 17 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., 197n60, 204n5 Peirce, Jane, 6 embroidered picture by, 6 Persen House site, Kingston, N.Y., 191n51 Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Perth, Scotland, 124 Petrie, Sir Flinders, 11, 92 Petrie Collection at University College Museum, University of Manchester, 195n14 Pevensey, Sussex, England, 66 Philadelphia, 98, 99 pinchbeck, 195n30 pincushions, 14, 25, 29–34, 32, 34, 160, 161, 181n10, 184n56, 184n58, 184n60, 185n63, 193n68 pin money, 184n55 pinner (garment), 14 pinners’ bones, 16 pin packaging, 25, 29 pin poppet. See needlecases pins archaeometallurgical study of, 182n31 finds of Anglo-Saxon, 13, 180n6 for babies’ clothing, 14, 15 bone, 180n6, 181n8 Bronze Age, 11 Celtic, 11, 12 Elizabethan, 12 Kurgan, in burials, 11 medieval, 12–13, 180n5, 181n18 mourning, 15, 25–26 Neolithic, 11, 12 Norse, 12 Paleolithic, 11 Roman, 11, 12 shroud, 35, 36, 37, 185n65 Viking, 13, 180n6 wooden, 12, 180n6

Index Pins and Pincushions, 26 pin-suites, 181n17 Plymouth, England, 193n68 Plymouth, Mass., 112 Josiah Winslow home site, 76 pneumoconiosis, 48 Pointer’s disease. See pneumoconiosis Pointer’s rot. See pneumoconiosis poor relief, 158 Pope, Peter, 194n80 Portsmouth, England, 95 Oyster Street, 80, 125, 188n1 Portsmouth, N.H. Jackson House, 76 Powers, Asahel Lynde, 132 Praetzellis, Mary, 190n35 ‘‘Praying Indians,’’ 112 Prehistoric Textiles, 137 prestation, 113 probate inventories, 33, 121, 139, 147, 153, 154 table 6.3, 188n5 prostitution archaeology of, 164, 166, 173–174 link with needlework, 158, 173, 174 Providence, R.I., 99 Puerto Rico, 153 Quarry Site, Munsville, N.Y., 191n51 Québec City Champlain’s Habitation, 64, 76 Estèbe House, 123 Place-Royale, 80 quilt patterns, 162–163, 163 racism, 173, 204n5 Raffel, Marta Cotterell, 156, 202n26 Rameses III, girdle of, 12 Ramscheid, Germany, 119 raths, Irish, 180n6, 198n4 Rattray, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 80, 188n1 Réamur, René-Antoine Ferchault de, 17 recovery techniques, archaeological, 40, 43, 187n76

Index Redditch, England, 50 Renews, Newfoundland, 65 Rhode Island Historical Society, 97 Richardson family of Philadelphia (silversmiths), 98, 196n36 Richard III of England, 17 Richmond, Va., 26 Riordan, Timothy, 185–186n66, 186n71, 187n73 Roelofs, Sara, 68 Rogers, Gay Ann, 88, 97, 165 Ross Female Factory, Tasmania, 171 Royal Worcester porcelain, 96 sailors, sewing by, 175–176 sailor’s palm, 91, 203n48 Salamis, Cyprus, 11 Salem, Mass., 45 sampling bias, 43 San Francisco, Calif., 176 South of Market neighborhood, 64, 160, 167, 190n40, 203n44 Santa Elena, S.C., 44 Sarre cemetery, Thanet, Kent, England, 198n9 Saugus, Mass., 17 Schmorl’s nodes, 187n74 scissorsmiths, probate inventories of, 121 seamstresses, 10, 39, 63, 89–90, 158, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 175, 187n75, 200n41, 204n5 Sears and Roebuck catalog, 108, 166 Seville, Spain, 109, 119 Sewall, Jane, 69 Sewall, Nicholas (Major), 69 Sewall, Susannah, 69 sewing, gendered nature of, 4, 169, 174– 176, 196n41 sewing birds, 3, 161–162. See also clamps, sewing shagreen, 111, 197n60 shears, finds of in France, 116 in Iran, 116

235

Iron Age, 116, 117 medieval, 117 in Roman Egypt, 116 sheepshearing, 116–117, 123, 124, 198n4 Sheffield, England, 119, 120, 121, 125, 128, 132, 198n12, 199n17, 199n19, 199n24 Silchester, England, 61 silk trade, 91, 146 Simons Brothers Company of Philadelphia, 107 Smith, Adam, 19, 20 Smithsonian Institution, 92 Society for Historical Archaeology, 2 Solingen, Germany, 119 Southampton, England, 13, 193n61 Hamwih Saxon settlement, 75, 193n61 Six Dials area, 193n63 Southington Cutlery Company, 120 souvenirs, 111, 164 Spain, 80, 109, 119 Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm, Newbury, Mass., 1, 6, 7, 106, 135, 136, 159, 159 spinning, 138–143, 147 spools (thread). See thread winders Springfield, Mass., 99 Staffordshire, England, 96 St. Augustine, Fla., 44, 186n66 steamboat passengers, 169–170 Stern Brothers and Company of New York, 108 St. George, Robert Blair, 85 stilettos, 163–164, 190n44, 203n50 St. John’s site, 40–41, 97, 135–136, 187n77, 188n1, 191n49 Van Sweringen site, 97 St. Mary’s City, Md. cemetery, 186n66, 186n68, 186n71, 187n73 St. Nicholas Parish Church, Lanark, Scotland, 185n65 stockfish, 46 Stockstadt, Germany, Limes fort at, 76 Stow, John, 47 Strough, England, 29

236

Index

Studley, England, 49, 50 Stump family farm, Glasgow, Del., 171–172 Stuyvesant, Peter, 68 Survey of London and Westminster, 47 Sweet Track, Somerset, England, 12 Sydney, Australia Armsden House, 61 Cumberland/Gloucester Street sites, 61, 158, 196n54 Rocks neighborhood, 61, 106, 159, 200n41 Syria, 89 tailors, 10, 39, 73, 120, 126, 168, 171, 172, 173, 174, 174, 175, 180n1, 187n74, 189n23, 196n41, 200n41 Taino Indians, 98 Tattershall, Edward, 183n49 Tayler, Daniel Foote (D. F.), 20, 21 Tepe Yahya, Iran, 46 Thame, Oxfordshire, England, 153, 202n38 Thiers, France, 119 thimble cases, 110–111 Thimble Collectors’ Encyclopedia, 89 thimble rings, 91–92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 102– 103 table 4.1, 183n33 thimbles Australian, 99 chronology of, 102–103 table 4.1 and femininity, 100 finds of Indian, 99 Islamic, 92 Viking, 92 interpretive potential of, 89, 111–114 styles of Abbasid-Levantine, 92–93 Hispano-Moresque, 92 Turko-Slavic, 92 Thomas, Nicholas, 113 thread winders, 160 thumbscrews, 161–162 Thurrock, Mucking, England, 198n9

Tibet, 64 Tilbury Fort, Tilbury, Essex, England, 42, 123 Tjørnuvík, Faroe Islands, 12 Toledo, Spain, 119 Traditional Country Craftsmen, 66 Treasury of the United States, 153 Triplex Middle Slave Cabin, Hermitage Plantation, Tenn., 62–63, 64, 158, 164, 166, 187n75, 202n40 Trondheim, Norway, 65, 199n28 Tryon, Rolla Milton, 153 Tylecote, R. F., 21, 182n31, 182n32, 185n65 Tyres Gate property (#8), Bermondsey, England, 193n67 Ubelaker, Douglas, 36, 39 Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, 84, 85 Union Army (U.S. Civil War), 120 Untermeyer Robbins Company of New York, 108 Unwin, Joan, 121 U.S. Army, 170 Useful Arts (booklet), 20 Valenciennes, France, 152 Van Beuningen–de Vriese Collection, Rotterdam, 191n47 Vermont, 132 verulanium, 193n63 vingerhoeds, 95, 195n30 Von Hoelle, John, 89, 92, 93, 194n6 Waite Thresher and Company, Providence, R.I., 108 Waltham Abbey, England, 29 Waterman, Charles, patented sewing bird, 161, 162 waterpower, 49, 119, 147 weaving, 143–151 Bronze Age, 144 Iron Age, 144 medieval, 143, 145 Neolithic, 143

Index postmedieval, 145 Roman, 144 Saxon, 143, 144, 145 tablet, 12 Upper Paleolithic, 90 Viking, 144 See also linen production Webster Company, North Attleboro, Mass., 108 Wellman, Howard, 192n52 Wentworth, Maria, tomb of, Toddington, Bedfordshire, England, 169 Weoley Castle, Birmingham, England, 65, 199n28 West Cumberland, England, 164 West Midlands of England, 49, 50 West Oakland, Calif. See Cypress Freeway Replacement Project, West Oakland, Calif. Wethersfield, Conn., 19 White, Carolyn, 184n51, 185n64 Wigmaker’s Art, 183n49 Wilkinson, Jeremiah, 19 William and Mary, rulers of England, 96 William Rogers Manufacturing Company, Hartford, Conn., 120 Williamsburg, Va. See Colonial Williamsburg Wiltshire, England, 201n13 Winchester, England, 145

237

Winterthur Museum, 71, 125, 162 Wiss, Frederick, 120 Wiss, Jacob, 120 witch bottles, 180n1 witches (and pins), 10, 180n1 Woman’s Institute of Scranton, Pa., 137 women’s activities, archaeology of, 1, 2 Woodfield, Charmian, and Ian Goodall, 183n33 Woollen Act of 1660, 185n65 Woolworth, Alan, 189n28 Worcester, England, 96 Worcestershire-Warwickshire border area, England, 49 workbaskets, 111, 137, 169, 204n1 workhouses, 158, 173 world system, 113 Worshipful Guild of Needlemakers, 49 Wright, Lemuel W., 20, 21 Wylie, Alison, 7 Yamin, Rebecca, 158, 164 York Archaeological Trust, 190n31 York, England Anglo-Danish, 75 Viking (Jorvik), 60, 61 Zalkin, Estelle, 92, 106, 110, 195n16 zen huan. See thimble-rings