Description:
One of two prints depicting the processing of hemp (Cannibis sativa); an illustration from the Universal Magazine (1756), depicting "The Manner of Watering, Breaking, and Heckling of Hemp/ Engraved for the Universal Magazine for J. Hinton in Newgate Street." This print shows laborers on the right hand side placing hemp in a river or pond and weighing it down with boards to rot. In the center a man is using a hemp brake to crack the hard outer shell of the plant. A woman stands behind him bundling up hemp. A man on the left side appears to be threshing the hemp on a board or perhaps doing a first rough heckling to remove the tough outer fibers. A woman on the far left hand side within a grotto could be drying the hemp? For its valuable fiber hemp (Cannibis sativa) was largely cultivated in Europe, but chiefly in Russia and Poland, for the manufacture of canvas cloth and cordage. It undergoes the same process for decomposing the parts of the stem as flax, called water-retting, by which the cellular tissue of the bark and medulla is destroyed, and the long fibres of the woody part are set free. This is not done by simply soaking in the waters of ponds and streams, for it requires to be dried both previously and subsequently to the retting process; after which it is beaten with wooden beetles or mallets, or by an apparatus called a break or brake worked by a treddle. Sometimes, however, this laborious operation is effected by water or steam-power. After breaking the stalks are conveyed to the scutching-mills, where the separation of the fibres is still further effected by rubbing and striking, after which it is heckled or hackled - the heckler taking as much as he can conveniently hold and drawing it through a number of iron spikes fixed in a board forming a kind of comb. The process called dew-retting, is also adopted for very fine varieties of hemp, such as the white crown Marienburg, and the Italian garden hemp; and in Russia and Sweden another method called snow-retting is used. After the first fall of snow the hemp which has been put up in stacks is spread out over the snow, and left to be buried by successive falls. It thus remains covered until the snow disappears, and is then sufficiently retted. Once the fibers have been sufficiently cleaned and straightened it is time to spin the fibers into thread to make cloth.
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