spinning tin yarn | All Fiber Arts

Tugging on a bit of pewter thread has led me down a new path of unraveling some of the intricately beautiful textile crafts of my ancestors.

Pewter
The first use of pewter dates back to the Bronze Age. Pewter was used by the Egyptians and later the Romans, and came into use in Europe for tableware and jewellery from the Middle Ages.

Pewter is a malleable metal alloy, traditionally 85–99% tin, with the remainder consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth and sometimes, less commonly today, lead. Silver is also sometimes used. Copper and antimony act as hardeners while lead is common in the lower grades of pewter, which have a bluish tint.
Wikipedia – Pewter

Although pewter was an alloy of tin and other metals such as lead, in modern day pewter or tin thread,heavy metals are no longer used. Silver is added to stabilize the tin instead.

Thread spun from metals such as gold and silver have been found in Viking age textiles in sites such as Birka. Pewter or tin could also be spun into thread and used for the making of jewellery or decoration for clothing. Pewter became known as the poor man’s silver. It is thought that the use of pewter thread has only been produced by the Saami. Earliest evidence of the use pewter thread has been found in Saami textiles from the 1600’s, though fragments of pewter have been found 500 years earlier.

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Tin Thread Making Tools
The tools for making pewter or tin thread are a die made from reindeer antlers and a spindle. The die is carved from a reindeer antler and has as many as 60 different sized holes drilled into it. The tin is dragged through the successively smaller holes until a fine tin thread is produced.

Die for Dragging Tin
Die made of reindeer antler, used for dragging and making tin thread.

Spin Cross
Spindle for spinning tin thread

Linnaeus: Tin Dragging and Spinning

Dragging Tin Thread
The tin thread was produced from bars of tin or from tin melted down from pewter plates and tableware. The tin is formed into narrow bars with a knife and hammer. It is pounded and shaped into a rod or dowel and pulled through the holes in the die with the use of pliers or even teeth.
to make it easier to pull through the die, the tin is dipped in fat, produced by melting reindeer hooves.

Tin is being pulled through the die with the use of pliers.

Tin thread is being pulled through smaller holes in the die.

Fine tin thread is being dragged through the die with the use of teeth.

Spinning Tin Thread

After the tin has been dragged, it is plied with a core thread using either a drop spindle or a Spin Cross.

The core thread should be the same thickness as the tin wire, in order to produce an evenly spun thread. The tin wraps around the core as it is spun using a similar plying technique as with other core spun yarns.

Tin Thread Embroidery
The spun tin thread can now be used for embroidery. It can be sewn directly onto tanned leather, though wool fabric or wadmal is used more often as the base for the embroidered thread.

The core thread is sewn to the back of the fabric to fasten the tin thead in place.

The tin thread is stitched to the top side of the leather or fabric with very small stitches.

Wadmal
Wadmal (vadmal) is a coarse, densely woven wool fabric that has been felted so that the weave structure is no longer visible. This creates a very warm and windproof fabric.
Instead of embroidering onto wadmal, I thought that I would try to embroider the tin thread onto handmade felt instead, as the felt would have a similar weight and consistency as wool felted yardage. I felted a small sheet of 21 micron merino wool and stitched a small sample of tin thread embroidery. I was quite pleased with the result.

Etsy
Look for pewter embroidered bags, bracelets and keyfobs in my PaivatarYarns Etsy Shop.

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References:

Västerbotten nummer 2/1980, sidorna 115-128 “Om tillverkning av platt tenntråd”
Västerbotten nummer 3/1970 “Sameslöjd”
Reindeer Antler Die
Vadmal and Other Woolens