On The Block: Gandhi's Spinning Wheel, Napoleon's Last Will
A spinning wheel used by Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi to make "homespun" cloth as a protest against British rule, has been sold at auction in the U.K. for $180,000 – about twice as much as expected.
The portable spinning wheel, known as a charkha in Hindi, was used by Gandhi to spin thread and make his own clothes while he was held as a political prisoner in Pune's Yerwada jail in the early 1930s. Shunning British textiles in favor of homemade cloth was part of a self-reliance campaign that encompassed the larger "Quit India" independence movement championed by Gandhi.
The wheel, being sold at Ludlow Racecourse in Shropshire, England, "folds into a bundle about the size of a portable typewriter and has a handle for carrying. When unfolded for use it is operated by turning a small crank which runs the two wheels and spindle of the device," the BBC quotes American monthly Popular Science as writing in 1931.
DNA India says the spinning wheel was given by Gandhi to American Free Methodist missionary Rev. Floyd A. Puffer.
"Puffer was a pioneer in Indian educational and industrial cooperatives. He invented a bamboo plow that was later adopted by Gandhi.
Gandhi presented the charkha to Puffer for his work in Colonial India."