Lace bobbins made by the Haskins family

 

The Haskins family were prolific makers of beautiful lace bobbins, in both bone and wood, from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century and many are now found in museums. The examples above are all made from bone and give a brief glimpse of their output. Joseph Haskins was born in 1779, lived in Bedford, and made highly decorated bobbins that included coloured spots, pewter wire and tinsel. He also turned bobbins with loose rings around the shank and made lovely ‘church window’ bobbins, with openings along the shank that contained tiny miniature lace bobbins inside them. In the image above the bobbin on the left is a church window bobbin with tiny green dyed bone bobbins inside the shank. Joseph is the only maker known to decorate these small inserted bobbins with a spiral groove. The second bobbin in the image is one of the few inscribed bobbins Joseph made. His lettering is distinctive and lies between two spirals of red and blue. The inscription reads ‘Eliza Ward is no moor’. Another unusual feature is that the text has to be read by holding the bobbin head down; the more usual direction is with the head up.

David Haskins was one of Joseph’s sons and he learnt bobbin making from his father. He later moved to Leighton Buzzard and established his business there. Like his father, he produced many decorated bobbins but relied on coloured dots, inlaid pewter and wire decoration, often including tiny lines of bead work (the two central bobbins in the image are his work). He did produce inscribed bobbins but the lettering is quite simple and plain and long inscriptions read up the shank of the bobbin in the conventional way. His nephew, Robert Haskins (Joseph’s grandson), also became a bobbin maker and seems to have learnt the skill from his grandfather. He records as a young teenager sawing bones into blanks for his grandfather to turn into bobbins. An example of Robert’s work is on the right in the image above. It is much simpler than that of his relatives, with coloured slashes and turned rings. He also used inlaid pewter and wire but does not seem to have made any inscribed bobbins. The Haskins family were clearly very skilled and prolific bobbin makers, whose work spans the entire nineteenth century and beyond. The style of their work also mirrors the fortunes of the lacemaking areas they worked in. With ornate and expensive bobbins being produced at the end of the eighteenth century but plainer functional designs being made by the end of the nineteenth century, when the handmade lace industry was in decline.