Bobbin Brown of Cranfield and his lace bobbins

William Brown was the eldest of ten children and was born in Cranfield in Bedfordshire in 1793. He described himself as a bobbin maker in the census returns of 1841, 1851 and 1861. This was unusual as most bobbin makers were not so specific and described themselves as woodturners or labourers. However, he was called Bobbin Brown by the local people so presumably his greatest trade was in lace bobbins. He had six children with his first wife, Sarah, but sadly she died in 1847 and in the 1851 census William is described as living with his unmarried daughter Mary. However, in 1857, at the age of 64, he married again, this time to a 44-year-old lacemaker called Hannah and they had two sons, one of whom it is thought later became a bobbin maker.

William’s bobbins are characterised by a small bulbous head with a slight dome at the top and a shallow pointed tail end. He made a large quantity of bobbins many of them inscribed with names and messages. His lettering is always coloured red and the letters are very neat although his spelling is sometimes incorrect, which may indicate he was not very literate. The bobbins in the image at the top of this post read from left to right ‘Sarah Ions my D[ear] Mother’, ‘My dear Father’, ‘George Burt my brother Jan 1856’ and ‘Love don’t forsake me’. Interestingly the bobbin with the spiral inscription follows a left hand spiral indicating that William was left handed. It also does not feature the characteristic domed head but I think the rest of the bobbin is so obviously William’s work that the head is a replacement, probably made by another bobbin maker to replace one that became chipped or broken.

The bobbins with single names in the next image read from left to right Mary, Dan[i]el, James, John. These are all common names of the time and William would probably have had a stock of them for sale in contrast to the longer and more complicated messages above which would have been specifically made to commission. The name bobbins also have very similar patterns of coloured dots at the back, which you can see in the image above, using his trademark colours of red, black and yellow.

William also made many bobbins inlaid with pewter. They were made by incising the bone or wood of the shank and then pouring molten pewter into the channels. They are called tigers, leopards or butterflies depending on the shapes of the pewter. All the bobbins in the image are tigers, because they have stripes of pewter, but the one on the right also includes  the name Joseph and a V shape called a butterfly. A leopard bobbin would include pewter circles. Over the years, the pewter used by several other bobbin makers has corroded and fallen out of the grooves in the bobbins, but William used a type of pewter with a low tin content which has survived well and gives a lovely silvery shine to them. William made a huge number of beautiful bobbins through his life, many of which survive today in excellent condition and are still used by contemporary lacemakers so I feel his nickname of Bobbin Brown is well deserved.