Guest Author - Beth Firme

I learned a lot that I didn't know when I picked up "A Pictorial Guide to American Spinning Wheels" by David Penington and Michael Taylor. This awesome book, published in 1975 by The Shaker Press in Sabbathday Lake, Maine,is a great guide to the different types of antique wheels that are being sold on various markets.

As the title says, it is primarily a book about American spinning wheels. However, American wheels wouldn't exist without their primary counterparts, the European wheels. Chapter one of the book deals with types and locations of European wheels that have been found in the United States and how the European wheels have impacted the style, look, and function of American wheels.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and if that's true, then this book is priceless. It supplies pictures, captions, dates, and maker names for a large quantity of European wheels that have influenced United States wheels. It also provides an overwhelming amount of documentation for the institution, integration, and proliferation of various types and designs of spinning wheels by location, maker, physical appearance, and function. This book also differentiates between the "wool" wheel, or "walking" wheel and the "flax" wheel and shows similarities and differences within those types.

The book has wonderfully clear pictures, easy-to-read captions, pertinent and valuable information, and a simple format. Each chapter deals with a specific type of wheel, such as Saxony wheels, Wool wheels, and Canadian wheels. At the front of the book is a diagram of a walking spinning wheel and a flax wheel with all of their parts labelled so that even the new spinner won't be overwhelmed with terminology.

This book is a must have for anyone who likes the antique or older wheels. Additionally, anyone who does reenacting of any period that would have a spinning wheel in it would find this book invaluable in determining the historical accuracy of a spinning wheel. While it is a short read, at 100 pages, it is well worth the time to look at the pictures and use it as the good tool that it was designed to be. I personally learned a lot from this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who would like to have an anitque wheel, does reenacting, would like to collect wheels, or simply has an interest in fiber history.