12/24/2023 0 Comments Spinning wheel painted running sheep![]() ![]() The cocoons are simmering on the left, and the craftsman turns the reel on the right to wind the silk. Initially this had to be done with a hand spindle. After reeling, several strands were often twisted together (“thrown”). Cocoons of the silk moth were soaked in hot water and the individual strand of each cocoon was then wound, three or more at a time, on a reel. Our story starts in China, where – as the many whorls found in neolithic sites tell us – making thread with hand spindles had been well known since around 4500 BC.īy about 1800 BC silk was widely used and the processes of preparing it were well understood. ![]() But calling it a whorl reminds us of the many, many centuries when that little disc was just a weight to help our ancestors keep their spindles spinning. Truly, a modern spinner should call the whorl on her spinning wheel a pulley (as some experts do) because that’s what it is. ![]() A drive band transfers the rotation of the wheel via the pulley to the spindle. Now instead of the little flywheel, or whorl, there is a pulley on the spindle. 2 (September 2015)įor thousands of years a weighted stick was used to twist fibre into yarn – then one day somebody turned the spindle on its side to be driven by a larger wheel. This is the young Netscher still near the beginning of his career, anxious to make his work marketable to a wide audience and providing for everyone in a household: a fashion plate, a lesson in domesticity, an example of his skill in portraying reality – and just enough allure to make some wish they were the unexpected visitor to the quiet room.First published in Creative Fibre vol. She toys with the length of wool, and the white satin gleams silver in the light as it slides over her knee. ![]() A single pearl nestles against her cheek under her ringlets and the white shift pushed back over the jacket reveals her pale neck. She leans forward, one hand brushing a frond of soft wool against her half-smiling lips. The direct, faintly enquiring gaze of the young woman adds another dimension to the picture. These maids were to be found mostly in very prosperous families and were reasonably well paid, often buying jewels or expensive clothes as an investment for the future – a kind of pension. At the time, maids too might own such garments. Similar red jackets were in fashion and appear in other pictures, such as Frans van Mieris’s A Woman in a Red Jacket feeding a Parrot. But this is a posed picture made to be sold as a decorative item and the clothing may have been a prop kept in the artist’s studio for a model to pick up and wear. Spinning would certainly be one of her household tasks. Although less distinct in the background, we sense the slick polish of the wood of the spinning wheel and its mechanism, glinting as it picks up the light.īecause of her costly dress, it’s easy to assume that the young woman is either the wife or daughter of a prosperous merchant or official. He shows exactly how hair was styled at this point in the seventeenth century, curl for curl, ribbon for ribbon and not a hair out of place. In this picture, the young woman’s white satin skirt gleams in the light of a candle or an oil lamp, the fur and velvet of the jacket is sumptuous and tactile. Netscher took infinite pains to portray texture faithfully – like his teacher, Gerard ter Borch – especially the rich fabrics of the fashions of his day. This seems like a real woman looking out at us, though we don’t know who she was. She is more interested in whoever has come in through the unseen door and taken her by surprise.Ĭaspar Netscher specialised in small genre scenes before he took to portrait painting, and such pictures of women alone in a domestic setting seem to bridge the gap between the two – half genre, half portrait. Although she holds a long length of raw half-spun wool between her hands, her mind isn‘t on the task. A young woman takes a moment from her spinning to look out from a dark room, her gaze direct. ![]()
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