Author: Sandra Costello

Orders of the day, Volume 33, Issue 3, 2001

Hand-sewing was a common and essential aspect of life in the Seventeenth Century, practised by women of all ages and positions in society. For those who sew in Living History displays, here is some background on the ‘tools of the trade’.

Sewing needles are such necessary articles of everyday use that they have been made from the earliest times by people of all races - from thorns, fish bones, carved from wood, bone, ivory and shell, and hammered from a variety of metals, including gold and silver. The bone needle had the advantage in that it did not mark materials or rust. The extent to which steel needles were available to the ancient civilisations is not known, as no fine needle made of steel could have survived the destructive action of rust. However those of bronze, a metal much more resistant to corrosion, have survived in some quantity. These however tend to be crude and unsuitable for fine fabric.

Until Tudor times at least, the bronze needles used in England were made by individual craftsmen, ‘needlers’, in various parts of the country, and needle-making was one of the industries practised in English monasteries before the Reformation. It is unlikely that they ever made steel needles, or even knew of them; those made were from lengths of bronze wire. The eye end was flattened on an anvil with a small hammer; the eye was then punched out and cleared with a small sharp punch on a cake of lead. The wire was then held in grooved pliers and rested against a wooden block fixed in a bench while the point of the needle was filed down, and the head trimmed and smoothed.

The needler sold most of his stock to the hucksters, who set up their booths at the markets and fairs of neighbouring towns, and to the peddlers and packmen who tramped the country roads to villages, scattered cottages and country mansions.

The steel needle originated in China some centuries BC, and the manufacture of needles from steel spread to the Near East. From Damascus, long famous for its work in steel, this knowledge was carried by the Moors into Spain, where during the Middle Ages Cordoba became a great needle-making centre. From there it passed slowly to the rest of Europe. During the 16th century steel needles, known as ‘Spanish needles’, were introduced into England. Katherine of Aragon, who arrived here with her train in the opening years of the 16th century and was renowned for her interest in needlework, no doubt brought with her a supply of steel needles from her native land. When contacts between England and Spain were further strengthened by the marriage of her daughter Mary to Philip of Spain, it may be assumed that no lady at the English court would have lacked a smooth steel needle for her embroidery. John Stow, the antiquary, wrote in 1598 in his “Survey of London and Westminster” that steel needles were being made in London, but to him, as to most people of the day, a steel sewing needle was still a ‘Spanish needle’.

In London the needle-makers formed themselves into a guild, the Worshipful Company of Needle-makers, and established themselves near the tailors and drapers in Cheapside and Threeneedle Street (now Threadneedle Street), so called from the three needles depicted on their coat of arms, and in nearby Whitechapel. The presence of foreign needle-makers in the City was evidently resented, for in the early 17th century the guild forbade their use of ‘engines’, probably the drop-stamp, which it was claimed produced inferior work, was dangerous to the workers and deprived many of their means of livelihood. As a consequence needle-makers gradually moved out of London to localities where they could avoid such restrictions. In 1650 some are known to have settled at Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire.

The main stages in the actual making of steel needles began when superior quality cast-steel wire was received at the needle-mill in coils. These were cut up into pieces equal to the length of two needles, which were straightened, then annealed. These lengths then passed to the ‘pointers’ who used large grindstones driven by water power to sharpen both ends. The two eyes were formed at the centre of each piece of wire as it was struck between dies mounted on a stamp. The thin film of metal remaining in the eyes was then punched out, the ‘flash’ or surplus metal filed away, the two sets of needles broken apart and the tops of each set in turn smoothed off. After hardening and tempering they were polished or ‘scoured’, a highly specialised process. A scouring mill worked by a water-wheel and said to have been used in the 17th century is still standing near Redditch. A number of steel needle-makers were already established there, probably a remnant of the old monastic industry. The needles were then washed with soap and water, then bundled with polishing powder to give them the high finish required.

Like needles, pins are so essential in everyday life that means of making them were found in very early times - from thorns and fish bones, or carved from slips of wood, bone or ivory. Eventually, with the increasing use of metals, they were made of bronze. We tend to associate needle manufacture with that of pins, but in fact the processes vary considerably. Early metal pins were made by individual craftsmen and were forged by hand. For small pins the head was made separately from the shank: a length of wire was coiled in a lathe round another wire of the same diameter as the pin. The coil was then cut up into pieces, one of which was slipped along the pin until it was held by a slight flattening at the top where it was secured by soldering with tin.

There was a Company of Pinmakers, or Pinners, as early as 1376, but they do not seem to have been a very powerful body. From at least the 14th century guilds and monasteries in Europe produced simple pins for use in household sewing and as fabric fasteners. Chaucer in 1387 describes the ‘wanton and merye’ friar in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales:

His typet was ay stuffed ful of knyves
And pynnes, for to give to faire wyves.

In these early days, any woman would have appreciated a gift of pins, which were very expensive, even for the more well-to-do. To the poor they were a luxury. Attempts made in Richard III’s reign to restrict the importation of foreign pins into England had been unsuccessful. In 1543 an Act was passed by Henry VIII to encourage the manufacture of good pins - possibly as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries, since it must have become more urgent to re-establish centres of pin-making now that the monks were no longer able to produce them. Henry’s Queen, Catherine Howard, is said to have preferred French pins as being of far greater fineness than those made in England. However in the 17th century the English began to produce equally high quality pins of tinned brass. In 1650 Ralph Verney, writing from France, was anxious that his wife should be provided with “proper pinns” from London, for “they are nought here”.

Pins were often carried in small cylindrical cases known as pincushion boxes or pin-poppets, fashioned from solid ivory and even mounted with gold and enamel. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I a large and well-filled pin-cushion or ‘pinpillow’ was an essential accessory for every woman of rank. By the end of the 17th century pincushions were becoming quite commonplace, consisting for the most part of cushion or pillow shapes made in linen, canvas or satin, from material salvaged from embroidered waistcoats, brocaded gowns or were embroidered with a variety of patterns.

After the Reformation, Gloucestershire became the main centre of the pin-making industry, though numerous other local manufactories are known to have existed.

In England it became the practice for merchants and other tradesmen, who had concluded a satisfactory bargain, to give something for the wife or daughter of the person with whom the bargain had been struck, ‘for her pynns’. This gave rise to the term ‘pin money’ for the sum given to a woman for personal expenses which would include the cost of the many pins needed for the making and fastening of her dresses.

The terms ‘needles’ and ‘bodkins’ were used indiscriminately until the end of the 18th century, the bodkin having a slightly blunter end and larger eye. By the 16th and 17th centuries a bodkin was a necessary accessory for both men and women; the many drawstrings, ribbons, cords and laces which needed fastening, threading and re-threading meant that one was often carried on the person in a small needle or bodkin case to be on hand for emergency repairs. At this time bodkins were often quite large, up to 6 or 7 inches long at times, and made of gold or silver, as well as of commoner metals. (Hamlet suggests that ‘a bare bodkin’ could make an effective murder or suicide implement.)

These date back to the earliest times, originally a small bell-shaped cap of leather made to be worn on the thumb in sewing, then of bronze dating from Roman times. Few have been found in this country from the Middle Ages, but during the 16th century there are references to silver thimbles, while an inventory of the possessions of Queen Elizabeth I mentions “a nedell case of cristall garnysshed with silver gilt, with twoo thimbles in it”. By the 17th century silver thimbles were in common use amongst the middle classes in most of Europe and were itemised in wills and other records. What had begun as a simple utilitarian item developed into a personal possession or a special gift or memento. In 1663 two thimbles were sent to Mary Verney of Claydon House and to her cousin Doll Leeke “that the one should not hurt a fine finger by the making of handkerchiefs, nor the other receive a prick in working my lady’s buttons”.

A silver thimble of the reign of Charles II is in the British Museum, but examples of gold or silver thimbles dating from this period are very rare. This may be partly because in England during the Civil War, while Royalist families contributed their silverware and gold plate towards the coffers of King Charles, the Parliamentary forces earned the title of the ‘thimble and bodkin army’, as these humble items were to be found in considerable numbers amongst the offerings of their supporters. These political gifts are a recurring theme in English literature of the 17th century. Pepys alludes to it in his Diary, 3 April 1663, mentioning that Hugh Peter’s preaching during the Civil War stirred up the maids of the City to bring in their bodkins and thimbles.

Though an essential item of sewing equipment, few scissors survive, being too useful to be allowed to remain idle, and so become worn out or broken in the course of time. There are two main types: those that work with a spring action, or shears, and those with pivoted blades such as we are familiar with today. Both were used in Roman times and were usually of iron, but as steel was already well known, the blades at least may have been made of the harder metal.

Pivotal scissors did not come into general use in England until the late Middle Ages. By the latter part of the 16th century considerable advances had been made by Continental scissorsmiths in the manufacture of more delicate implements suitable for embroidery for which there was a growing demand, due largely to the increasing popularity of fine cut-work - a type of needlework that remained in fashion for more than a century. Scissorsmiths are mentioned in the register of the Cutlers’ Company at the time of its incorporation in Sheffield in 1624, but it was some years before the finest sewing scissors were readily available in England. In 1649 Susan Verney, in a letter to her brother Ralph who was in exile in Paris, writes: “Pray brother lett mee beg a payer of very leetle french sisers of you”.

About the 17th century cross-bladed scissors began to replace shears for cutting fabric, though spring scissors were nevertheless retained for purposes to which they were specially suited: by weavers, fullers, tailors and seamstresses.

Bibliography

• The History of Needlework Tools and Accessories, Sylvia Groves, David & Charles, 1966
• Old Needlework Boxes and Tools, Mary Andere
• An Illustrated History of Needlework Tools, Gay Ann Rodgers