Felted Primitive

Around christmas sometime, we bought an ancient carding machine from Ulla and Søren Winding of Kartehuset, Denmark. It has been this year’s major project to prepare a home for it and work out how to collect it.

No-one is really sure how much it weighs but it must be more than 1.5 tons. It is from the C. E. Schwalbe works in Werdau, which is near Chemnitz, in Germany, not far from the Czech border. The textile machine works opened in 1833 and closed in 1956. This machine is numbered 4209. If anyone can give us any information about it or the works please contact us.

Anyway… after a long and exhausting couple of weeks we managed to get it here on a trailer. First the side of the building in Denmark had to be demolished to drag it out and at this end a similar event took place to squeeze it in….

This is it’s new home…

First we dismantled everything we could. This is the core of the machine going through the entrance corridor with 8cm to spare each side. This part weighs about 750kg. The frame is cast iron and the machine is driven by huge leather belts.

This will be the carding hall. (The junk on the left are the parts of the carder we dismantled)

The view to Russia from the back door… (The trees are over the border)

Test run in Denmark during the spring…

It will look very like this one, when it is set up.

We also bought back a “Volfer” or “Willower”, in English, which we now call a “Woolfer”. This is a beautiful, machine. The feed table is driven by a wooden sheave, (Not visible in picture) and the frame, feed and rip roller are all wooden with hand forged teeth. (a few of which are missing… which is only natural at that age…)

More updates after mid-summer… Take care all….