Thimble

A Small Shield With a Two-Thousand-Year History

Hand sewing asks the middle finger to do something unreasonable: push the blunt end of a needle, thousands of times a day, through cloth that resists it. The thimble is the armour for that fingertip, a cap of hard material whose dimples catch the needle's end and keep it from slipping sideways into the finger. The Roman thimble from Pompeii, bronze and dated to the first century AD, shows the design was already settled in antiquity: a domed cap with a pitted surface. A Roman thimble was also found at Verulamium, modern St Albans, and can be seen in the museum there. Sailmakers, tailors and quilters developed their own forms, including the open-ended tailor's thimble and the palm thimble or sailmaker's palm that pushes heavy needles through canvas and leather, the work described under the stitching awl's companion trades.

Manufacture left evidence collectors still read. Before the 18th century the small dimples on the outside of a thimble were made by hand punching; in the middle of that century a machine was invented to do the job, so a thimble with an irregular dimple pattern was probably made before the 1850s. Mechanisation also changed shape and thickness: early thimbles tend to be quite thick with a pronounced dome, while the metal on later ones is thinner and the top flatter. Silver thimbles, common in the 19th century, had a practical flaw, since silver is soft and easily pierced by a steel needle; Charles Horner solved the problem with a steel core covered inside and out by silver, producing the Dorcas thimble, pretty as a silver thimble but durable, and now popular with collectors.

Measures, Tokens and Collectors

A tool carried by everyone gathers extra meanings. In the 1800s thimbles were used to measure spirits, hence the phrase just a thimbleful. Victorian schoolmistresses practised thimble-knocking, tapping unruly pupils on the head with dame's thimbles, and the same word names a quite different tapping on windows. Thimbles have been used as love-tokens and to commemorate important events; collecting became popular in the UK when many companies made special thimbles to commemorate the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. During the First World War, silver thimbles were collected from those who had nothing to give by the British government and melted down to buy hospital equipment, and in the 1930s and 40s red-topped thimbles carried advertising. A sandalwood thimble left in fabric stores is said to help keep moths away, and a miniature thimble is one of the tokens in the game of Monopoly.

Modern sewers choose among metal, leather, rubber and silicone thimbles, including soft leather palm guards for quilting and adhesive dot thimbles for a single fingertip, but the working principle is unchanged since Pompeii. Of all the tools in this section of sewing definitions, the thimble is the only one worn rather than held, and the only one whose purpose is to protect the worker rather than act on the work, a reminder that sewing has always been skilled manual labour performed by hands worth protecting.