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.

Wooden lace bobbins with inlaid pewter

 

These wooden lace bobbins are inlaid with pewter, which would have shone like silver when they were first made in the nineteenth century. The one on the right gives an idea of how they were made, by cutting channels into the wood, placing the bobbin in a fired clay mould and then pouring molten pewter into the grooves. Traditionally bobbins with pewter rings were called tigers, those with spots were leopards and those like the bobbin second from right with the V shapes were called butterfly bobbins. The bobbin on the left is interesting because it has pewter spots and fine wire wound round the channels rather than pewter. The spots were made by drilling straight through the wood and inserting a rod of pewter, which was then cut flush with the wood and smoothed to a shine. The bobbin with the criss-crossed pewter is also unusual mainly because of the amount of pewter used and the overall pattern. Pewter is an alloy of tin and lead and unfortunately the reaction between sweat from the lacemakers hands and the tin in the pewter can cause the tin to corrode and expand. This may make the surface of the bobbin feel rough and these rough edges can potentially catch on the lacemaker’s hands or the fabric of the lace pillow. In other cases, the pewter completely falls out of the bobbin, as it has started to do in this one, so it is common to find wooden bobbins with grooves cut into the wood but no pewter inlay. Although I do use the wire bound one, I tend not to use the others because of the likelihood of the pewter falling out.

Lace bobbins with pewter inlays

These lace bobbins are all inlaid with pewter in different patterns – the bobbins with rings or stripes are called tigers, the V shaped ones are butterflies and ones with spots of pewter (not shown here) are known as leopards. The one on the far left has a thicker layer of pewter, which may originally have included lettering, and the second from the left also includes the inscription Joseph with the six letters separated half way through the name with the butterfly. The Springetts, who are modern bobbin makers, discovered that these bobbins were made by cutting grooves in the bobbin, placing it in a fired clay mould and then pouring the molten pewter into the grooves. They also found that the bobbin makers sawed an angled cut at the bottom of the groove to stop the pewter from coming loose. Pewter is an alloy of tin and lead, although sometimes antimony was added as well to make it look more shiney. In some of these types of bobbins the metal inlay is so shiney, through constant use, that it is often mistaken for silver but molten silver would set a wooden bobbin on fire and would damage a bone one so silver could never have been used and it would also have been too expensive for the lacemakers to afford. Unfortunately many inlaid bobbins have lost their pewter over the years, including part of the one on the far right, so it is common to find a bobbin with grooves but no pewter. In some cases the cause is corrosion of the pewter due to the interaction of perspiration from the hands on the tin in the alloy. This is especially the case for bobbins by Jesse Compton who ironically used good quality pewter with a high level of tin. The corrosion makes the pewter expand and feel rough to the hands and also to snag on the lace pillow so some of the lacemakers may have removed it on purpose to make the bobbins easier to use.