This week’s image shows Cathy sitting behind a small forest of similar tools. They all have particular names according to the trade or craft they are used in. Cathy calls them ‘round awls’ or ‘scratch awls.’ In textiles they are called ‘pricker markers.’ In the carpentry trade they are known as ‘bradawls’ sometimes ‘braddles’ and were used the make the pilot holes for screws and small nails, hence ‘brad’ or small nail, awl. Sometimes they are confused with ‘reamers,’ used to widen existing holes. Beautifully here in Yorkshire the dialect word for them is a ‘nelsin,’ which is thought to be a corruption of the name ‘an elsin,’ from the middle English elsen, elsyn or alsene. This week we would like to have a big ‘hurrah’ for the work done by our friends over at the dialect and heritage project run by the University of Leeds. They have revived the work done in the 1950’s to gather aspects of the English language which were dying out after the war. Their archives make fascinating reading and listening, and you can contribute your own dialect words and phrases in their ‘great big dialect hunt’ section; let them know what your Granny’s word for splinter was!
We had a really interesting Wednesday in the studio, as we had two lovely people coming on one of our one-one workshops to make scabbards for their swords! If you would like to come to a one to work workshop, or would like to join a small group of people in our Monday or Thursday workshops, please contact us at cathy@ce-leathergoods.com
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