Monday 21 June 2010

Oh those pesky sources.

This weekend, an e-mail with a research-related question fluttered into my inbox:
Some months ago, I was doing websearch on nalbinding and ran across a blog entry about ancient scrivner tools that actually may have been misidentified nalbinding needles.

Unfortunately, the author of the mail can't find it anymore and thus asked if it might have been on my blog. Where it is not (or at least I can't remember writing it at all, which usually means I never did write it). But the Internet is large and full of knowledge - any of you know this article and maybe even where it is?

And while I'm blegging: Recently, historical spools and bobbins for thread have come up again and again as a topic, and I remember that I had already taken one foray into the library to look for some more examples - but these little buggers seem to be hard to find. The one that is cited (and reproduced) most often is the spool from London, and I know that there are some thread spools, including simple reed cutoffs, in the finds from Kempten. But apart from that? There's only little mention of "possible bobbins" or so in most of the publications that readily come to mind. Have I missed the compendium of thread spools and bobbins? Or is there really so little of these small helpful things out there?

2 comments:

Cathy Raymond said...

Well, there's this find from the Historiska Museet in Stockholm which is believed to have been a bobbin, but that's Viking era. There's another one here, of a slightly different design. I don't know why either is believed to be a bobbin, though the first one resembles the shape of some modern embroidery thread holders I bought on EBay.

a stitch in time said...

There are slightly similar little cards still used for storing and organising embroidery threads; however I agree with you - I would not call them bobbins either.
But at least they are a thing to store threads on - thank you, Cathy!