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By Michele Jennings

In our contemporary times amidst technologies that aim to make life more efficient, the ethos of “doing it yourself” reunites people with traditional tools and skills. In April, the Marian Library held workshops on hand-spinning, a handicraft that stretches back tens of thousands of years, relying on the natural properties of fibers and the force of momentum — not to mention human ingenuity.

The importance of spinning is explored further in the Marian Library’s exhibit Warp and Weft: Weaving Mary and Identity. The exhibit curator, associate professor of art and design Darden Bradshaw, organized these workshops to weave together the exhibit’s contents, the historical practices of spinning weaving (reaching even further back than Mary’s lifetime) and the physical experience of handling fiber and a spindle.

At their simplest, spindles are long, thin rods used to hold spun yarn. Eventually, weighted discs known as whorls were added onto spindles to create drop spindles; whorls help the spinner use inertia to spin yarn faster. During the hand-spinning workshops, led by volunteers Becky Jarvi and Martha Donley, members of the local spinning and weaving organization Weavers Guild of Miami Valley, participants used drop spindles and prepared wool to try their hand at this ancient practice. With some patience and a few false starts, participants walked away with a small ball of their own hand-spun yarn. While the practice of twisting the fibers into yarn was intuitive enough, getting a consistent result was a challenge for all, illustrating why, historically, producing textiles for a household was a full-time job. 

Imagery of hand-spinning as a part of domestic labor comes across in the Marian Library’s collections, as does the presence of fiber art that depicts Mary. In images in the collections, Mary is depicted with a spindle and a distaff — a tool for holding unspun fibers. While in some cultures spinning was practiced by people of all genders, in others, it’s a pervasive symbol of women’s domestic work. In Warp and Weft, the role of fiber and textile in relation to the recurrent iconography of Mary offers a perspective of Mary as engaged in domestic labor or everyday practices for many women of her era and beyond. More than 2,000 years later, learning how to spin by hand offered workshop participants a portal into those same practices.

Plan Your Visit

Visitors can see Warp and Weft: Weaving Mary and Identity from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday through June 27 in the Marian Library Gallery.