Posted 2 months ago
keramikos
(24 items)
I was watching Korean noir classic "The Housemaid (1960) on Turner Classic Movies, and (again!) noticed a vintage sewing machine in an early scene.
I made a mental note to go back and scrutinize it to see whether I could identify the make and model.
In that first scene where the VSM puts in an appearance, the decal on the arm seemed to read "BROTHER."
20240730: kwqd seems to think that the stencil on the arm might spell "BROSHER." Certainly the top of that middle letter does look like it could be an "S." I've never seen a sewing machine with a badge name like that, but there were hundreds if not thousands of badge names created during the heyday of sewing machine badging.
This one looks like a Singer model 15 'clone' (the tell-tale tension knob assembly protruding from the faceplate).
I caught another glimpse of the VSM at about the mid-point of the movie, and said to myself, "Wut." That arm decal sure looks like it reads "Singer."
Then in a scene close to the end, I got a look at the company logo on the leg of the treadle: "The Ideal Sewing Machine."
I need rest. >8-0
IMAGE CREDITS:
The first image is a screen capture from a YouTube video by user-tz6tp4ti5k:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4CV7zHZkv8
The second image is a download from:
https://www.banjobuyer.com/banjo/40497
The third image is a low-tech capture (me taking a picture of the TV screen) from a Turner Classic Movies screening of the film):
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/780004/the-housemaid/
The fourth image is a download from:
https://www.nyculturebeat.com/index.php?mid=Film2&document_srl=4104955
OTHER REFERENCES:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150980/
https://archive.org/details/HanyoTheHousemaid1960KimKiYoungAngeeParaZoowoman.website
https://www.koreaseen.com/the-housemaid/
WoW research research research
Looks like Brosher, not Brother, in first image. A repaint? The circular plaque looks different, too. Was some Asian company knocking off American sewing machines before 1960?
kwqd, Hmmm, Brosher, huh?
That middle character did look like it could be an "S."
I've never heard of the badge name "BROSHER;" however, there were probably hundreds if not thousands of VSM badge names.
I just threw that picture of a motorized Brother in there for comparison, not as a twin.
Was some Asian company knocking off American sewing machines before 1960? Oh, brother (and I don't mean just the Brother Sewing Machine Company).
There's a huge back story of Singer model 15 copying (and to a lesser extent a couple of other Singer models), starting right after WWII.
There's no confirmed information as to how it started exactly. Some VSM enthusiasts think that the U.S. government gave the Japanese the blueprints (as part of the Marshall plan to rebuild the Japanese economy), and Singer didn't care, because the model 15 was so old.
After WWII, Singer was concentrating on the development of their new slant-needle model for the Singer centennial. They were convinced that the model 301 was revolutionary.
I myself think that some enterprising Japanese machinist might have taken a Singer model 15, and reverse engineered it.
Calling those Singer model 15 copies "clones" doesn't do them justice, because the Japanese went on to improve the Singer model 15. Thrift shops are full of them, and most of them are excellent machines that can be picked up on the cheap.
A repaint is possible; however, in other scenes of the movie, you see more decals on the VSM body.
I think they just used more than one sewing machine in the film, although I don't know why they'd do that.
Ain't no faking that logo on the treadle leg, however.
FYI, there IS an Ideal Sewing Machine Company. More than one, actually. The devil is in the details...