Whirligigs Are Joy In Motion by Sarah
J. McNeal
I have loved whirligigs all my life. I remember going up to north central
Pennsylvania on visits to my grandparents. Because of the large numbers of
Amish there, handmade wooden items are easy to find, whirligigs among them.
Passing by shops with all kinds of animated whirligigs brought to life by the
wind, made me laugh.
I suppose I ought to start by explaining just what a whirligig is. A whirligig
is an object that spins or whirls, or has at least one part that spins or
whirls. There are several kinds of whirligigs that include pinwheels, buzzers,
comic weathervanes, gee-haws, spinners, whirligigs, whirlijig,
whirlybird, or plain whirly. Whirligigs are mostly powered by the wind but can
be hand, friction, or motor powered. They can be used as a kinetic garden
ornament. Some are designed to transmit sound and vibration into the ground to
repel burrowing rodents in yards, gardens, and backyards. There are four types of
whirligigs: Button, friction, string, and wind driven.
Button Whirligig
Button whirligigs:
Button whirligigs, also called button spinners and buzzers are the earliest
whirligigs. They are very simple. Native Americans designed them with a piece
of clay or bone and a strip of hide since 500 BC. Many children during
the Great Depression from the Appalachians and Ozarks made them with a button
or coin and a piece of string. They were entertaining toys and I even made them
myself.
Buzzers are button whirligigs that make a sound which can be adjusted
depending on how quickly the button is spinning and by the tightness of the
string. Button whirligigs are still seen in craft shops and souvenir stores in
the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Friction and string whirligigs
String powered whirligigs require the operator to wrap the string around a
shaft and then pull the string to cause the whirligig’s motion. String
Whirligigs have ancient origins. The bamboo-copter or bamboo butterfly, was
invented in China in 400 BC. While the initial invention did not use string to
launch a propeller type piece, later Chinese versions did. The first known
depictions of whirligigs are string powered versions in tapestries from
medieval times.
Friction whirligigs, also called Gee-Haws, depend on the holder rubbing a
stick against a notched shaft resulting in a propeller at the end of the shaft
to turn, as the result of the vibration carried along the shaft. The motion
needed to power a friction whirligig is very similar to rubbing sticks together
to create fire. Friction whirligigs are still found in craft shops and souvenir
stores in the Appalachian Mountains.
Simple Wind
Driven Whirligig
Wind-driven whirligigs
A wind-driven whirligig transfers the energy of
the wind into either a simple release of kinetic energy through rotation or a more
complicated transfer of rotation energy to power a mechanism that produces
repetitive motions and/or creates sounds. The wind simply pushes on the
whirligig turning one part of it.
The simplest and most common example of a
wind-driven whirligig is the pinwheel. The pinwheel demonstrates the most
important aspect of a whirligig, blade surface. Pinwheels have a large cupped
surface area which allows the pinwheel to reach its maximum speed quickly at
low wind speed. I know all of you have seen pinwheels. I used to make them
myself out of paper, a straight pin and a straw.
Increasing the blade area of the whirligig
increases the surface area so more air particles collide with the whirligig.
This causes the drag force to reach its maximum value and the whirligig to
reach its terminal speed in less time. The opposite occurs when thin or short
blades with a smaller surface area are used, resulting in the need for a higher
wind speed to start and operate the whirligig. Whirligigs come in a range of
sizes and configurations, bounded only by human ingenuity. The two blade
non-mechanical model is the most prevalent; exemplified by the classic bird
with wings.
I once saw gigantic whirligigs in a magazine. One
of them was a dad holding a kid as if he was teaching her how to swim. The arms
of the child were the movable part; they spun around when the wind blew. This
thing looked as if it was as big as a billboard. I can just imagine it on the
grassy prairie with the grass looking like waves. I thought it was amazing.
Some interesting history:
The actual origin of whirligigs is unknown.
Farmers and sailors use weathervanes and the assumption is one or both groups
are likely the originators. By 400 BC the bamboo-copter or dragon butterfly, a
helicopter type rotor is launched by rolling a stick had been invented in
China. I have one I bought at a store in Chimney Rock. It’s just a stick with a
helicopter-shaped blade on top. I can used my hands, with the stick in between
and twirl it until it spins fast enough to lift off.
Wind driven whirligigs were technically possible
by 700 AD when the Sasanian Empire began using windmills to pump water for
irrigation. The weathervane which dates to the Sumerians in 1600-1800 BC, is
the second component of wind driven whirligigs.
In Chinese, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman
civilizations there are ample examples of weathervanes but as yet, no examples
of a propeller driven whirligig. A grinding corn doll of Egyptian origin
demonstrates that string operated whirligigs were already in use by 100 BC
The first known visual representation of a
European whirligig is contained in a medieval tapestry that depicts children
playing with a whirligig consisting of a hobbyhorse on one end of a stick and a
four blade propeller at the other end.
For reasons that are not clear, whirligigs in the
shape of the cross became a fashionable allegory in paintings of the fifteenth
and sixteenth century. An oil by Hieronymus Bosch probably completed between
1480 and 1500 and known as the Christ Child with a Walking Frame, contains
a clear illustration of a string powered whirligig.
A book published in Stuttart in 1500 shows the
Christ child in the margin with a string powered whirligig.
The Jan Provost late sixteenth-century painting
‘’Virgin and Child in a Landscape’’ clearly shows the Christ child holding a
whirligig as well.
The American version of the wind driven whirligig
probably originated with the immigrant population of the United Kingdom as
whirligigs are mentioned in early American colonial times. How the wind driven
whirligig evolved in America is not fully known, though there are some markers.
George Washington brought ‘’whirligigs’’ home
from the Revolutionary War.
By the mid-18th century weathervanes had evolved to
include free moving “wings”. These “wings” could be human arms; pitchforks;
spoons, or virtually any type of implement. The 1819 publication by Washington
Irving of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (one of my favorite stories) contains the
following description: “a little wooden warrior who, armed with a sword in each
hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn.”
By the last half of the 19th century constructing
wind driven whirligigs had become a pastime and art form. What began as a
simple turning of artificial feathers in the wind advanced into full blown
mechanisms producing both motion and sound. Unfortunately, both the exposure to
the weather and the fragile nature of whirligigs means very few wind driven
whirligigs from this era survive. (A fate my own whirligigs have met.)The
period between 1880 and 1900 brought rapid geographic expansion of whirligigs
across the United States. After 1900, production seemed for the most part to
center on the southern Appalachians. Craftsman from the southern Appalachians
continued to produce whirligigs into the 20th century. During the Great
Depression a resurgence in production by craftsman and amateurs was attributed
to the need for ready cash.
Today Whirligigs are used as toys for children,
as garden structures designed to keep birds or other garden pests away, as
decorative yard art and as art.
A Mechanical
Artistic Whirligig
Whirligigs as art
Whirligigs have become art. A number of museums
now have collections, or examples in their collections.
Whirligigs in literature
William Shakespeare uses the whirligig as a
metaphor for "what goes around, comes around" in his play, Twelfth
Night.
O. Henry wrote a short story called "The
Whirligig of Life", about a mountain couple who decide to divorce and the
events that lead to their remarriage told from the perspective of the judge.
Lloyd Biggle, Jr. wrote a novel titled The
Whirligig of Time as part of his science fiction series featuring Jan
Darzek, a former private detective.
In Whirligig, a novel by Paul Fleischman,
a boy makes a mistake that takes the life of a young girl and is sent on a
cross country journey building whirligigs.
In the Newbery Award-Winning young adult novel
Missing May by Cynthia Rylant, Ob, the main character's uncle, makes whirligigs
as a hobby. After his wife who loved the whirligigs dies, the whirligigs
continue to move and symbolize the fact that life must go on for Ob. I love
this symbolism.)
Whirligigs in the movies:
Kinetic Metal Whirligig
In the movie Twister, Helen Hunt’s aunt Meg
(played by Lois Smith) has a large collection of metal kinetic art whirligigs
in her front yard to warn her of approaching tornadoes. (I loved her big metal
whirligigs. They also made music like wind chimes. They were beautiful.)
Whirligigs as folk art
When whirligigs became recognized as American
folk art isn’t clear, but today they are a well-established sub-category. With
recognition, folk art whirligigs have increased in value.
Whirligig Kinetic Art Public Library,
O'Fallon, Illinois
A traditional whirligig commonly found in Bali, Indonesia
is a musical whirligig of a farmer pulling a bull. They are still available,
and are often used in the rice paddies as the sound they make when the wind
blows scares the birds away. An example of this type whirligig was found near
Clarkrange, Tennessee on the Highway 127 Corridor Sale. It represents an
interesting example of a combination of a mechanical and sound producing
whirligig.
This picture shows the mechanism for
producing music
The propeller, the Balinese farmer and the bull
are of tin. The farmer and bull are painted but the propeller blades are not.
The body is of hand whittled bamboo, fastened with rusty nails and wire and a
single piece of string. There are still pencil marks where various pieces were
centered and/or aligned.
The farmer is connected to the shaft of the
whirligig by a bamboo stick with an offset where the stick connects to the
shaft. The result is: as the shaft turns the farmer’s arm lifts from the offset
shaft which makes the farmer pull the string which lifts the bull’s head. The
shaft contains a second feature, a set of knockers that create a bit of music
on raised pieces of bamboo. There are a total of six knockers which strike six
bamboo plates. The bamboo plates are raised by placing a circular piece of
bamboo or something similar between the knockers and the bamboo base. Each
rotation causes three knockers to hit plates so the sound is actually different
at each rotation. The knockers are nailed in pattern to the shaft.
Whirligigs from folk artist Reuben Aaron Miller
and others are considered highly collectable. However, whirligigs' value as
folk art has been uneven. At a 1998 auction at Skinner Galleries a 19th Century
Uncle Sam with saw and flag in excellent condition sold for $12,650. At a 2000
auction at Skinner Galleries a 19th-century polychrome carved pine and copper
band figure whirligig in excellent condition sold for $10,925 and an early
20th-century bike rider of painted wood and sheet metal sold for $3,450. In 2005,
a 20th Century folk art whirligig in good condition brought $2,900 at an
auction at Horst Auction Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (30 miles from my
hometown.)
I bought most of my whirligigs for $10-$20 dollars.
Those same whirligigs now cost around $58. Just sayin’.
The modern craftsman:
There is still a role for the solitary craftsman,
whittler or inventor as evidenced by the following cast of modern whirligig
builders.
Lester Gay of Fountain, North Carolina made
whirligigs from his retirement until his death in 1998. Mr. Gay’s wind driven
whirligigs were made of bicycle rims placed at nearly uniform height to create
a "garden of whirligigs". He never sold one personally. At the end of
his life there were said to be over 250 whirligigs in his yard. The whole
collection was donated to the Fountain, North Carolina Volunteer Fire
Department, which sold them off at $75 each.
Near Plantersville, Alabama between 2001 and 2008
Edith Lawrence made whirligigs that her husband Gene sold from their front
yard. Gene became known locally as Whirligig Man. Edith's whirligigs were of
the wind driven type, typically of cast off plastic. All of the proceeds they
earned went to their local church. Edith died in December 2008 and Gene
abandoned the business soon after.
Mr. Elmer Preston (b.3/17/1874-d.10/1/1974)lived
in South Hadley, Massachusetts worked in a traditional folk manner, with the
classic themes of Farmer Cutting Wood, etc.
Ander Lunde of Chapel Hill, North Carolina is
credited with reviving the whirligig during the 1980s. A well-known painter and
wood sculptor, Lunde won First Prize for a whirligig sculpture in the 1981
Durham (North Carolina) Art Guild Juried Exhibition. Lunde received two
honorable mentions for his whirligigs at the first statewide Juried Exhibition
of North Carolina Crafts in 1983. Lunde's contribution to the literature on whirligigs
is substantial, with a total of eight how-to build whirligig books to his
credit. (See bibliography.)
The most famous of modern wind driven whirligig
makers is probably Vollis Simpson (1919 - May 31, 2013) of Lucama, North
Carolina. Mr. Simpson has constructed a "whirligig farm" on his land
in Lucama, North Carolina, which has been profiled by PBS, the subject of an
online photographic essay at the Minnesota Museum of Science, and an article in
American Profile. One of Simpson's creations stands in front of the
American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Simpson was named the
2012 Arts and Culture winner of Southern Living's Heroes of the New South
Awards. Simpson's farm contains some thirty to forty whirligigs at any given
time, some of which reach fifty feet in height. The whirligigs are made from
castoff metal machine parts and an assortment of odd and colorful pieces of
various origins., He sells smaller versions to the public, but only from his
farm.
Pine Shop Woodcrafters was established in 1989 in
Bellows Falls, Vermont by John Whitney, and continues to reproduce this early
American craft. John's whirligigs are from clear cut pine logs. All parts are
handmade (even the crankshaft), and are individually traced, band-saw cut, and hand
sanded to give them the best 4 season balance& durability.
Wilson, North Carolina holds an annual Whirligig
Festival in November of each year which includes a whirligig building contest
complete with nominal cash prizes. The contest is judged in part by Vollis
Simpson.
My Whirligig Collection
I have used artistic wooden crafts in two of my
Wildings series stories. Both wooden craftsmen were from the Thoroughgood
family and both stories were Christmas short stories.
WHEN LOVE COMES KNOCKING
Excerpt:
After the bags were placed inside the door, Banjo
glanced around the room. “I see you’ve got a Christmas tree this year,
Penelope.” He stepped over to the tree and examined it, touching some of the
wooden ornaments. “Gil, these are nice. I know you made them. I can tell your
work. You’re the best carpenter in town, maybe anywhere in the state. You ought
to make these to sell.” He peered at Gil with those dark eyes framed in
wire-rimmed spectacles. “The townsfolk talk about your rocking chairs and
tables, but I bet they never saw anything like these beauties. Oh. Before I
forget, Belle wants to talk to you about ordering new chairs for the Iron
Slipper. Seems some rowdy cowpokes got into a scuffle over a card game last
week and some chairs met their end.” Banjo grinned.
Gil wanted to dislike Banjo, but he just couldn’t. For
all that he was orphaned as a baby and left to be raised by whores, he was one
of the kindest young men he knew. “I’ll drop by her place on the way home and
see what she wants.”
Just for a fleeting moment, Gil saw the shadow cross
Penelope’s face. Probably just the mention of the Iron Slipper or Belle
probably still brought the memory of Evan’s death to her and the pain that went
with it.
A CHRISTMAS
VISITOR
Excerpt:
Matilda
unwrapped the brown paper from the present using the utmost care so as not to
damage it. Beneath the wrappings she found a box shaped like two doves, one
with its head pointed in one direction and the other with its head in the
opposite direction. The meticulous detail of the carved wings made the feathers
seem real. Between the two doves was a red heart. The heart, the wings, and the
beautiful fans of feathered tails moved slightly when she ran her fingers over
them. Try though she might, she could not find the lid to open the box and see
what was inside.
When
she glanced up to ask Sterling how to open the box, he stood before her with a
grin spread across his face. Before she could ask, he answered her unspoken
question. “It’s a puzzle box, darlin’. There is a way to move the pieces to
open the box. It took a while for me to draw up the plans and quite some time
to get it to work just right. I thought about what pleasure it would be for
you, so I was determined to make it just right.” The light of pride fairly
glowed in his eyes.
“It’s
a beautiful thing like a work of art. That it is made into a puzzle box with
such intricacy and thoughtful design, makes it the most significant present I
have ever received.” She heard something shift inside the box when she moved it
to examine it more closely to discover how to open it. “There’s something
inside?”
Sterling
nodded his dark head. “Yes. In fact, the greater gift is inside the box.”
Again, he grinned with a boyish delight. “I made it big enough to hold all your
treasures. Do you like it?”
Diverse stories filled with heart
Facebook
Twitter
Website
My
Amazon Author’s Page
Prairie
Rose Author Page
The
Wildings
Prairie Rose Blog
Fantasy & Dreams Blog
References:
Wikipedia, Pinterest (I did not, however, use any
of those pictures due to the unknown copy rights), and my own whirligig
collection.
Bibliography of books that might interest you:
Bishop, Robert and Coblentz, Patricia; A Gallery of American Weathervanes
and Whirligigs (ISBN 0525476520 / 0-525-47652-0); E.P. Dutton, NY, 1981.
Bridgewater, Alan; and Bridgewater, Gill; The Wonderful World of Whirligigs
and Wind Machines (ISBN 0830683496 / 0-8306-8349-6); Tab Books, 1990
Burda, Cindy; Wind Toys That Spin, Sing, Twirl & Whirl; (ISBN
0806939346 / 0-8069-3934-6); Sterling, New York, 1999
Fitzgerald, Ken; Weathervanes and Whirligigs; Bramhall House, 1967
Lunde, Anders S.; Whirligigs: Design and Construction; Mother Earth News,
1983
Lunde, Anders S.; More Whirligigs; Chilton Book Co., Radnor, PA; 1984
Lunde, Anders S.; Whirligigs In Silhouette: 25 New Patterns (ISBN
0866750142 / 0-86675-014-2); Modern Handicraft Inc., Kansas City, MO; 1989
Lunde, Anders S.; Whirligigs for Children Young and Old; (ISBN
9780801982347); Chilton Book Co., Radnor, PA; 1992
Lunde, Anders S.; Easy to Make Whirligigs; Dover Publications, 1996
Lunde, Anders S.; Making Animated Whirligigs; Dover Publications, 1998
Lunde, Anders S.; Whimisical Whirligigs; (ISBN 0486412334); Dover
Publications, 2000
Lunde, Anders S.; Action Whirligigs: 25 Easy to Do Projects; Dover
Publications, 2003
Marling, Karal Ann; Wind & Whimsy: Weathervanes and Whirligigs from
Twin Cities Collections; Minneapolis Institute of Arts,2007
Pettit, Florence Harvey; How to Make Whirligigs and Whimmy Diddles and
Other American Folkcraft Objects (ISBN 0690413890 / 0-690-41389-0); Thomas Y.
Crowell, New York, New York, U.S.A., 1972
Pierce, Sharon; Making Whirligigs and Other Wind Toys; (ISBN 0806979801 /
0-8069-7980-1); Sterling Pub Co Inc; New York, New York; 1985
Schoonmaker, David & Woods, Bruce; Whirligigs & Weathervanes: A
Celebration of Wind Gadgets With Dozens of Creative Projects to Make;
Sterling/Lark, New York, 1991
Schwartz, Renee, Wind Chimes & Whirligigs, Kids Can Press, 2007
Wiley, Jack; How to Make Propeller-Animated Whirligigs: Penguin, Folk
Rooster, Dove, Pink Flamingo, Flying Unicorn & Roadrunner, Solipaz
Publishing Co., 1993
