Combers

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Combing wool with a stationary comb on a rack. A replacement comb lies on an ember pot in a box for warming, the finished comb is in a basket (1442)
Blaise is martyred with wool combs, relief in the Appeville chapel from the 13th century

Kämmer or Wollkämmer , also Kämmer or Wollkämmer , was a trade in the textile industry .

To make worsted wool , wool must first be combed. For carded yarn, on the other hand, wool is carded . Only long-staple wool can be used when combing . The process removes all shorter fibers , nodules and impurities that are separated out as so-called noils , while carding only arranges the fibers to a certain extent, but long and short fibers remain as a mixture and there is no waste.

history

A male wool comb is depicted on a silver beaker from the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, which was found in Avenches in Switzerland, as is a fine-pronged iron wool comb.

In the late Middle Ages, pairs of wool combs with frames were already used, and women also did the combing.

The Wollkämmler and their upstream profession of Wollschläger but were not organized in guilds in the 11th and 15th centuries, worked in the urban textile centers in central workshops of Tucher, who as merchants the cloth production in the domestic system initiated and organized. The craftsmen received a time wage. In the English centers of wool processing, the once powerful comber profession disappeared completely after the introduction of the comber within just a decade until around 1860.

In addition to the urban craftsmen, combing wool was also practiced as a sideline in the country. It was a winter work from September to March. The comber either went from place to place to permanent clients, from whom he also received food and shelter, or the wool was brought to him by sheep owners. In parts of Germany, namely at least in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt , this activity continued until the First World War .

The patron saint of wool combers was Blasius von Sebaste .

Wool combs

A pair of wool combs with 3 rows of prongs each

A comber's tool included two pairs of combs, a rack with a holder (or wall bracket) for a comb, an oven or ember pot with charcoal, one or two oil cans, a bench, a tine funnel for damaged tines, and wool pulling tongs. The wool combs had a handle up to 32 cm long and had up to eight, but mostly three to five rows of steel teeth, the tips of which had to be sharpened to a needle point. The individual steel needle could be over 25 cm long, the height decreased from row to row of tines towards the handle. The head of the comb was at a 60 degree angle to the handle. A single comb weighed 2-3.5 kg.

In order to slide through the wool as easily as possible when combing, the combs, actually just the tines, were warmed in a special oven or over an ember pot and the wool was drizzled or dabbed with oil, known as peeling . The oil - rapeseed oil or other vegetable oil that can be washed out - was also heated; it was basically to be provided by the client or Tucher.

A wool comb in the country could produce 20 combs 15 cm wide and 1 m long in one hour. The wages for this in the Altmark were 50 Pfennig before the First World War and 1 Reichsmark during the war .

Comber

Combing machine: The prepared material is fed in at the top, the cam draw comes out at the bottom

Edmund Cartwright developed wool combing machines (the Big Ben ) in 1790 and 1792, but they were technically and economically unsuccessful. It was only very late in the industrial revolution , around 1850, that Josua Heilmann , Samuel Lister , Isaac Holden and others succeeded in mechanizing wool combing.

Has the wool two before being inserted into the comber routes have gone through and (Engl. As a sliver sliver ) are present, from which then the actual tops (Engl. Top ) is produced.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karina Grömer: Prehistoric textile art in Central Europe. History of crafts and clothing before the Romans . Publishing house of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, 2010, ISBN 978-3-902421-50-0 , p. 78
  2. ↑ Detail of a miniature from the Royal Manuscript 10 E IV folio 138 in the British Library and another miniature from the Royal Manuscript 10 E IV folio 138v , late 13th or early 14th century
  3. ↑ Almut Bohnsack: Spinning and Weaving. Development of technology and work in the textile industry . Rowohlt Verl. Reinbek 1989, pp. 106-108
  4. ^ Museum Burg Brome : Sheep wool processing . Accompanying sheet for exhibition No. 4, and: Ernst Bock: Alte Berufe in Niedersachsen . Reprint of the 1926 edition, Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 1985, ISBN 3-8067-0890-8 , chapter "Der Wollkämmer" pp. 21-22
  5. ^ Museum Burg Brome : Sheep wool processing . Accompanying sheet for exhibition No. 4
  6. ↑ Friedrich Hassler: From spinning and weaving. A section from the history of textile technology . Oldenbourg Verlag Munich 1952, p. 24, and: Chris Aspin: The woolen industry . Shire Books, Princes Risborough 1994, ISBN 0-85263-598-2 , p. 18

Web links

Commons : Combing Machines  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Combers in Art  - collection of images, videos and audio files