18th Century Winding Tools for Yarn or Thread

Last updated: Jan 29, 2024

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"

Swifts

• Miniature winding-tools from a dollhouse, 17th-18th century
• 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
• Cooperstown Graduate Program T2020.0001.3, clock reel from the northeastern United States, c. 1750-1800
• Philadelphia Museum of Art 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