Vintage and Antique Singer Sewing Machines

When it comes to antique Singer sewing machines, even avid collectors tend not to mince their words. Singer was not known for its innovation, says Harry Berzack, who owns about 500 sewing machines of various makes and models. But one thing everyone agrees on was Singer’s unprecedented ability to get its machines into the hands of customers. Singer executives “were unbelievable marketers,” Berzack says. However, Isaac Merritt Singer, born in 1811, did play a fundamental role in developing a marketable sewing machine that worked well enough to outpace skilled seamstresses. In the early 19th century, the first sewing machines were large, heavy, and noisy, and they tended to bunch the thread up. A handsome, charismatic traveling Shakespearean actor and son of a German immigrant, Singer had to take work in print and machine shops to make ends meet. In his late 20s and early 30s, he patented inventions like a horse-powdered drilling machine and a wood-type carving machine, with financial support from a bookseller named George B. Zieber. Working at the machine shop of Orson C. Phelps in 1850 with Singer, Zieber noticed that the sewing machines that Phelps built and sold, based on a patent awarded to Sherburne C. Blodgett and John A. Lerow in 1849, didn't work very well. And the few garment-industry customers who purchased these machines were regularly bringing them in for repair. Singer criticized the design of the machine, suggesting that the shuttle should move back and forth and not in a circle, and that the needle should be straight, not curved. But it took some doing to convince Singer to work on a device for such a feminine pursuit. Zieber recalled Singer complaining, "You want to do away with the only thing that keeps women quiet—their sewing!" He also asserted, "I don't give a damn for the invention, the dimes are what I'm after." But Zieber and Phelps agreed to fund Singer's prototype, so he built this sewing machine, also solving the problem of keeping the thread tense enough to sew, but not so tense it broke. Singer quickly purchased a 1849 patent belonging to John Bachelder, which conceptualized putting the machine on a table so the fabric could be fed horizontally and using a presser foot to hold it in place as the needle moves vertically. The three partners formed I.M. Singer & Company, and offered its first sewing machine in 1850 for the hefty sum of $125 (which would be more than $3,200 today), when the average American annual salary was $500. Sewing machines were a hard sell, because they were financially out-of-reach for most families, but even profitable uniform and garment companies were wary of sewing machines, given their reputation for malfunctioning and breaking. Tailors were concerned that sewing machines would diminish their craft. However, Singer had boatloads of charm and gusto, which he employed to sell his sewing machines and make his company a success. He took his bulky inventions on the road, putting on performances and demonstrations at country fairs and performance halls in rural towns, where he gave a dramatic recitation of Thomas Hood's 1843 poem, "The Song of the Shirt," detailing the drudgery of the hand-sewing seamstress life. He enlisted pretty young seamstresses to demonstrate his sewing machines at fairs and in storefront windows to prove that ladies were not too delicate to manage such machinery. In New York City, he drew attention driving the streets in a tremendous, bright yellow and black horse carriage. The 3,800-pound vehicle was pulled by six-to-nine horses, had seats for 31 adults, beds for children, and a water closet. A band positioned in the back played while Singer's spectacle paraded through the streets. Singer's grandiosity extended to every aspect of his life—throughout his life, he managed to maintain long-term relationships, often overlapping, with five different women (two of whom were his wives) and had about two dozen children. After taking Zieber's and Phelp's initial investments of $3,000 (about $89,000 in today's dollars) in his sewing machine, Singer was quick to scam them out of their shares of I.M. Singer & Company, and by 1851, he had reformed the business, partnering with New York lawyer Edward Clark. As sewing machines became more practical, the industry was hobbled by bitter patent litigation. While Singer had come up with the final elements needed for a workable sewing machine, an assortment of other inventors had paved the way for him to do so. They had developed the lockstitch, the eye-pointed needle, the shuttle, and so on. Elias Howe, Jr., held the patent for the essential eye-pointed needle, and after a successful lawsuit against Singer, Howe began to charge all manufacturers $25 per machine (roughly $650 today) for the use of this needle. In 1856, the companies that held the most important sewing machine patents—Singer, Howe, Wheeler & Wilson, and Grover & Baker, came together to create America's first patent pool called the Sewing Machine Combination. This alliance settled their legal disputes with one another, and allowed them all to produce quality machines. They still had to pay Howe $5 per machine (about $130), whereas companies that weren't members of the Combination were required to pay $15 per machine (about $400). The $65 price tag for a Combination machine (roughly $1,700) was still too steep for most Americans. In terms of antique sewing machines of this era, Wheeler & Wilson produced a mechanically superior machine. But Singer was better at marketing and promotion, while his partner Edward Clark had the business acumen, so Singer sewing machines became more popular. Clark developed the hire-purchase plan, introduced in 1856, which allowed women to rent sewing machines for $2-$10 a month, which would be credited toward the machine's purchase at a markup. Between 1855 and 1856, Singer nearly tripled its machine sales, from 883 to 2,564. While this debt plan made Singer sewing machines more accessible to regular women, businessmen often used the hire-purchase system as opportunity to exploit women by foreclosing on machines that were nearly paid off or hiring women to sew goods by telling them their labor would go toward paying off the machine, failing to give them enough work, and repossessing the machines. In 1857, I.M. Singer & Company announce a plan that allowed sewing-machine owners to trade in their old machines to purchase the newest Singer sewing machine for just $50 each (still nearly $1,300 in today's money). The 1857 Singers were not much improved from the 1856 models. Nonetheless, this perceived bargain bumped up Singer sales by 40 percent that year, and it succeeded in preventing hundreds of used machines from entering the market at a lower price point. Instead, the company sold the old machines as scrap metal to be melted down. Today, this plan means that even some antique Singer sewing machines that were popular in their day are rare now. The legal stability created by the Combination allowed Singer to build a U.S. factory with cutting-edge technology, completed in 1857 and inspired by Colt and other gun makers, who had developed machines that could stamp out identical gun parts. Before 1857, sewing machines were hand-crafted by machinists, meaning no two were the same, even if they were the same model. Early sewing machines were expensive to repair because parts could not be interchanged. Also in 1857, Singer opened a storefront with a decorated window at the company's headquarters in New York City, the first of myriad Singer stores to open around the country and the globe. His female demonstrators would operate his sewing machines in the window, showcasing how Singers could even create embroidery and art-sewing projects. To combat the anxious fretting of doctors and ministers worried about the ill effects of women becoming familiar with machines, Clark offered Singer sewing machines to preacher's wives at half price, reminding them of the grim picture painted in "The Song of the Shirt." In the early 1860s, Singer donated machines to the Union Army to quickly make uniforms for the new recruits fighting the Civil War. I.M. Singer & Company developed an image as both a protector of feminine domesticity and a champion of social reform. The machines were beautifully adorned with gold decals or mother of pearl so that they were appropriate for display in one's home. About 10,000 of the antique lockstitch sewing machines known as Singer No. 1 were produced between 1851 and 1860, but because they were unwieldy and noisy, they tended to be scrapped, hence these historical machines are rare today. It's estimated that roughly 100,000 Singer No. 2 machines were produced between 1860 and 1900, but these large, heavy machines were also mostly melted down. Despite their current rarity, these antique Singer sewing machines are not particularly expensive to collect. Singer Nos. 1 and 2 were largely industrial machines sold to garment companies. It wasn't until 1856 that Singer introduced its Turtleback (or Turtle Back) sewing machine for home use. This is the most highly sought-after antique Singer sewing machine today. Offered between 1856 and 1861, it was a market failure, thanks to a fragile mechanism that couldn't handle a wide variety of fabrics. But because only 1,500 were made, it is rare today. The Turtleback was followed up with the very popular Singer Letter A sewing machine—also known as Model A— introduced in 1859 and sold through 1865. It was offered with the options of a metal table and stand, or a wooden table, or a mother-of-pearl head and wooden folding-box cover. Even though about 75,000 Letter As were produced, because of the return policy, those antiques sewing machines are also rare today. Around 1863, Singer introduced its New Family sewing machines—the first of these is now known as Singer Model 12 and alternatively the Fiddlebase, or Fiddle Base—which were a tremendous success and also the most copied machines of the era, up until the 1920s. The Model 12 used a traversing "boat" type shuttle, and could be purchased with a hand crank or a treadle. The New Family machines also came with a wide variety of ornately decorative decal styles, from handsome gold scrollwork to mother of pearl. The larger New Family Model 13 of 1870 was not as successful and was marketed mostly to the garment industry. By the middle of the decade, the company was putting out about 60,000 sewing machines a year. Unfortunately for Mr. I.M. Singer, the scandal about his cheating lothario ways broke in the United States, driving him to step down as an executive of his company and take up residence in Paris, where he returned to acting. The business was renamed the Singer Manufacturing Company in 1865. When Singer passed away in 1875, Edward Clark took full control of the business. Elias Howe had left the Sewing Machine Combination that created the four-company monopoly in 1867, when his last patent expired. The coalition was fully dissolved in 1877 when the last patent Singer Manufacturing Company held, based on Bachelder's feed concept, had expired. The 1879 Singer Improved New Family machine, also known as Model 15K, was considered a breakthrough because of its oscillating shuttle and lack of gears, which meant it was quieter and faster. It could sew almost any kind of fabric, and the needle had evolved to the sort of needles we see on sewing machines today. But the next year an even more significant development occurred—Singer put an Edison electric motor in one of its machines, a foreshadowing of things to come. In 1885, Singer debuted the Model 27 (later the Model 127), which employed "vibrating shuttle" technology and sold by the millions. By 1890, Singer had a staggering 80 percent of the world sewing-machine market, and by 1891, that early Edison prototype was being offered to the public. In 1905, Singer Manufacturing Company acquired Wheeler & Wilson, and started producing the popular high-arm Wheeler & Wilson D-9 machine, first introduced in 1895, as the Singer 9W. Using technology and knowledge the company gained from Wheeler & Wilson, Singer introduced its Super 66 model in 1908. This antique sewing machine was the forerunner to modern sewing machines with its round bobbin, enclosed needle bar, and horizontal oscillating hook. The Singer 99, debuting in 1911, was simply a smaller version of the 66, which offered a higher stitch quality. In 1921, a version of the Singer 99 that used electricity was put on the market. A smoother and quieter version of the Singer Model 15 was launched in 1934, and the elegant ironwork treadle was replaced by a wooden-box style treadle. Five years later, Singer debuted its top-of-the-line Model 201, or Singer 201K, which was built to last a lifetime. Most women living through the Great Depression could only dream of such a luxury, and these vintage Singer sewing machines are coveted today, as they often work better than anything on the market. Another popular vintage Singer sewing machine is the Model 221, also marketed as the Singer Featherweight, produced between 1933 and 1969. In 1934, the Singer company bought out Standard Sewing Machine Company, which had developed a portable Sewhandy machine with a small carrying case. The year of the merger, the Featherweight made its public debut at the Chicago World's Fair in 1934. Made with aluminum parts, the Featherweight was only 11 1/4 pounds. The Singer 221 machines sold at the fair carried a specialized "A Century of Progress" badge and are sought after by collectors today. But because the Featherweight cost a hefty $125 during the Depression (about $2,200 today), sales of this innovative machine did not take off until after World War II. But the Singer Model 221 became the "it" sewing machine of the 1950s, and by the late 1960s, Singer had sold more than 2 million. In 1953, a Singer factory in Scotland began to produce the Featherweight 222K, which was an improved-upon Model 221 with a free-arm. This machine was made through 1963 and only sold in Canada and the United Kingdom, so a relatively small number—100,000—were made. By the 1950s, Singer was offering thousands of sewing-machine models, thanks to all the new machine technologies developed during World War II.