VICTORIAN NEEDLECASE
PERIOD: POST MEDIEVAL LOCATION: LINCOLNSHIRE, UK MATERIAL: BRASS
Do you ever have those iffy signals? The ones that just aren’t quite… there. A target that sounds like it could be good but is it really worth digging?
Well at Roman Found we dig them. The wilder the signal the more we want to know what's under that coil. We might dig some big trash but every so often it turns out to be something really special.
It was deep in winter digging (not just fair weather detectorists over here) and tackling one of our more difficult pasture fields. We love a bit of pasture detecting and have had some of our best conditioned coins and finds out of pasture but for this particular field we have a love-hate relationship with its grassy plains and that’s just the problem it’s far from a plain, it’s practically a cliff. A short steep climb up to its highest point and not the easiest to cover, especially dragged down by all the damp winter gear.
“The wilder the signal the more we want to know what's under that coil”
One part of the flat grassy top we have searched in detail is the old public footpath, always a fruitful hunt are footpaths and definitely worth digging those iffy targets. Just like this particular find of ours and one of our deepest hidden treasures.
It had gone far beyond the depth that we have officially termed ‘scary deep’. A depth where the target starts suspiciously smelling like any detectorists nemesis, deep iron. Lucie had given up on the dig leaving Ellie to her trashy fate and scanned off hunting for that next target, when she got the shout. That Roman Found call across the field of get yourself back over here and film right now because this is sounding good!
That is when we had it, at well over two foot deep, our Brass Victorian Needlecase.
The needle could possibly be one of the earliest tools made by humans, with its use dating back to the Stone Age where bone needles were used to fashion primitive clothing from animal hides. Metal needles were, pre industrial revolution, very labour intensive to make. Made by hand from wire, they were highly valued domestic tools, so valued that decorative needlecases designed to keep them safe can be dated back to Viking times.
Watch the recovery footage
Princess Helena painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalte
It’s the Victorian Era that we are most interested in as our needlecase was produced in Redditch, an area that in the 19th Century produced the majority of the world’s needles. This small manufacturer W.Avery & Son are a highly collectable needlecase manufacturer, who are well known for their figural brass needlecases and the maker of our Victorian find.
For women at this time needlework was a key part of their education, as it was an important tool of survival. Whether you were working class or from a prestigious background needlework was taught to all. It was a strong form of expression and autonomy for many women as technically speaking a married woman in Britain was unable to call any property her own until 1870. Unable to earn and claim wages as her own or have individual status under the law, sewing tools seen with such feminine connotations they were one of the few types of inheritance that women were allowed to own and pass down through the female generations.
Needlework has important relevance to our find itself as this particular ‘Demi - Quad’ (a needlecase designed to hold two packets of needles) was named ‘The Helen’. A design showcasing needlework history and women’s history that was patented in 1869.
Named after Queen Victoria’s third daughter Princess Helena, ‘The Helen’ is a needlecase that celebrates her affiliation and support of The Royal School of Needlework. The Royal School of Needlework is an international school that has its roots in the art of hand embroidery. It was founded with the purpose of reviving a dying art that had been threatened by the invention of the sewing machine and to provide an important income to women who were threatened by poverty in the event of becoming widows.
Through Princess Helena’s fundraising efforts the school grew from a small group of 20 ladies working above a shop to an establishment with its own headquarters that employed over 150 workers. Soon gaining prestige they had several large scale commissions for designers such as William Morris and embroidered robes for several monarchs, including Queen Victoria’s Funeral Pall (who had been the Patron of the Royal School of Art Needlework since 1875) a project that Princess Helena described as a ‘Labour of Love’ set with the task to create a white funeral pall 48hrs before the funeral procession.
To be able to uncover such rich history from one artefact lost to time is one of the greatest rewards of metal detecting. A find that seems like a simple object, is really one that holds a much deeper tale into women’s history and the importance of a domestic craft that was almost lost by the industrial revolution.
