This artifact was featured on our monthly social media series, "Museum Mystery Mondays."
Although it looks rather menacing, this artifact was used for one of Western NC's most dominant industries.
It is a heckling comb, used for dressing flax in the textile industry. Textile workers would pull flax through the comb several times so the fibers were straight and clean before spinning. After spinning, the flax was woven into linen. The process, called heckling, was done by hand until the late nineteenth century, when the gill could do it mechanically.
Fun fact: The verb “heckle,” meaning to interrupt a person’s performance with critical and often rude comments, originates from the textile work of heckling through flax. It metaphorically described “combing through” someone’s speech or argument with insults.
The image features a woman combing through flax. Image Credit: St. Louis Art Museum. Drawing by Jean-François Millet, 1854.