s Wool winder made from whalebone (scrimshaw) - Hull Museums Collections

Wool winder made from whalebone (scrimshaw)

This is a wool winder or ‘swift’. It helps somebody wind up wool and acts as an extra pair of hands. A swift is one of the most difficult things a whaler could try to make.

With whalers at sea for years, scrimshaw swifts probably developed as presents for wives back home. If the whaler couldn’t be there to help, then perhaps he could give a present that would. It would also remind her of him while he was away.

There are often more than one hundred separate pieces in a swift. Scrimshaw swifts have been described as “the ultimate product of the scrimshaw worker’s art”. However, swifts were also made in other materials.

This swift is made from whale jawbone and sperm whale tooth. It is provided with a clamp for fixing it to a table. It is decorated with metal inlays. Above this is a collar with lozenge pattern.

Scrimshaw is the folk art of the whaler. This is usually made with whalebone, teeth or baleen (a hard substance from the mouths of filter feeding whales).

The origin of the term “scrimshaw” is not clear and is discussed a lot. When a captain ordered his crew to be “scrimshandering” for the day, he wanted them to be pre-occupied.

The main reason for making scrimshaw was to kill time and to keep men occupied and out of trouble. Sailing, and especially whaling, involved long periods of waiting and doing nothing. Anything that took a long time would have been a welcome hobby.

A lot of scrimshaw is from the US, especially pieces made from the teeth of sperm whales. Britain also produced scrimshaw, especially “busks” and items from baleen, mostly originating from the whales in Arctic fisheries.

Items identified with the Hull whaling trade are extremely rare, and occasionally fake. The British trade in whale oil and bone centred around Hull in the early 1600s and the early 1700s. Most surviving scrimshaw is from after these periods.