Yesterday I got an intriguing note from my dad, asking if I’d like to pick up some ‘screeds’ he had inherited from his grandfather. Having seen something like this in use on Gardener’s World (Monty Don always covers his newly sown seed over with sifted compost, using a tool that looks like these), I immediately answered yes! Today, I’ve been researching what these tools are called, what they were originally used for, when they were in use, and more. It’s been a fun project! Turns out there is a lot more to these tools than meets the eye. If you’re interested in history or craft, then continue with me in this deep dive.
My first idea was to look up the word ‘screed’ since that’s what my dad called them. Other than our usual use for this word (meaning a long speech or piece of writing), it is used in construction, when applying concrete or stucco. It’s a tool that flattens the wet concrete or stucco, like a board, moved back and forth to smooth it. The back and forth motion of the tool might be why dad (and possibly his grandfather) used this word to describe it, but the pictures of screeds did not match up with the tool in front of me. I knew I needed to continue looking.
I visited the website for The Heritage Crafts Association in Great Britain. This is a place dedicated to keeping craft alive, and I found this site when Dad made me the hurdles I use in the garden. It’s full of crafts that have gone extinct or are endangered. Scrolling through their ‘red list,’ I saw the words ‘sieves and riddles’ and this sounded likely, so I clicked through. Bingo! This is what these tools are called. The word ‘riddle’ comes from an old English word that meant ‘coarse sieve.’ One of my riddles is quite coarse, with 1/4” hardware mesh, and then other is finer. The HCA says that these are for use in “gardening, shellfish harvesting, pottery, and other activities.” The area where they were originally made was in Derbyshire, and there were many companies that made them, “producing beechwood and wire mesh sieves and riddles for mines, agriculture, fishing, and even on the railways, where they sifted ballast between the tracks.” They were made from strips of beech that were steamed in a steaming chest in order to be bent; they were rolled around cylinders and left to dry for several days. The ends were ‘chamfered’ (a symmetrical sloping edge) and tacked together, and then holes were drilled for the weaving of the mesh. The galvanized steel mesh was woven inside the rim. I believe that these from my great-grandad were made a bit differently, with a pre-made wire mesh instead of one woven in place, but I’m not totally sure about that.
HCA went on to say that it is difficult to source the straight-grained beech required, and that affects the viability of the craft. A man named Mike Turnock was the last known maker of these tools, and he retired in 2010 unable to find someone willing to continue the craft. The craft went extinct. But it was recently revived by a man named Steve Overthrow, who consulted with Mike Turnock, and now has a robust business in Langport. His website is full of these sieves (he claims the sieve is the tool, the riddle is the mesh), in all kinds of sizes, meant for use in varied pursuits: Horticultural, Fishing, Kitchen, and Foundry.
So that told me a little history about sieves and riddles in the UK, but what about in America? How did this tool arrive here, and what was it used for? My research led me to the Shaker Museum in Mount Lebanon, New York. A 2018 blog post detailed their collection of sieves, which apparently is generous; “the smallest, under two inches in diameter, with a mesh of finely woven silk, was used to sift out impurities from medicinal powders. It is the largest sieve in the collection, however, that is the topic of this discussion. At nearly 40 inches in diameter and with a mesh of woven rawhide set at an average of an inch and a half apart, there are not a lot of things that wouldn’t fall through its holes.” The post goes on to detail that when they obtained the sieve from the Shakers in Canterbury, New Hampshire, it was explained that it had been “used for sifting corn husks which were used to stuff mattresses.” Along with straw, corn husks were used to fill bags of cotton ticking to be used as a mattress, and standard practice, once a year, was to “riddle” the contents of the mattress to sift out dirt and bugs.
In another post from the museum, they show a photo of another sieve on which is printed, “Seed Loft No 10.” Reading on, the post says “sieves of all sizes were made, sold, and used by the Shakers at Mount Lebanon beginning as early as 1810. They were made with bentwood rims of ash, elm, and maple. The rims were fitted with a woven mesh of horsehair, iron wire, or brass wire. The size of the sieve rim and how tightly the mesh was woven determined how the sieve was intended to be used… sieves should probably be seen…. as multi-purpose tools. For example, sieves intended to clean wheat, could have just as easily been used to screen the dust from charcoal at a blacksmith’s forge.” This got me thinking about how my great-grandfather would have used his riddles. So I called my dad for some more information.
My great-grandfather, Audley Heintzelman, was born in 1884 and lived his entire life near Youngstown, Ohio, in a small town called Hubbard. He was a railroad man, maybe a station agent, because Dad remembers him using Morse Code, and station agents were usually also the telegraph operators. He was also a farmer in the sense that everyone had a small farm in those days, to provide sustenance for the family. Dad writes, “He had quite a bit of property with a big barn, pond, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens. The only animals were chickens. I just remember him looking like a farmer, working around the property, always sawing logs for the fire, using the scythe for cutting the grass… their property also had coal. Hubbard was near Coalburg. As a kid I remember seeing coal at the surface. You didn’t have to dig for it.” Of course this time my dad was describing was when he was a kid visiting his grandpa there in the 1950’s. But in the early l900’s, when Audley was working for the railroad, the railroad would have been king, having taken over from the earlier canal system. The main railroad operating there was the B&O (which was first to cross the Appalachian mountains and connect Ohio to the East Coast). The steel and coal industries used the railroads to transport product.
Audley might have used these tools on the railroad or in his gardens. He may have even gotten them from the robust Shaker community in Ohio at the time. Wanting to know more about how they could be used in gardens, I found a book called ‘A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools’ by Bill Laws, who published in 2014 and lives in the UK. He explains that the sieve is closely connected to basketry, and that its principal use was to sift soil to remove stones. He tells of one example discovered in a burial barrow in Saxony which dated back 30 centuries. It was cast in bronze and had a handle embellished with the horns of a bull. Steam-bent wood containers would have been made since the Iron Age. Mr. Laws then talks about Mike Turnock, the sieve-maker in the Peak District who retired in 2010! He writes, “He cut and steamed rims of beech wood, bending them into perfectly circular frames and, as his father had done before him, weaving the metal screens, using a crook-shaped tool to thread the wire. In his father’s time, in the 1950’s, the railways had been his principal customer, using large sieves to screen the ballast that was laid between the tracks.” This leads me to believe that my great-grandpa took these screens from the railroad (were they no longer used? did he buy them? were they a retirement gift? who knows) to use in his home garden.
Which is exactly how I will use them, I imagine. Although, I found other uses for them as well. In a book called ‘History of Worcester, Massachusetts,’ I found this reference: “Wire-working as an industry in Worcester was contemporaneous with wire-making. In April, 1831, Jabez Bigelow manufactured “wire sieves, such as meal sieves, sand riddles… and baker’s riddles.” He apparently wove the wire on huge looms, just like thread! So there is evidence that riddles were used in baking and in mills. Truly, an all-purpose tool!
One more interesting item about sieves. In my research, I came across ‘The Sieve Portraits,’ a series painted of Elizabeth I in the 1500’s.
According to Robert Stephen Parry, who writes about the paintings, “A humble sieve is not something a Queen would be familiar with on a day-to-day basis. It is a practical piece of equipment used by gardeners and bakers to separate the finer elements of a substance from the coarse. Of soil or flour, for example. Separating that which is desirable and useful from that which is merely waste. Thus, around the rim of the sieve, we can read the inscription: A TERRA ILBEN/ AL DIMORA IN SELLA. Translated, this means “The good falls to the ground while the bad remains in the saddle.” So it is not just flour or soil we are considering here. It is a kind of sieve of human quality that we are being presented with. Elizabeth, we are urged to believe, is a creature of discernment and refined tastes. Especially where the good and the bad of human nature are concerned. Would-be suitors take note!”
This was a fun rabbit hole in which to fall. I love the idea that we are all keepers of a history, in craft and tools. This strings a thread (weaves a wire?) between me and my ancestors. I shall use the riddles and when I do, I will think about my great-grandfather, Audley Heintzelman.
