Antique stereoview card of ‘Spinning flax with a spinning wheel - beginning of the great linen industry, Ireland’. 1908

 

 

An antique stereoview card of ‘Spinning flax with a spinning wheel - beginning of the great linen industry, Ireland’. Copyrights 1908 by Underwood & Underwood. 

Outside a cottage door in a village in County Monaghan, northeastern Ireland. This old woman has known how to spin ever since her own mother taught her when she was a little girl. The linen wheel itself is even older than its user - an inheritance from another generation when quantities of flax were grown about here and spinning was one of the chief cottage industries. At present (meaning the moment this picture was taken) the soil of the flax fields in this locality is exhausted and all the profitable spinning is done elsewhere...Just such shawls and aprons and caps are worn by self-respecting old women all through this part of Ireland. The cottage is of stone, plastered and whitewashed, with a thatched roof. The cooking is done over coals of peat in an open fireplace. [From Notes of Travel, N. 18, copyright, 1905, by Underwood & Underwood]. 

I just love the way antique photography documents the past ❤️...so much to learn, appreciate and pass onto the present and future generations 🙏😊