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International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society

The purpose of the International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society is to foster the collecting of, and research into, sewing machines.

ISMACS' Sewing Machine Book List

MUSEUM & EXHIBITION CATALOGUES, ARTICLES & ESSAYS

Deutsches Museum catalogue, book cover

Deutsches Museum Catalog

Publisher:

Deutsches Museum (Munich)

Date:

8 May to 14 November, 1993

Pages:

83

Published to accompany the 1993 exhibition, "The French Contribution to the Development of the Sewing Machine" mounted to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Barthelemy Thimonner's birth. Most of the machines are from the Strobel Collection, with many contributions from the Thimonnier collection, with toys from the Georg Reinfelder, Musée de la Chemiserie and the Auriel collections. The catalog contains a useful bibliography and index; a brief history of the sewing machine, a timeline of notable developments, diagrams on stitch formation, black-and-white photographs of the exhibits, each with a description. (Sylvia Lanza)

Strobel Museum Catalogue

Publisher:

Strobel Museum (Munich)

Format:

8” x 8”

Date:

1993

Pages:

90

Illustrated list of 50 machines from the Munich-based, Strobel industrial-machine company museum.

Sewing Machine Art

Publisher:

Strobel Museum (Munich)

Format:

Hardback

Date:

1991

ISBN:

Possibly available as ISBN 3-9800-2-5

Another high class Strobel publication featuring advertising and other art from the Munich museum.

Spanish Exhibition Catalogue

Publisher:

Cam Cultural

Format:

8 ½” x 8 ½”. 90 photographs, Col & B&W. Some Spanish text.

Date:

1991

Pages:

60

A major international exhibition, in 1991, of antique sewing machines was orchestrated by ISMACS member, Emilio Cano, in his home town of Elche, centre of the Spanish shoemaking industry. Machines were shipped from the Maggie Snell collection in London and the IMCA collection near Amsterdam, as well as the home-based Cano collection. Occasionally surfaces secondhand.

Barnett Collection Catalogue

Publisher:

Rural History Centre of the University of Reading

A 30-years-old catalogue which surfaces rarely today and contains only basic information.

Articles and Essays

Title:

American Sewing Machines

Author:

Frederick G. Bourne

Published in:

One Hundred Years of American Commerce, ed. Chauncey M. Depew. 1895; New York, 1968, p. 530.

Title:

Consumption, Production, and Gender: The Sewing Machine in Nineteenth-Century France.

Author:

Judith Coffin

Published in:

Gender and Class in Modern Europe”, 1966, Cornell, N.Y., pp. 111–41.

Title:

Credit, Consumption, and Images of Women’s Desires: Selling the Sewing Machine in Late Nineteenth-Century France

Published in:

French Historical Studies 18 (Spring 1994): pp749–83.

Title:

The Global Diffusion of the Sewing Machine, 1850–1914.

Published in:

Research in Economic History 20 (2001): pp1–46

Title:

Pioneering Foreign Direct Investment in British Manufacturing.

Author:

Andrew Godley

Published in:

Business History Review 73 (Autumn 1999): 394–429.

Title:

Singer in Britain: The Diffusion of Sewing Machine Technology and Its Impact on the Clothing Industry in the United Kingdom, 1860–1905

Author:

Andrew Godley

Published in:

Textile History 27 (Spring 1996): pp59–76.

Title:

The Channels of Distribution for the Innovation: The Sewing Machine Industry in America."

Author:

Andrew Jack

Published in:

Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 9 (Feb. 1957): 113–41.

Title:

Early Foreign Multinationals in Japan and the Indigenous Firms: Singer Sewing Machine and Japanese Enterprises, 1901–1960s (in Japanese)

Author:

Tetsuya Kuwahara

Published in:

Kokumin Keizai Zasshi [Journal of Economics and Business Administration] 185 (May 2002): pp45–63.

Title:

Singer: Competition and Closure

Author:

Michael McDermott

Published in:

The History of Clydebank, comp. John Hood. Glasgow, 1988, pp. 151–66.

Title:

A Beautiful Ornament in the Parlour or Boudoir: The Domestication of the Sewing Machine."

Author:

Nicholas Oddy,.

Published in:

The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption, and Home Dressmaking, ed. Barbara Burman. Oxford, U.K., 1999, pp. 269–84.

Title:

Creating Consumers: Gender, Class, and the Family Sewing Machine.

Author:

Nancy Page Fernandez

Published in:

The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking, ed. Barbara Burman. Oxford, U.K., 1999, pp. 157–68.

Title:

L’industrie de la machine à coudre en France, 1830–1914."

Author:

Monique Peyrière

Published in:

La révolution des aiguilles. Habiller les Francais et les Américains, 19e–20e siècles, ed. L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Paris, 1996, pp. 95–114.

Title:

The Sewing Machine Comes Home

Author:

Tim Puttnam,.

Published in:

The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption, and Home Dressmaking, ed. Barbara Burman. Oxford, U.K., 1999, pp. 285–302.

Archival Sources

Clydebank District Library Archives, Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland.

Singer Archives, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.