The famous painting “The Spinner” by William Adolphe Bouguereau depicts a woman hand-spinning by means of a drop spindle. Her left hand contains a distaff which the fibers to be spun are bound.

About the Artist – “William Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France on November 30, 1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants. He seemed destined to join the family business but for the intervention of his uncle Eugène, a Roman Catholic priest, who taught him classical and Biblical subjects, and arranged for Bouguereau to go to high school. Bouguereau showed artistic talent early on and his father was convinced by a client to send him to the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, where he won first prize in figure painting for a depiction of Saint Roch.” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All I can say is thanks to the industrial revolution for inventing industrial hand wheels. This spinning is just far too labor intensive, I’m just sayin’.