18th Century Winding Tools for Yarn or Thread

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Last updated: Oct 29, 2025

Various types of clock reels, swifts, and niddy-noddies (hand reels) used for winding wool yarn. Elsewhere on this site, you can find winding tools from the 14th-16th centuries.

Hand reels and niddy-noddies

• Wooden hand reels from Lanarkshire, Scotland, 18th century
• Skinner 3259T, Lot 1153, four 18th century wool-winding tools from the Marge Staufer Americana Collection, 18th century New England
• Portrait of a girl winding silk, 18th century
• GUCO 1625, a niddy-noddy from Maine, marked "1777"
• Concord Museum H2000, a pine reel probably made in Concord, Massachusetts, in the late 18th or early 19th century; “Central shaft, with a perpendicular arm at either end. One in shaped as a handle; the other is slightly longer. Three notches in each edge at each end of shaft. Arms have slight curve, and curve back at tips (to keep yarn from sliding off). One end of the arm does not curve back, presumably to allow the yarn to be removed. One end of other arm has 6 deep notches and three shallower notches, presumably for measuring the amount of yarn (apparently one set of notches was put in after the other, possibly to correct measurements). White yarn is strung around it.”
  Additional hand reels at the Concord Museum: H0159 and H0221

Swifts

• Miniature winding-tools from a dollhouse, 17th-18th century
• Laboratorio di ricamo by Pietro Longhi
• Skinner 3259T, Lot 1153, four 18th century wool-winding tools from the Marge Staufer Americana Collection, 18th century New England
• The hard-working mother by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, 1740
• Interior with a wool-winding girl by Louis Aubert, 1746
• Industry and Idleness: The Fellow 'Prentices at their Looms by William Hogarth, 1747
• Matin, 1761
• An old lady gives a prediction to a young lady by Pehr Hilleström, c. 1775
• Pook & Pook Jun 18 2010, Lot 1353, a tabletop wool winder
• Wiederseim Associates Nov 24 2012, Lot 490, a wool-winder with turned legs, late 18th century
• The Wool Winder by Pehr Hilleström
• Reading in candlelight by Pehr Hilleström, 1805

Clock reels and spinner’s weasels

• Miniature winding-tools from a dollhouse, 17th-18th century
• H2016 a clock reel, probably made in Concord, Massachusetts; “Six arms. This clock reel counted the usual forty strands in a knot. Twenty knots made a skein. Holds original flax.”
• Cooperstown Graduate Program T2020.0001.3, clock reel from the northeastern United States, c. 1750-1800
• Philadelphia Art Museum 1938-6-1, a measuring reel, Pennsylvania, c. 1780-1800
• Irish Linen Making (Representing Spinning, Reeling with the Clock Reel, and Boiling the Yarn), 1791
• National Museum of American History 56613, an 18th century six-arm clock reel, possibly used at Mount Vernon in Virginia
• Merrill’s Nov 6 2020, Lot 209, an 18th century clock reel yarn winder with chip carving
• Historic New England 1986.285, a clock reel, c. 1800-1850

Other swifts, reels, and winding tools

• The Second Plate of the Woollen Manufacture exhibiting the Art of Spinning, Reeling, Warping, & Weaving Woolen Cloth, 1749
• Diagram of Fil, Roüet, Dévidoirs in the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, s.n. Fil et laine, 1765
• Handwerke und Künste: Der Scheerer, Elementarwerke für die Jugend und ihre Freunde, 1774
• A yarn-winder from Dalry parish in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, 18th or 19th century