The phrase “the distaff side” is routinely used as an expression meaning “the wife,” but many people do not know its origin. A distaff is one of the tools used in spinning, which was considered women’s work. The emblem of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution incorporates tools of spinning into its logo. The book of Proverbs in the Bible describes a virtuous woman as one who “seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands” and “layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands holdeth the distaff.”

This is how my ancient Encylopaedia Brittanica describes spinning: “No art which has been so long and widely practised remained so unprogressive as that of spinning. On the other hand, since about the middle of the 18th century, when human ingenuity bent itself in earnest to improve the art, there have not been developed in the whole range of mechanical industries machines of greater variety, delicacy of action and capacity than those now in use for spinning.” Let’s look at what this means.

In researching this article, I discovered that my mental images needed some reworking. We think of a woman seated at a spinning wheel when we think of spinning. However, spinning could be done without a spinning wheel, and some spinning wheels were walking wheels in which the operator stood.

Two basic tools are used for spinning: a spindle and, for some types of raw materials, a distaff.

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