Johann Friedrick Blanck (1747-1827), his son, Gerhard (1771-1849), and grandson, Christopher (1817-?), where listed in the Lehe Church records as linenweavers.

Linen is made from the fiber of the flax plant. Linen has many advantages as a fiber but the process from seed to fabric is labor intensive.

The small oily seeds are sown in the spring. They are sown close together so there is less branching of the plant and minimal weeding is necessary. Flax quickly depletes the soil so it is planted as a rotation crop.

When the outer stems are sufficiently decayed the flax is laid out to dry.

Next the brake (a large wooden thrash) is used to loosen the boon (the woody part of the plant) from the fibers.

This type of residual of the flax was used to stuff seats.

From back of card: "The work is in one sense rough and heavy, in another sense very delicate. An unskilled man, drawing a bundle of long flax fibres over those ugly, sharp teeth, might easily break them so that the result would be a mere handful of broken remnants. An expert worker knows how to handle the stuff so as to comb out each course fibre into a bundle of smaller, parallel fibres, with the least possible waste in the way of unevenness and breakage."

The long thin fibers resembling human hair have to be handled carefully to keep them from tangling. A distaff is used to keep the fibers separate and in line during spinning. The flax wheel is traditionally a small wheel. The flax needs to be continually moistened while spinning.

Young ladies with spinning wheels and distaffs

Flax is a valuable crop not only for the linen. The seeds are harvested for linseed oil. Linseed oil has been used for wood treatment, paint, aminal fodder, lamp oil, cough medicine, laxatives and other medicinal purposes. Linoleum was make from linseed oil and ground cork.