What in the world is this device? That was the thought that went through my head when I saw its picture on a used item website. The seller claimed it was rare and the only other one he knew of was owned by the Canadian Museum of Civilization. In meeting with the gentleman, he showed me a copy of a salvaged publication with more information about the wheel:
Further research was done by means of asking the wise people of the Antique Spinning Wheel group on Ravelry. Prior to meeting with the wheel seller, I received an identification of this device from janclark. She said it was a John Bryce/Bruce tabletop spinning wheel, patented in the late 1800s in Canada and the USA. She gave me this link showing the device… in the American Textile Museum.
During this time I also made contact with the Museum of Civilization. They graciously sent me a massive PDF file of their entire spinning wheel collection, and sure enough two John Bryce wheels were buried inside it, although only one was complete and the other was certainly not painted green.
With such a rich back story, and with this wheel in such a great condition, I couldn’t pass it up!
Here is a picture of how it works. It clamps onto a table edge – a narrow one, as I learned while trying to attach it to this black countertop. The spinner turns the metal wheel with the knob, which makes contact with a leather pad on the other side of the big wooden wheel pictured above. The big wheel is locked into the small wooden receptacle on the spindle, and voila, one turn of the large metal wheel produces many revolutions of the small spindle. There’s your twist/stored up energy, now you can make yarn!
How many rotations exactly, and what kind of yarn it produces, are things I will have to determine later on in life. While the wheel is in excellent condition overall, the metal wheel does not make firm enough contact with the big wooden wheel to reliably spin. I have a few solution plans in mind, but they will have to wait until I’ve moved into my farm&house. Until then, it will just have to sit around and look gorgeous… not too hard of a task at all! Just look at those flawless wooden parts, made back before today’s world of plastics and disposables. I am honored to be the current guardian of this wonderful piece of equipment.