Adelaide

On April 6, 2021October 7, 2021 By BrendaIn antique spinning wheel, Quebec spinning wheel4 Comments

Many Quebec wheels are painted—usually a mustard yellow or, less often, shades of orange, red, and sometimes black. Only very occasionally does a green wheel turn up.

Adelaide is one of them. Her paint now is mottled and looks as if the original paint job has been touched up over the years.

But the remnants of green, worn down to lustrous wood grain make her a wheel of rare beauty.

She is a screw-tension wheel, with no discernible maker’s mark, but carries the typical characteristics of a Bisson wheel.

Joseph Bisson (1823-1901) (Oct. 2021 edit–this should read Louis Bisson, not Joseph–my apologies!) was a wheel maker in the Beauce area south of Quebec City. Many, if not most, of his wheels carry a maker’s mark. His older brother, Vital, also made wheels, but none have been found with Vital’s mark. Some wheels have been found with a “Joseph Bisson FJ” mark, which may have been Vital’s son. (see Fabricants de Rouet, below).

Bisson wheels have a distinctive style. Their drive wheels and treadle assemblies are immediately recognizable. The drive wheels are spare, with only 8 spokes. Something about them is very visually appealing.

As is the treadle support, with its graceful curve. It is an attractive and practical feature, allowing for easy two-footed treadling.

This wheel shows the most wear from a left foot on the treadle bar curve.

The wear on the treadle itself is only on the right edge. I love how the treadle is cut to match the curve in the support bar.

Bisson tables typically are grooved down both sides,

with secondary supports on each wheel upright.

Shortish legs have simple turnings.

Adelaide’s non-spinner side leg has a large nail protruding from the bottom to keep the wheel from sliding across the floor.

Aside from the drive wheels and treadles, Bisson flyers also are unique among the Quebec wheels. Rather than splaying outward like a wishbone, the flyer arms run parallel to the shaft and each other and have a small ridge running down the center of the flyer. Unfortunately, I do not have a photograph of a Bisson flyer since this wheel qualifies as a mélange wheel, with a replacement flyer.

One sign that it is a replacement flyer (aside from the fact that it doesn’t look like a Bisson flyer) is that someone inserted two thick pieces of leather as washer spacers to make the replacement flyer align properly with the drive wheel.

One flyer arm is cracked and has been repaired by pinning it with a small piece of metal.

The orifice is bell-shaped, but without fluting.

The orifice has wear marks on each side from the spun yarn running out to the flyer arms.

There are wear marks on the inside edges of the flyer arms, likely from winding off, and an odd groove in the tension screw.

I cannot tell if it is from wear or simply an accidental gouge.

Each side has a piece of leather acting as an axle bearing.

Another ancient piece of leather sits under the mother-of-all collar, keeping it tight and aligned.

The footman was attached to the crank with a piece of leather and string, which I had to replace because it was cracked beyond repair.

Adelaide had belonged to the seller’s grandmother. The family had kept the wheel lovingly wrapped up for years, sparing her the fate of so many wheels relegated to basements, barns, and garages to become spider condominiums. As a result, she survived in remarkably good condition, green paint and all.

For more information on the Bisson family and their wheels, see:

Foty, Caroline, Fabricants de Rouets— this book and a photo supplement are available for sale as a downloadable PDF by contacting “Fiddletwist” by message on Ravelry.

Hortense

On March 14, 2021March 14, 2021 By BrendaIn antique spinning wheel, Quebec spinning wheel7 Comments

While Olympe (previous post) is my biggest Quebec wheel, Hortense is my smallest. She is unmarked, but likely made by a member of the Paradis family. This multi-generational Quebec wheel-making family was centered in St. Andre, Kamarouska, on the St. Lawrence river northeast of Quebec City.

There are wheels marked by Amable Paradis (1811-1891), his sons Phillipe, Amable Balthasar (Balt), and Aram Baptiste. In addition, some of Amable’s other sons, his brother, Antoine, and a third generation, including Alfred and Lucien, also were wheel makers. They were a productive clan, turning out wheels for many decades. There is much more information about this interesting family in Caroline Foty’s book Fabricants de Rouet.

Although a few other Quebec wheels share some characteristics of Paradis family wheels, Hortense appears to be a fairly classic Paradis. She is small,

with screw tension, pagoda (or Jetson) maidens, distinctive spoke turnings, and yellow paint.

Hortense turned up at a local auction, offered with a great wheel. She was in rough shape, but her perky stance captivated me. I am a sucker for wheels that resemble dogs in a “play with me” position, and she certainly has that look.

Besides, no one bid on her. I could not leave her behind. So, for $20, this little survivor and a great wheel came home with me.

Hortense is loaded with character. While her color is primarily yellow, she has splashes and undertones of red peeking through.

She was a hard worker, carrying evidence of long years of use and repeated repairs.

Those repairs were worth it because she continues to be a lovely little spinner.

She has cracks and knots and battered maidens.

Her hub is gruesomely cracked,

with what appears to be a wedge of stiff leather inserted on one side.

Despite the yawning crack, the axle remains solid in the hub, with no slippage.

A gap in the drive wheel also has a thin piece of wood inserted.

Many of the spokes have been messily glued to the rim.

The wheel uprights–

black to the table with dripping grease residue–extend quite far below and are pegged under the table.

The axle bearings appear to be horn, or possibly bone,

and there is a screw in the side of the rear upright that may have been used to stabilize a crack. The little treadle is not original–its treadle supports are well worn, but it is not.

She has lovely legs.

The flyer probably broke clear in half and was repaired with glue, a thick thread wound around the orifice end,

and metal plates screwed on to both sides.

There are two types of wear marks on the flyer arms. There are a series of close-set ridges on the inside of each arm—marks that are found on many old wheels.

As explained in an earlier post, “Zotique,” I suspect these ridges were made from winding yarn off the bobbins rather than cross-lacing.

Hortense has some wear marks on her tension screw that could be from winding off around the screw.

What is most interesting about Hortense’s flyer, though, is a second type of more unusual wear marks that go across the flyer arms.

These marks appear to be consistent with those made by cross lacing.

As I said in the “Zotique” post, I am just speculating about how these marks were made and would love to hear thoughts from others on this.

Hortense on the left, marked Amable Paradis on the right

I recently picked up a marked Amable Paradis that I am fostering for a friend and will move along on the first leg of a wheel railroad.

Because Hortense looks quite old, I had thought she was likely made by Amable, but when seeing her side-by-side with the marked wheel, there were more differences than I had expected. The cranks are similar,

as are the rims,

and, while the legs and spokes have the same overall design, they are different.

Hortense has a more raked stance with a shorter, more tilted table, more bubbly spokes, and slightly more dramatic turnings. She is a bit like a caricature of the Amable–everything is slightly more exaggerated. It would be fascinating to put a whole line up of Paradis family wheels together to compare the differences. Maybe someday.

Thank you to Sherran Pak for allowing me to use photos of her Amable Paradis wheel.

For further information on the Paradis family and their wheels see:

Foty, Caroline, Fabricants de Rouets— this book and a photo supplement are available for sale as a downloadable PDF by contacting “Fiddletwist” by message on Ravelry.

Olympe

On February 27, 2021July 15, 2022 By BrendaIn antique spinning wheel2 Comments

Olympe is a magnificent giantess of a wheel. She is from Quebec, but her maker remains a mystery. There are several similar wheels likely made by the same maker, although no two are quite alike. Caroline Foty wrote an article about them in The Spinning Wheel Sleuth, fittingly entitled “A Family of Wheels of Unknown Origin.” In it, she documents her wheel, No. 94 from Joan Cummer’s collection, and seven other wheels of varying sizes and configurations that share the characteristics of this wheel family–a low-slung profile, short legs, and fine, sharp distinctive turnings on the maidens, legs, and spokes—all features very different from other Quebec wheels.

Several of the wheels are huge and adorned with whimsical carved flowers and sunbursts. The enormous ones have been affectionately referred to as Big Bertha or Madame Maxime wheels.

For some reason, these wheels seem to appear in my life. I encountered the first one at an auction selling items from the American Textile History Museum (ATHM). It was Cummer’s wheel No. 94, soon to be Foty’s. A sister wheel, not quite so large, No. 95 in Cummer’s collection, had been donated by the ATHM to the Marshfield School of Weaving for their Textile Collection (photos can be found here: https://marshfieldschoolofweaving.omeka.net/items/show/121). But perhaps because No. 94 had a broken flyer, it went to auction.

I was interested in other wheels that night and was done bidding fairly early. But I was staying overnight and was trying to track the ATHM items to see where they went and for how much, so hung in to the bitter end. Cummer’s wheel was one of the very last items up for bid, after almost everyone had left or was packing up, and I was relieved when Foty’s remote bid was the winner, knowing it would have the best of homes.

By then I felt almost motherly toward the wheel and, because of her large size, made sure she was stowed safely out of harm’s way for pick up later that week. It had been a fun evening admiring the giantess, but I did not expect to see another in my lifetime.

Less than six months after the auction, I was picking up a loom in central Maine for a friend and stopped by an antique store. I was astonished to see in the front window another one of the giantess wheels.

It was decorated with trefoils and sunbursts and its original screw tension had been replaced by what looked like a tilt-tension from a Vezina wheel. It appeared to have 21 spokes and, of course, I was besotted. What followed was an extremely unpleasant series of exchanges with the antique dealer. He had the wheel marked for sale at a very high price and when I offered him something lower (but still high), he basically refused to sell it to me at any price. When my husband stopped by the shop some months later, the wheel was gone from the window and the owner said that it had sold. I wish I knew where it was.

*This sunburst is a small version of Olympe’s. The trefoils are found on two of the big wheels.*

I still had that wheel on my mind when my daughter and grandchildren came for a visit in December that year. They wanted to see Quebec City and before the trip I, of course, took a look at Kijiji, Canada’s version of Craigslist, to see if there were any interesting wheels for sale. I was gobsmacked to find, way at the end with the oldest listings, another giantess wheel, that had been languishing for months unsold. What are the odds for that?

On the second day of our Quebec visit, a granddaughter and I drove over the bridge to Ile d’Orleans and had a wonderful visit with the wheel’s owner, a Francophone woman with an artist husband. She collected antiques and had owned the wheel for decades, but knew nothing of its earlier history.

She had another beautiful wheel for sale, but it was all I could do to fit the giantess in the car along with my daughter and three grandchildren.

After a lot of luggage rearranging, we managed to get it in the car and home it came. The drive wheel was bizarrely cobbled together and canted crazily in different directions, making me a little dubious that it would hold up to spinning.

But the treadle and supporting bar were very worn, so clearly had been heavily used in the past.

And, sure enough, despite the wonky drive wheel, it spins beautifully and has an added almost fairy-tale quality of making me feel like I have shrunk to child-sized dimensions when I sit down to spin.

The wheel is huge.

The table is 31” long, with a squiggly, dotted sunburst in the middle

and two holes—possibly for a distaff and water dish for spinning flax. No ordinary production wheel.

The sides curve in and out, with barely-visible chisel marks on the curved portions

and chip carvings along the flat edges and ends.

The 38” drive wheel has twenty exquisite spokes

—so many that there is barely room for them in the hub, especially with their upside-down blossom shape.

The drive wheel rim is relatively narrow, made of two long and two short pieces.

The joins are unusual and include a smaller piece of wood between the main pieces

with thick metal wire reinforcements that likely were added well after the wheel was made.

The wheel itself barely clears the table.

One spoke was broken, but repairable, and others were loose, many with nails protruding–some barely hanging on.

It looks as if the spokes were re-positioned on the rim at some point.

They are cut at angle where they butt up against a narrow lip.

The wheel uprights measure an impressive 7 ½” circumference.

They are held in place under the table with large pegs.

There are secondary upright supports on both sides.

The wheel has relatively short legs—only 13” at the downhill end—with chubby feet.

In contrast with the fine work on the rest of the wheel, the hole for one of the legs is rather crudely dug out.

There is a graceful S-shaped crank

and metal footman

and a beautifully made treadle and treadle bar, wide enough for the two-footed treadling that keeps the momentum smooth and easy for such a big wheel.

The maidens are unusually lovely and a hallmark of this wheel family.

Interestingly, the top parts of the maidens are very light and the lower parts much darker.

At first, I thought that the tops were a different wood type attached to a darker wood below. But there is no join, so perhaps they were stained differently for decorative effect.

The mother-of-all is secured by a large nut underneath the table—something more often seen in Scandinavian wheels than Quebec wheels.

The orifice is smooth–not fluted.

Because the wheel has a screw tension, and very large drive-wheel, under the current definition, it is not considered to be a Canadian Production Wheel (CPW) even though it spins very fast and fine.

It is a wheel of flair, elegance, and whimsy, designed to be noticed.

One reason this family of wheels is fascinating is because they are so different from other Quebec wheels. In her book, Cummer suggested that they may have been made in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, which had a heavier English influence than other areas of Quebec.

But the wheels have no maker’s mark and there does not appear to be any evidence, other than speculation, that they are from the Eastern Townships. What interests me, however, is the similarity of these wheels to others that do have maker’s marks—most specifically to those made by Elie Laporte (featured in the last post “Fleur”). It was the spokes that first caught my attention—the upside-down blossom shape where they meet the hub.

The only time I have ever seen such spokes is on the mystery wheels and Laporte wheels. Looking at the wheels side by side, so many other similarities are striking—the low profile, the large size,

the distinctive maidens,

the legs, the treadle joins,

the rims,

the deep cuts for the axles, the secondary upright supports.

Could Laporte have made all of these wheels?

Or could his father, who was also a wheel maker, have made the earlier screw tension wheels, while Elie carried on with tilt-tensions? Or was this a wheel style from the Yamaska area, where Laporte made his wheels?

We know of another similarly-styled wheel made by Jean Baptiste Houle (marked “JBH”), who also lived in Yamaska, in a town near Laporte’s. It is a screw tension with the wooden nut underneath, short legs, similar (but slightly different) maidens, chip carved ends, and a heavy long table with an odd rectangular hole cut in it. Houle (1818-1884) was a generation earlier than Laporte (1845-1919). Could there be some connection?

Another intriguing wheel surfaced on Facebook several months ago and shares some similarities with these wheels. It is a screw tension with the unusual wooden nut under the table and has similar maidens, legs, and treadle construction.

The table has a cut out box in it, with a cover stamped with the name “D. Stewart” and an embedded 1857 coin marked with “Bank of Upper Canada.”

The end of the wheel also had the name stamp and an accompanying reel had another embedded coin. From the style of the stamp, which is different than most maker’s marks, it seems likely that it is the name of the wheel owner rather than maker. But, who knows? This wheel looks newer than the others and remains a mystery. But its similarities to the others suggest there may be some connection.