Description:
Wooden hatchel with iron spikes, branded with the initials "IN" [JN] for John Nims, the maker and/or owner. Hatchels, also known as hetchels, were used to comb flax fibers in preparation for spinning and weaving. The name comes from a late 15th-century English word (hackle) meaning to prick or pierce. Hatchels are made with long iron teeth or nails secured into a wooden base. The teeth would align the flax fibers which are combed through it, separating out the shorter (tow) fibers from the longer ones desired for spinning into yarns suitable for weaving linen. As many as five hatchels of increasingly finely spaced teeth could be used to refine the flax before spinning. This example's nails are spaced widely apart, suggesting it is a coarse (gross) hatchel, used for the first pass-through of flax fiber combing. Successive combings of the flax would be done with increasingly finer hatchels whose nails were spaced more closely together. The wooden base measures about 1.5" thick.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+69.1122 |
