One of the members of our weaving guild (North of Boston Handweavers) is also a docent at the James House Museum in Hampton NH. Benjamin James was a weaver at the turn of the 18th Century, arriving in Hampton to learn the weaving trade circa 1690. The house was initially built around 1723, after James learned his trade and accumulated some wealth.

Three generations of weavers plied their trade in that house. The Museum President, Skip Webb, gave a tour of the house and the (many!) ongoing renovations. The current project is reconstruction of the house’s facade, including period-appropriate exposure for the clapboards. All of the nails for the project were manufactured by hand to ensure period authenticity for all materials and methods.

The demise of the American Textile History Museum in Andover MA provided a collection of fiber processing tools for the James House Museum. Among the collection are a number of flax wheels, yarn winders, swifts, and other linen tools. The collection also contains a flax break and a (much larger) hemp break. Hemp was a very popular fiber in the early years of the United States. It’s falsely rumored that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, but the real document is on parchment, not paper at all.

  • Flax Wheels
  • Yarn winder & swift
  • Squirrel Cage swift

Additionally, a brace of “great wheels”, or “walking wheels”, along with more weasels (winders) and swifts, occupy the wool room. One of the wool wheels has a “Miner’s Accelerating Head“, a system of two pulleys that spins the yarn spindle much faster (4-5X) than a standard wheel, allowing yarn to be twisted, and therefore completed, much more quickly. The yarn winders present all seemed to have in-built counters, typically a worm screw on the winder axle driving a worm gear which in turn drives an indicator dial on one side of the winder. Often, there will also be an audible click or pop when a predetermined length of yarn had been wound. Believe it or not, this is one theory regarding the origin of “Pop Goes the Weasel”.

  • Great Wheels
  • Yarn winder (weasel)
  • Squirrel Cage swift

The centerpiece of the entire exhibit, however, is a rather large barn-frame loom. I didn’t measure the piece, but it’s at least 8 feet long, 5 feet wide, and nearly 6 feet tall. Our weaver, Diane, has to climb into the loom to weave.

The loom originally came with reeds made of rattan, not steel like modern reeds. The reed is that part of the loom that keeps the warp threads spaced evenly across the loom. Rattan reeds are much more delicate than steel (go figure!), so a temple (seen next to the beater in the right photo) is used to keep the fabric’s selvage edge straight to avoid stressing and breaking the reed.

Much thanks to Diane for arranging this tour.