This past week, I narrowed in my studies on textile crafts to focus specifically on spinning. This was heavily centered around the wool-spinning class at Arbutus Folk School that I attended beginning Monday evening. I covered my learning experience in a separate field study reflection post that can be found here.
Because I was able to put all of the theoretical knowledge that I have gained over the past few weeks into practice, I suddenly found myself very quickly able to grasp more complex concepts in regards to wool spinning and the processes associated with it. Most importantly, I came across a section in Cotton Khadi in Indian Economy by Yovesh Chandra Sharma that detailed the advancement in mechanization of the spinning wheel traditionally used for spinning khadi. What I found interesting was how the focus of its advancement was both focused on creating both a method of spinning that could spin as much as possible as quickly as possible, while also maintaining its ability to be powered by one person and be worked from home. This focus on both productivity as well as the welfare of craftspeople is a very unique situation that I believe would not have been so successful if the spinning of khadi was not so tied up in the Swadeshi movement. This is quite a contrast to the immediate jump from the simple one-spindle spinning wheel to the mills that popped up in the British Isles.
While learning about the role of spinning in small economies and in the lives of craftspeople, I began to notice the term ‘cottage industry’ being used over and over again. It all started to click with me that the cottage industry that has suffered possibly the most by industrialized textile mills is definitely those whose role was to process and spin fiber. I thought that what I had picked up on cottage industries needed to be compiled into one cohesive post, so I went ahead and wrote an overview of cottage industries and of those that I have learned about over the past few weeks which can be found here.