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Holiday Snaps from Denmark

Martin Gregory
ISMACS News 2008
Issue 92

Going round museums on one’s holidays (as one does) there are occasionally pleasant surprises in store in far away places. At the farthest north tip of Jutland (Denmark) is the small port of Skagen where the Kattegat meets the Skagerrak. In the Skagen By-og Egnsmuseum (local history museum) is a small display of sewing machines of which two were of particular interest.

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Displayed as ‘the first sewing machine to be used in Skagen’ is a small treadle machine made by Bergmann and Huttemeier of Copenhagen in the 1870s. It is a ¾ size lockstitch machine copied from the Grover and Baker shuttle machine. I have only seen it before as a hand machine on a cast iron base (Figure 1). In the Skagen museum, the machine has lost its decoration (Figure 2) but is mounted on a delightful tripod base with a single foot pedal (Figure 3).

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The other machine of note was a copy of the early Taylor machine patented in Denmark by Petersen of Horsens (Jutland) in 1873 (Figure 4). Whether Petersen manufactured it is not known. The castings are less ornate than those of Taylor or Lipmann and Lind, and it is all a bit crude. Sadly, no trace of decoration remains on the Skagen example.

So, next time you trip over a hidden gem, write it up for ISMACS News!

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