Imagine, you are a boy, living in a small seaside town in the early 1900s. Your family has been here for ages, and they're all fishermen. Your father and his father before, probably even his father before that! You know that when you grow up you'll be going out on the boats too, but at the moment, you're too small. Father has been teaching you to use his netting needles though, and while he was out today you were practising on one of his old nets. When he saw it, he was very impressed, said you'd fixed it so well he would be able to use it again!
When I took this netting needle to show the children they didn't believe it was a needle at all. All the needles they have seen and used are small, thin, metal needles. According to one (rather well spoken) child, the idea that the 'huge, strange shaped, wooden contraption parading as a needle' was actually a needle was 'preposterous'. They couldn't see how it would be used or what it would be used for. When I explained it was a netting needle, used to make and mend nets, they were fascinated. They had never thought about how nets were made, assuming they were made on machines and fixed with a normal needle, or simply thrown away.
As is so often the case with everyday items, we don't know exactly when people started to make nets. We do know though that fishing nets were being used by the ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese and Egyptians. Paintings and records suggest that the Egyptians were using fishing nets as far back as 3000BC and a Chinese fish shaped bowl, decorated with a net pattern from the same period suggests they also had fishing nets. The Greeks and Romans were certainly using nets to fish by the second century AD, and probably had been using them for many years prior to this, though there is no record. Fishing was often seen as a 'lower class' activity though, and so does not appear as often in accounts as other activities.
As for when the netting needle was invented, we also don't know. Early nets were probably made by simply knotting grass, reeds and other fibres together and although it is possible a needle was used to help with this process, we have no evidence to suggest this was the case. It seems more likely that netting needles came in when spun fabric fibres started to be used. Of course, netting wasn't just used for fishing nets either. It could be used in making various clothing pieces, like hairnets, and also to make nets for other uses. Certainly, netting needles like the one I showed the children were used during World Wars One and Two to make camouflage nets. These were often made by women, or even children and my Mother remembers her Mother telling her about making the nets for the soldiers while she was at school.
