your old pal, jim

overall boys

2012-01-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

mill street, showing sweet, orr & company's factory, wappingers falls, n.y.

2011-12-14T23:18:00.001-05:00

addressed to 'master evan morgan leonard' and posted june 20th somewhere between 1912-1914, this postcard reads:

you mind

your sister also

your mother or

i will fix you

when i come home

               daddy.

you'd think that by posting a sweet, orr & company postcard such as this that  i'd go off on some arcane history relating to the picture of their original factory. i'm actually more interested in the back of the card these days. the card's message is from a period of time when very few fathers got to spend substantial amounts of time with their children, especially during their child's toddler-hood.

fortunately some things have changed over the past 100 years and that has not been my situation. the past year or so i've been spending pretty much every day with my son, working on my projects at night as time and energy permits. followers of my blog (there's only a couple dozen, but i'm happy to have them) have probably noticed that my posts are about half of what they were for 2009 and 2010. 

i'm not making any apologies here, my son is only going to be a toddler for so long. as he gets older (he's almost two) my time is at a premium. frankly, i'd much rather be a good father than a good blogger.

early home r.p.p.c.

2011-12-06T21:45:00.001-05:00

i don't always collect real photo postcard for sartorial reasons. sometimes i get them just because they're amazing photographs.

ready for fishing

2011-10-28T12:49:00.010-04:00

although the apron-front may be hidden under her jacket, this "sweet-orr girl" is likely wearing a pair of the company's trademarked and patented 'womanalls' under her jacket. so far i've found postcards of two variations of sweet-orr's overalls for women and this may or may not be a third. the pants part of the ensemble drapes like the photo of the overalls i posted a while back, so my hunch is that they are. the card suggests they be used for sport fishing and seems to be an attempt to appeal to a progressive woman of means.

from late 1916 until about 1919, sweet-orr heavily promoted his new 'bifurcated' style for women. i'm interested in the advertising, copy, and promotions of 'womanalls' for a few different reasons. one is that, to my knowledge, this style marks the entry of 'pants' for women into popular fashion. the nature of the marketing of the garment, however, is what really intrigues me.

sweet-orr promoted 'womanalls' to several different demographics (i'm loathe to use that word) of women, and that poses an interesting dichotomy. studying the copy in the ads from various journals of the time, one quickly gets the sense that there was no political or social ideal driving the marketing, just the desire to promote and sell the 'womanalls' to all women. on one hand, sweet-orr assures industry that these garments were in fact 'more modest' than the dresses women workers were presently wearing, while on the other hand they promote them as ideal for the lifestyle of the modern woman, more or less. the "more modest than dresses" copy was found in ads from industry journals, whereas the lifestyle ads were directed at affluent urban women and depicted leisure activities, such as sport fishing.

one form the product's promotion took was a lecture and short film at the john wanamaker store, presented daily the week ending june 16, 1917. the talk was given by edith m. burtis, a fashion editor from the ladies home journal, and the film depicted womanalls in various uses. i have yet to find a transcript of her lecture - i doubt there is one - and i would love to one day find the film that was shown afterwords. i did find this endorsement, however, from a wanamaker customer in a 1917 'clothing trade journal':

"i have worn 'womanalls' and i have walked in 'em, gardened 'em, kept house in 'em, motored in 'em, played tennis and golf in 'em; yes, danced in 'em and actually slept in 'em - and they are modest, comfortable, sensible, efficient beyond my wildest dreams. i put them on over my skirt in an emergency - as when my auto breaks down, or wear them as a dress when going in for all-day work. and no man yet has told me they are not becoming - the flatterers."

the words of a modern woman, for sure, but it seems to me that these garments were primarily used during world war one by manufacturers to outfit the women who replaced male workers that had gone to war. after the war, progressive women continued to wear pants, especially for activities such as bicycling, but the 'womanall' as depicted on this postcard seems to have dropped out of fashion, if not sight.

old overalls and straw hat

2011-09-22T22:24:00.000-04:00

four gentlemen

2011-08-07T19:38:00.002-04:00

come settle up mr. howler.

2011-07-11T20:45:00.008-04:00

the "flint hills" brand was a bit confusing to me when i first started to look into its history. the card itself is nothing special and its artwork is typical of mass-produced victorian era trade card blanks, so there was little to be gleaned from the illustration. the copy was of no help either; connor mercantile company simply sold the brand and was not the manufacturer behind the label. eventually i discovered that schramm & schmieg of burlington, iowa made and wholesaled flint hills garments, which sort of baffled me as i always assumed that they were manufactured in flint hills, kansas.

the schramm & shcmieg partnership began sometime after the civil war, but the wholesale business wasn't initiated until 1881 and i would imagine that's about when they started manufacturing the flint hills brand. charles f. schramm and frederich schmieg, both natives of germany, were brother-in-laws and residents of burlington for thirty years or so by the time they started working together. they had as many as 75 "girls" (not my words) sewing up overalls and such. the "history of des moines county, iowa; volume two" from 1915 has an excellent biography of schmieg but is a bit light on information about schramm and has contradictory dates for his death.

flint hills garments from the late 1800s to early 1900s seem to be quite rare. i only know of one pair of overalls from this period of time, but i'm not really privy to the secretive (more or less) group of collectors who may have them, so they may be more common than i think. regardless, for the number of flint hills overalls, coats, and pants that were made (or any early working garment for that matter), it would be safe to say that very few have survived. the brutal working conditions of the industrial revolution destroyed the majority of the clothes worn by its workers, and the clothes that weren't destroyed were re-used and recycled out of necessity. for me, knowing this serves as an excellent antidote for turn of the century nostalgia.

compliments of the joplin overall co.

2011-04-28T22:09:00.005-04:00

leonidas p. cunningham provided the initial capital for the joplin overall company, but it was william h. scott who attempted to transform the company from a regional workwear manufacturer to a nationally known brand. through a series of stock purchases, he assumed control of the company sometime around the end of 1907 and beginning of 1908.

these joplin “overall girl” trade cards were produced in 1908 and were used to market “scott’s special” overalls. if they look reminiscent of the sweet-orr “overall girl” trade cards there’s a reason: scott was sweet-orr’s advertising manager in the early 1900s, maybe until 1905. he then worked for larned-carter’s headlight overalls for a few years before moving on to the joplin overall company.

around the end of his tenure with sweet, orr & co., scott organized an employers’ association called the “union label advertising league.” the league's intent was to promote the various labels attached to different types of union made products, including working garments. these promotions were often exhibitions or street parades where the labels themselves were the featured visuals, and appear to have been as flamboyant as scott’s promotions for sweet-orr.

an interesting criticism of scott’s use of the union label as advertising was presented in 1905 at the first convention of the industrial workers of the world. william ernst trautmann, one of the founding members of the i.w.w., delivered an address during the morning session of the convention’s third day entitled “indictment against the american federation of labor.” scott’s name was mentioned by trautmann, whose basic complaint was that scott was essentially using the union label as a manufacturers’ label. given scott’s advertising tactics, i completely agree. but at the end of the day, isn’t any label sewn into a garment an advertising “agency” for the manufacturer? the union label simply wouldn’t have been sewn into the garment unless a manufacturer perceived it to be beneficial to sales. the real focus of trautmann’s address, however, had more to do with his deep-seated belief that the american federation of labor, as well as many other labor unions, were collaborating with the companies their members worked for, thereby undermining the interests of the workers they represented. one-hundred and six years later, i wonder how much has changed in terms of the power dynamic between worker and employer.

when i look at a union label in a vintage garment, or any garment for that matter, i always wonder what was going on in the factory the moment that article was stitched up. the union label represents the ideal, not the real. there’s absolutely no way to know if all the fantastic ideals that we believe as a culture to mean “union made” were actually being upheld, and not just by the companies, but also by the unions themselves. Today's typical response to the union label seems to be a reflex, one that seems to be increasingly jingoistic.

striped overalls and steam tractor

2011-04-01T22:17:00.000-04:00

w.b. rickenbrode basket factory

2011-03-23T10:57:00.013-04:00

i love real photo postcards and this is one of my favorites for personal reasons. although it is not a great photograph, it does show the basket factory of william b. rickenbrode, my great-great grandfather, around the 1920s or a bit earlier. his factory provided baskets for his fruit farm and others in the ripley, new york area. i have not been able to find out much about this business or his fruit farm for that matter, and pretty much anyone who would have information pertinent to its history has passed on. i truly wish this photograph was just a bit sharper.

j.a. christensen, maker

2011-03-15T14:46:00.011-04:00

dear friends,

i am pleased to announce the start of a new blog in which i will share with you things i have made as well as things that i am currently making. some of my productions will be for sale, as is the case for my first post, a small run of neckties made in the manner of an obscure mid-west tailor. if time permits, please follow my link for details.

your old pal,

jim (j.a.christensen, maker)

photo: gustavo escobedo

brokaws' shirts trade cards

2011-03-07T09:42:00.013-05:00

these trade cards are from the early 1870's, when william b. brokaw set up a few machines to sew shirts in a space above a bookstore called smith's at 77 water street in newburgh, new york. his shirt making business grew quite rapidly over the next ten or so years and in 1880 he changed his concern's name, establishing the brokaw shirt manufacturing company. the 1869 establishment date on these cards and the 1880 name change leads me to believe that these are possibly the first cards brokaw produced to advertise his shirts.

the phrase "reliable goods" in the third line of each card reads like bit of foreshadowing to me. brokaw would later trademark the word "reliable" for a line of shirts having a unique front placket. he was granted a patent in april of 1887 for this placket and it was applied to a number of different types of shirts. an advertisement from the period lists the following specific shirts: blue flannel, working, yachting, boating, hunting, tourists, steamer, bicycle, tennis, cricket, mining, railroad, firemen's, club, night, and pajamas. sixteen different types of shirts manufactured by the tens of thousands and still you would be hard pressed to find on today (maybe i just don't look in the right places.)

the oshkosh b'gosh railroad uniform

2011-02-20T06:25:00.024-05:00

oshkosh b'gosh overalls are iconic in the history of apron front overalls. i believe their success in the early 1900's was the result of a savvy mixture of garment design, advertising, distribution, and of course, quality. this advertisement is from the back cover of the july 1927 brotherhood of locomotive firemen and enginemen's magazine (volume 83, number 1). while the advertisement's design is not the company's best, i find the copy and the products it pictures interesting.

the company was founded in 1895 as the grove manufacturing company, makers of the j. & c. overall, changing its name in 1897 to oshkosh clothing manufacturing. 1911 saw yet another name change, the concern now being called the oshkosh overall company, and was also the year william l. pollock allegedly branded the company's overalls "oshkosh b'gosh" after hearing the phrase at a vaudeville show in new york city. this is an extremely truncated version of oshkosh's early history, but you don't have to search long for a more thorough explanation of its past and present.

the garments manufactured during the early days of oshkosh typically exhibit idiosyncratic designs and show a subtle kind of pragmatism that looks modern when compared to its competitors garments. we're all familiar with their original "vestbak" overalls, but the "vestkote" pictured in this ad's detail is an oshkosh jacket which i have never seen in person. its name is odd as a coat is meant to be worn over a jacket and this product is definitely a collarless jacket. it also has an unusual asymmetrical three pocket arrangement and a straight bottom hem, as opposed to a vest hem which would make more sense on a jacket called the "vestkote." other manufacturers followed suit and produced their own versions of this jacket and some did hem the bottom with the style line of a vest, but to my knowledge oshkosh was the first to manufacture a collarless working jacket in denim.

also worth considering is the language of the advertisement. what exactly does oshkosh mean by "regulation length?" the phrase is not defined in the ad and leads me to believe that the idea of "regulation" was in the air when this ad was published. that would make sense in post world war one america, when civil society was being militarized, more or less. civilian garment production was affected by military standards, and ready-to-wear pattern-makers from this period of time benefited greatly from the united states military's statistics of average proportions for men.

"railroad uniform" is used to describe the entire ensemble. a handful of ads that predate the one posted here refer to a pairing of coat and overalls as either a working or railroad suit, but the term "railroad uniform" was more commonly used to describe a suit worn by a railroad official, like a conductor or station agent. perhaps the language of the ad was meant to raise the status of the railroad trainman in his own mind.

these are just hypotheses about the advertisement's language. undoubtedly the truth lies somewhere between them and other ideas i've yet to discover. that's the great thing about concerning oneself with the details of a particular form over an extended period of time, the more you learn the more questions you have.

engineer buster

2011-02-10T20:40:00.006-05:00

this picture of my uncle buster (of whom i wrote in a previous post) is from sometime in the early 1940s. i've stared at this picture for so long and i still can't figure out what's going on with his coat and hat, but they look like they were crudely altered to fit him properly. his eyes in particular are very similar to my son olen's eyes, however olen has one eye that looks like his mama's and one like his papa's. you can barely make it out, but he's standing in front of a locomotive and i wouldn't be surprised if it was a new york central engine as this picture was most likely taken around ripley, new york.

child's self-help overall

2011-01-22T21:57:00.021-05:00

based on the number of leaflets it published, the united states department of agriculture was very concerned with the lives of rural americans. several concerned the garments of country folk and were authored by clarice louisba scott (1899 - 1989). unfortunately, i have been unable to find much information about her, so i'm not sure how involved she was with the pattern drafting of the garments presented in her publications.

the scott-authored leaflets span about a twenty year period from 1937 to 1957, one leaflet about judging the quality of mens' suits being revised in 1963, and are interesting to study with regards to how the united states government was advising its rural population to deal with difficult times. there was the recession of 1937 before world war two, and then there were the post-war problems that arose from pushing women out of the jobs held by men before the war. more often than not, this meant a return to home making.

the leaflet pictured here titled "child's self-help overall" was published in 1948, the very early days of the post-war baby boom. there is nothing implicitly propagandistic in its copy with regards to the roles which women were being expected to return, but i honestly can't see a man from this period of time giving a rat's ass about its pointers. other media from the time, the hoover aero-dyne advertisement for example, was not so subtle, and i can't help but to see this leaflet in that context.

i would imagine that there would have been a series of patterns produced in conjunction with this leaflet to be sold at local fabric or department stores, maybe andrea over at unsung sewing patterns has an example in her extensive pattern library. her recent post made me think of the u.s.d.a.'s leaflet series and inspired this post.

the redwoods, calif.

2011-01-20T17:36:00.002-05:00

some days i miss california so much, more often than i would like. i guess today is one of those days.

the world works in crown overalls

2010-12-20T13:52:00.024-05:00

i have always wondered if the man standing beside the car in this real photo postcard is actually oscar berman, but short of finding another copy that documents the gentleman's name on the back there is really no way to tell. the image is not sharp enough when enlarged and even then it would be more of an educated guess than an accurate identification. as far as the date of the image goes, it was definitely taken in the early 1920s, based on the man's attire, style of the automobile, and slogan "the world works in crown overalls," copyright 1920.

oscar berman entered the overalls business in a partnership established with samuel levy in 1903. The firm was named berman & levy, but they called the concern the crown overall company. after about ten years the partnership was dissolved, eventually coming to a lawsuit filed by berman against levy for starting a new overalls company, an act that was not allowed by the terms of their partnership's dissolution.

berman continued on with the crown overall company and crown was a successful label for many years. sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s crown acquired headlight overall manufacturing company. crown/headlight was ultimately bought by carhartt in the 1960s. eventually i'll get around to clarifying these dates with someone at carhartt.

one of the more interesting projects oscar berman was involved with was the 1925 commissioning of "prison labor for private profit: survey and report on the prison labor situation.", authored by kate richards o'hare, a controversial figure of the american left to say the least. the report's committee was sort of a who's who in american work wear manufacturing for the time and also included t.a.rickert and b.a.larger of the united garment workers of america, r.j.noren of the union-made garment manufacturer's association, a.e.larned of larned carter & co. (headlight overalls), and s.a.sweet of sweet, orr & co. the report offers an invaluable introduction to the conditions in which many manufacturers were having their garments produced in the early 1900's, most notably milton f. goodman of the reliance manufacturing company. the report is a quick read, so please follow my link and do so.

when i first stumbled upon ohare's prison labor report a few years ago i was immediately struck by the composition of its committee. the quality of the garments and designs that crown, headlight, and sweet-orr produced had always caught my attention, but to find a document in which they support a call for ethics in manufacturing was sweet confirmation for my belief that they were among the truly great companies of their time.

the three companies' histories are not without error for sure, that would be virtually impossible. however, i feel that as we look to the past and envision our future, their stories help to inform the actions we take in the present, especially for those of us who are concerned with the reinvention of manufacturing in north america.

boy in overalls

2010-12-17T23:00:00.003-05:00

first snow

2010-11-28T12:25:00.016-05:00

the first snow around the great lakes reminded me of these two photographs. my grandfather took these pictures of his sons with a kodak brownie camera most likely in the winter of 1948 on the streets of ripley, new york. the top image shows my uncle buster pulling my dad (left) and my uncle george (right) on a sled, while the bottom shows buster zipping down a street on a sled that i am pretty sure my dad still has.

wintertime always reminds me of my uncle buster. most of the season i wear a white rayon scarf that was his, my grandma called it an "opera scarf" when she saw me wearing it in the early 1990's. she told me that uncle buster was a sharp dresser and my style reminded her of him. i haven't found any pictures of buster as a teenager, but i think he looks pretty stylish for an eight year old, which was about how old he was in these photographs.

i never met my uncle buster. he died july of 1955 in lake erie, off moose beach around westfield, new york, at the age of fifteen. he was there with his girlfriend and her family, and they said one minute he was floating in an inner tube on the lake and the next minute they looked up he was gone. lake erie has some pretty wicked currents, and it was a while before they found his body. the cause of death was drowning, but my dad feels that it was a hemorrhage of some sort as uncle buster was a good swimmer, and there was blood around his eyes, nose, and ears.

talking to my dad about buster's death can be emotionally leveling. when i was recently asking about the uncle i never met i really understood how huge the loss was for him. "it was a dark summer," he said. "no matter how much the sun shined, it just wasn't that bright."

when i look at these two photographs i usually don't think about buster's death, i am just happy to have found them several years ago in a box of old family photographs. while rifling through the cache of pictures, i immediately paused when i saw the one of buster sledding down the street. in that picture, he and i look alarmingly alike. i flipped it over to find out who the boy was and the back was blank, as were all of the pictures in the box. that discovery triggered a whole day of mining my dad's memory so that the pictures in the box wouldn't one day become "instant ancestors" for someone else. i imagine the same scenario will happen one day when olen, my son, fires up my old mac and finds the thousands of images that i have never properly named.

the bee overall for girls

2010-11-22T07:57:00.011-05:00

this trade card may have been advertising girls overalls produced by bittner, hunsicker & company, who manufactured "bee hive" overalls, but i can't say for sure. it seems logical, as they manufactured a number of products for working class people, but i have yet to find a reference to "bee overalls for girls" anywhere but on this trade card, and unfortunately there is no information printed on the back.

my response to old advertisements for children's overalls is not what you would think. sure, they are sweet images, but if placed in the context of the time in which they were produced they also have a sad quality. the late 1800's to early 1900's was a terrible time to be born to working class parents. such children were often compelled to work hard labor of some sort. today many of us are so far removed from the realities of child labor that we have an extremely difficult time imagining what this must have meant and means for families.

when presented with a card such as this most people respond with a gush, and think 'that girl looks so cute in her overalls!' which in fact she does. but it is important to remember the unfortunate experience millions of children endured at the turn of the 19th century, and that the same experience still exists today for just as many in developing countries.

...just a little something to remember the next time we head out to a "specialty apparel retailer" to buy a new jumper for the baby.

a good look for spring...

2010-11-10T22:02:00.007-05:00

a few weeks ago i posted a picture of a worker in overalls, proposing it as a good look for this fall. it was response to this years end of fashion week in new york city, but a while later i realized that all the looks the fashion houses were pimping this fall were for the spring of 2011! funny that nobody called me on that error seeing as i'm such a freak about details.

so here's my look for spring 2011 which is classic 1920's. i don't know who made the sport shirt this guy is wearing, but it is very similar to the one for which harry simons drafted a pattern in his 1918 manual "drafting shirts and undergarments." his overalls have what look to be surcingle style suspender loops but it is really hard to tell for sure. his shoes, however, have got to be keds conquest high tops. the conquest model had a crepe soles and were more popular for daily wear than the comet model. i scanned this to a pretty high resolution so you can see for yourself.

a good look for spring, don't you think?

sweet, orr & co.'s newburgh manufactory circa 1891

2010-10-25T20:29:00.012-04:00

these seven images are from "newburgh: her institutions, industries and leading citizens" compiled by john j. nutt and published by ritchie & hull in 1891. sweet, orr & company constructed their newburgh factory in 1880, when their production was behind by well over ten thousand garments. they moved their headquarters to the new plant and continued production in wappingers falls, where the company was founded. the buildings shown in the first picture were considered to be state of the art garment manufacturing facilities at the time they were built. they aided greatly in meeting the market demands for sweet-orr garments, a market which extended well beyond north america into south america, europe, and south africa.

the engine room provided steam power to the plant's sewing and cutting machines by way of a system of belts and pulleys. the garment cutting machines are particularly interesting to me and i can't quite get my head around how they received the power that drove them. in the main workroom, lighting was provided by "peculiar semi-glass roofs" of a style that would become commonplace in 20th century warehouse construction. electric and gas were also used to light the factory's rooms.

operating rooms no. 1 and 2 show where the sewing operations were performed. to me it looks like the majority of the machines in the sewing rooms were singer's model 13, but i'm no expert so i'll try to get that verified. the buttonhole department was still making buttonholes by hand at this point which is unbelievable to me, while the buttons themselves were being attached by machinery. i find this period of garment manufacturing especially interesting as the sewing machine operator would have needed a high degree of skill in order to perform their job (or rather her job) successfully.

sweet, orr & company is my favorite manufacturer from the early years of ready-to-wear garments for working class people and it is unfortunate that they no longer exist to promote and defend their legacy. the way in which the company cooperated with the workers that produced their garments was progressive and exemplary. they allowed for their factories to become unionized without hesitation and initiated concepts we take for granted today, such as arbitration in order to avert a labor strike and the placement of the union label on a garment, insuring that it was made under fair and safe conditions. the company's early advertising is intriguing as well, in particular their "tug-o-war" campaign and logo, which i believe predates all other manufacturers use of the same "two things can't pull our overalls apart!" concept.

the way a company positively contributed to the culture of its workers' lives is way more important than pedestrian claims concerning rivets and pocket stitching and fabric and such. the fetish culture surrounding early working class garments needs to snap out of their nostalgic delusions and pay attention to what's really important in a company's history - how its workers were (or were not) organized, compensated, and respected during the manufacturing process. companies such as sweet-orr, keystone, crown, headlight, carhartt, and finck's all made a conscious effort to benefit the lives of their employees and their markets and their legacy extends well beyond the garments and ephemera being fetishized today.

a good look for fall...

2010-09-28T21:53:00.007-04:00

last week i overheard someone say "new york fashion week is over!" and understood something totally different than what the person was exclaiming. i thought to myself, "hmm, that would be nice..." (apologies to my friends in the industry), and then quickly realized that i wouldn't have anything to work against if it weren't for the world of fashion. there's an intermittent line that connects fashion to style and lately i'm wondering how long the fashion world will be enamored with men's work clothing from the early twentieth century, maybe another year or two?

here's my ex post facto contribution to this fall's panoply of "looks". i wish that this image was sharper so that you could more clearly see the bowler hat, polka dot shirt, tie (is that knot a half windsor?), vest, simple overalls, and work boots this worker is wearing. i like that his overalls have a button hole for a watch fob but no safety pocket for the watch, making me think that he had a job where he didn't have to bend over a lot, perhaps a machinist. another thing that makes me think that he may have been a machinist is that polka dot shirts like his were advertised heavily in trade journals of his time, such as the machinist monthly journal.

a good look for fall, don't you think?

the virtues of sweet-orr ladies' overalls

2010-09-15T20:53:00.006-04:00

here's a few more postcards of sweet-orr's patented ladies' overalls, a nice addition to my previous post. their style barely registered in the flow of overall patterns and one just needs to see how unflattering they are to understand why. needless to say, i still find them intriguing.

i'm in the middle of a number of things right now and finding the time to make a thorough post is difficult. i'll try to keep up, but things may get a bit thin around here over the next few weeks.

rich man poor man

2010-08-19T19:35:00.005-04:00

i think this picture is from the 1870's, but that's just a hunch. it is impossible to know why the seated man is dressed so well and the standing man is in rags, but i love the class contrast. this is probably the oldest photo i have of a person wearing apron front overalls. i hope to one day find the oldest in the world...

john f. eagan & co.

2010-07-15T05:48:00.016-04:00

the writing on this letter reads:

john f, eagan & co.

manufacturers of the

empire pantaloon overall

sack coat and mechanic's jacket

wappingers falls, n.y., aug 14, 1884

a.w. humphreys pres't.(president of the sterling mountain railway company)

dear sir

your favors of 16 and a few days ago were rec'd. our mr. deville, being about to take a trip through n.j. the next day after receiving your first letter, we handed the letter to him to answer in person. he has evidently forgotten about it, and we enclose our price list and quote you best discts (discounts) 20% 30 days or 2 off 10 days. hoping we may be favored with your orders and asking pardon for our seeming neglect in answering your first letter we remain

yours truly

john f. eagan & co.

john f. eagan founded his company in wappingers falls, new york sometime in the early 1880s, but the earliest reference to "empire pantaloon overalls" that i have found is from a newspaper dated 1883. eagan's partners were mrs. luke hunt and mrs. john eagan (that is how their names were recorded), and at the time of the company's failure in late 1889 they had about 100 employees. officially, the business failed because it had an over-supply of cold weather garments and no market in which to sell them.

although it looks like the company's failure had to do with poor salesmanship, bad luck played a role as well. apparently there was an arsonist on the loose in wappingers falls in the 1880's. he had it in for eagan and lit up his factory up a handful of times. there was also the goliath of sweet, orr & co., whose original factory was founded in wappingers falls in 1871. i guess eagan was either full of moxie or naivete to think that he could compete with that giant.

it took a couple of years to sort out the financial end of the company's failure, and in 1892 eagan and his family moved down the hudson river to manage the overall shop at sing sing correctional facility. it looks like the "empire" brand continued in some way, but i'm having a difficult time verifying wether the brand continued after eagan or if an entirely different concern used "empire" to brand their products. i found one reference to a company in auburn, new york that used "empire" to label their overalls, but that was from the early 1900's, so i am thinking that it was a different company all together.

i would like to thank andrea from unsung sewing patterns for helping me decipher the script and archaic abbreviations in this letter.

straw hat and striped overalls, part two

2010-07-07T19:10:00.004-04:00

i was going through my stack of real photo postcards of people wearing overalls and thought this guy looks a little bit like olen might in a few years, if he agrees to wear overalls, that is. it is difficult to raise a child, work full time, and keep up the content of my posts, but i promise that soon enough i will have some good copy for my seven loyal followers. change is in the wind...

sweet, orr & company's overalls for women

2010-06-26T20:46:00.014-04:00

charles w. bartrum, sweet, orr & company's newburgh factory superintendent, was granted the patent for the design of the overalls pictured here on december 12, 1916. i regard them as the first overalls drafted specifically for women. they were meant for use by the increasing number of women that were employed in the united states factories supplying the allies during world war one, and then our own military at the end of the war. we didn't formally enter the war until the middle of 1917, when our policy of isolationism was broken by german actions against our national security.

i am curious about the design of these overalls with regards to who actually drafted their pattern. in 1917 daniel edward ryan was making claims in the clothing trade journal that he made "the pioneer attempt of designing women's overalls for sweet-orr co., inc.". his oddly worded claim is in the middle of a self-promotional advertisement for an improved draft of women's overalls he was selling to the trade and it makes me wonder if he felt stiffed by sweet-orr on the rights to the patent.

this design of women's overalls is an interesting first attempt, but they were not practical in the context of a factory for obvious reasons. for example, the baggy legs that were meant to approximate a skirt would be a liability even in today's factories (not that there are many left here in the united states...). it seems like overalls for women weren't reconsidered until world war two. check out the post at unsung sewing patterns about how that war affected their design and affected what women would feel comfortable wearing in the future.

chas. fitzsimmons & co.

2010-06-19T21:20:00.005-04:00

i know that it is a bit of a stretch for me to expect anyone to be as excited as i am for this trade card, but please indulge me. a while ago i posted images from a fink's time book and in that post i mentioned that william muir finck got his start in the manufacture of overalls working in his uncle's shop, that uncle being charles fitzsimmons. this card is copyrighted 1882, three years before finck & fitzsimmons found it necessary to relocate to detroit, michigan. it has been difficult for me to find out anything about fitzsimmons, so finding a card with the business' address was pretty exciting. the art on the card is typical of a lot of victorian trade cards, but the information trumps the aesthetics for me on this one.

anvil brand overalls

2010-05-26T13:48:00.011-04:00

i don't know a single thing about the anvil brand except that some form of anvil still exists and they do not make overalls anymore. for some reason denim collectors go nuts for them, especially when they are deadstock children's overalls. i bought these years ago, long before my model olen was even a gleam in my eye. the great thing about these is that they are made exactly like adult models with every detail being scaled down to fit the infant pattern, except for the buttons, button holes, strap buckles, and label. unfortunately, they are not very practical as they have no snaps on the legs' inseams, and redressing olen in these overalls four to eight times a day after a diaper change would be a total pain in the ass. they do, however, make for great pictures.

army denim

2010-05-02T21:43:00.003-04:00

i found this image in a galvanized tub of old photographs at my favorite local vintage shop. this picture stood out to me as i usually see servicemen in their uniforms when they have their portrait taken, not their work denim. i've seen snapshots of army men working in their denim jumpers & pants but never a studio portrait.

military garments don't really appeal to me as i detest guns and i don't cotton to the idea of taking orders. that's all i think about when i see field or dress uniforms. that being said, i can't deny the impact that the military has had on men's clothing. my favorite pattern maker, harry simons, used the measurements of enlisted men to create average dimensions from which production patterns could be drafted. this set of standards in conjunction with the production pattern drafting techniques he learned from daniel edward ryan revolutionized the way mens garments were drafted and sewn.

as an aside, a few weeks ago i met kevin charles newcomb while he was fishing through that galvanized tub i mentioned. he has a nice blog of found photos called shark dust, check it out if you have the time.

happy may day, comrades!

2010-05-01T19:35:00.002-04:00

chestnut park fruit farm in ripley, new york

2010-04-09T05:35:00.022-04:00

chestnut park fruit farm was in ripley, new york, and was owned by william b. rickenbrode ( b. late 1800's - d. early 1900's), my grandmother's grandfather, which would make him my great-great grandfather. the album that this image came from has seven panoramic photographs of william's farm, but this is the picture that i like the best. the photographs range in size from 3 1/4" x 11" - 5 1/4" x 14"" and were taken by fred l. yagear (1872 - ?),photo artist, from panama rocks, new york. yagear is more known for his real photo postcards. my photographer friends tell me that they are most likely contact prints from glass negatives. the album is falling apart as it is made from non-archival material and many of the prints are suffering because of this, so i've taken the album apart and i'm framing the leaves in an effort to preserve it's contents.

my dad gave me this album last summer and it's existence was a total surprise to me. at first i was stunned by the quality of the panoramas, about half of which show rolling lakeside hills plants with vineyards and orchards that look more like europe than the united states. the photo i've posted immediately appealed to me, but it wasn't until a few months later that i noticed a very small detail that has made it my favorite.

the overalls worn by the gentleman in the detail have peculiar suspender loops which were patented by charles w. bartrum (patent no. 814,509 granted march 6, 1906). bartrum was sweet, orr and company's newburgh factory's superintendent. spotting this tiny detail pleases me as over time i've grown to truly respect sweet-orr's history. i've never actually seen a pair of sweet-orr overalls with this particular suspender loop but i have seen them on a pair of cortland overalls. cortland overall company was located in the middle of the state of new york, just north east of ithaca, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if that was the company who manufactured his overalls. i also like that he is wearing his cardigan under his overalls, just like my grampa used to.

william also had a basket factory and the record of that factory helps me a little to date the period of time this image was captured. the forest service and the new york state college of forestry published books that documented the wood using industries of the state. william's basket factory was listed annually from 1913 - 1921. my sentiment is that this picture was taken during this period of time, when the farm and basket factory seem to have been at the height of their success.

this image was difficult to scan, and i would like to thank anthony acardi at green rhino for digitizing this image for me.

straw hat and striped overalls

2010-04-02T03:20:00.003-04:00

i wish that i could tell you the girl in this picture is one of my relatives but she's not. this picture is from the 1920's, i believe, and is part of my small collection of real photo postcards of children wearing overalls. collecting images like this always makes me a little sad as the name of the child is rarely indicated or any sort of information, for that matter, that might help us understand who this little person was and who they became. when i post pictures like this i always hope that some random person will stumble across my blog and say 'hey, that's so-and-so'. an unlikely scenario, i know, but a guy can have hopes, right?

worthy clothes for workingmen

2010-03-08T20:22:00.012-05:00

as much as i am interested in the garments of the american working class from the late 1800's to early 1900's, i find that i am intrigued more by the manufacturer's ephemera than their products. if you are interested in the social and political aspects of a defunct manufacturer, the ads and time books contain the most information you'll find from the company itself. the willard k. bush company serves as great example of this circumstance.

bush, a michigan native, was a few months shy of 33 years old when he established the willard k. bush company in march of 1900. i'm not sure why he went into the business of manufacturing workwear as his early professional experience was in stenography. he was also politically active and served as deputy secretary of state and then secretary to the governor in the state of michigan in the late 1800's. if you overlay bush's biography with those of the people for whom he campaigned and served, you realize that he was a pro-business republican and that business was his business. manufacturing overalls was good business in the detroit of the 1910's, so i guess that answers the question of why bush started the company.

this advertisement for the "w.k.b." brand was printed in the first page of the brotherhood of locomotive engineers journal in july of 1903. i've always been enamored with this ad for the way it is rendered and i use it as a reference for my own illustrations. my interest in the "w.k.b." brand, however, stops at this ad. i've seen some "w.k.b." brand garments and they are well made, like many of the other union made garments coming from detroit at that time, but there is nothing there for me in this manufacturer's history beyond this ad that holds my attention or imagination. bush established the business, made some money, and that's it.

i wish i had a better story to tell for this company. the state of contemporary manufacturing predisposes me to root for the little guy, even when i'm prying information from the historical record. but even though the "w.k.b." brand doesn't have a story that appeals to my bias, this ad is still a really great drawing.

"profile" winter wear 1937

2010-02-12T06:40:00.008-05:00

we are pretty much snowed in here on the east coast so i thought i'd share this carter & churchill pamphlet from 1937. the copy in the pamphlet describes the products well, and i've written a brief history of the company in a previous post. i bought this bit of ephemera mostly for the illustrations which remind me a great deal of the graphic novelists of my generation.

having grown up on lake erie, i have no romantic relationship with snow. page four of this pamphlet pretty much sums up what snow meant to me as a boy: shoveling (mostly) and sledding. but you do tend to develop a sort of romance with the things hat keep you warm and the garments illustrated here play to that sentiment.

when i first saw this i immediately thought of the good folks over at archival clothing, so this post would be a tip of the hat to them.

waiting for a train

2010-02-08T21:36:00.010-05:00

last week chris bray from billykirk sent me a link to this great footage of jimmie rodgers (1897 - 1933), the "singing brakeman". chris & his wife tracy had their second child a couple days before my son olen was born and chris has been giving me great advice with regards to caring for a newborn. he explained that this particular song is getting a lot of play around his house lately.

i love jimmie rodgers and as far as i'm concerned, country music starts with him and the carter family. this footage was a surprise to me as i had no idea that any existed. i guess i assumed there were no films of him as he passed away young from tuberculosis. i like how he wears his jacket under his overalls for this show and that his hat has some sort of leather visor. i've tried to figure out the make of the overalls and engineer's jacket he's wearing with no success.

a rememberance of james orr on his birthday

2010-02-05T10:59:00.007-05:00

james orr was born on february 5, 1820, 190 years ago today, and lived until october 8, 1899. this image is from "newburgh; her institutions, industries and leading citizens", published in 1891 by ritchie & hull and compiled by john j. nutt. the book's contents include a short biography for orr, as well as ones for clayton e. sweet and clinton w. sweet, his nephews and business partners in the sweet, orr & company. orr's life story is interesting to me and the biography written for him in this book seems especially important as it was drafted in his lifetime. orr established the first factory devoted to the manufacture of workwear, establishing sweet, orr & co. in 1871 in wappingers falls, new york.

he has also been credited with developing the first "apron front overall", but these claims are suspect to me as they all seem to be from the period of time when his grand-nephews reginald l. and stanley a. sweet were running the company in the 1920's - 1930's. i have not found any claims of this nature in documents produced during his lifetime, but that really doesn't diminish the importance of james orr and the sweet, orr & company with regards to the history of the manufacture of workwear.

gandy dancers in ripley, new york

2010-02-02T15:27:00.003-05:00

i was in college when my dad gave me this photograph, that was about twenty years ago now. i had no idea then that this image would have any significance for me and i wonder how its meaning to me will change in another twenty years. it came with a bunch of others that were all taken by the "town photographer" of ripley, new york. many of those photographs documented terrible train wrecks.

i think these gandy dancers were maintaining the tracks of the new york central railroad as there was a station there in ripley, but it might also be the tracks that ran along lake erie for the lake shore & michigan central railroad, i really have no idea. maybe there is a railroader out there who could winkle some detail out of this image that would give us the answer to that question. it should go without saying that i'm particularly fond of the shirts, vests, and overalls these gentlemen are wearing. based on the style of those garments, i'd say this photograph was taken in the early 1900's.

"train up a child..."

2010-01-21T11:52:00.004-05:00

this advertisement is from a november of 1910 locomotive engineers journal. i will be looking forward to this matching overalls look with my son as he gets older, however that's probably going to train him up for rebellion...

olen modigliani christensen

2010-01-15T14:28:00.006-05:00

dear friends,

if you've been wondering about the shortage of posts on my blog lately there is a good reason. allow me to present to you my first child, olen modigliani christensen. he was born naturally january 10, 2010 to his amazingly strong and determined mother, leah modigliani, weighing in at 7 lbs 1 oz and measuring 19 1/2" long.

when i started this blog about 8 or 9 months ago, i knew leah and i would be having a child within the year and much of this blog has been written (and will be written) with olen in mind. it is important to me that he has an understanding of my world view, whatever his may ultimately be. i am also hopeful that this blog may help him piece together some sort of narrative for my side of the family as leah's side is reasonably well understood and documented. the modiglianis are incredible people and i'm privileged to have married into their family.

i can't begin to tell you how much i love this little man already, but please don't be concerned for the future of my blog, i promise to not turn it into a parade of "proud papa" posts. just grant me this one indulgence and i'll return shortly with a new post.

your old pal,

jim

p.s. he's swaddled in an old feedsack and is laying on a quilt leah made for me for christmas from my vintage denim scraps.

happy is the man who wears the dutchess overall

2009-12-19T17:03:00.011-05:00

hull & co. was founded by j. frank hull, sr. in 1879 in poughkeepsie, new york and initially produced aprons and ladies dresses. the manufacture of mens garments was not undertaken until 1884. it is unclear to me where their original factory was located, but in 1884 the plant's address was 17 crannell street, later changing to 15 - 23 crannell street.

in the 1880's j. frank hull, jr. started running the business . in addition to running the company his father founded, hull jr. briefly served as poughkeepsie’s mayor from 1897 – 1898. he died unexpectedly in 1907 at the age of 53, and by then the business's name had been changed to the dutchess manufacturing company, but their mens garments had long been branded as "dutchess".

there are numerous references to dutchess trousers and pants in literature and journals of the late 1800’s – early 1900’s as they were a very popular brand. They initially advertised their product with the slogan "from the sheep to the man one profit", which i'm interpreting to mean that they owned the sheep that supplied the wool that they wove for their trousers, but that is an idea i have not been able to verify.

they also had a warranty of sorts and for the first two months that you wore your ”dutchess trousers” they offered to pay 10¢ for every suspender button that came off, 50¢ if they ripped in the waistband, and $1 if they ripped in the seat or you would get a new pair of trousers free.

this bit of ephemera was sold to me as a trade card. there is nothing on the back however, so i am thinking that this was cut from a box or maybe it was part of an in-store display. the painter in the image is being assaulted by what looks like a papillon, boston terrier, some sort of spaniel, and a pitbull. the boston terrier would date this card to the mid-1890's at the earliest (maybe there is a dog expert out there who could help me out with the timeline of the dog breeds). the square-toed boots and a shawl collared jumper that the painter is wearing look pre-1910 to me, but that's intuition more than anything. for now the turn of the century will have to do for this card's date.

the putter shop, continued...

2009-12-08T06:12:00.007-05:00

here's three pictures showing the children's furniture my grampa and dad used to make at "the putter shop" in ripley, new york. i think these are all from the fifties and the first photograph includes my aunt glady and my dad (i'm pretty sure that's him).

i have an old box wooden box that was my grampa's and it is full of templates for the chairs, cradles, stools and hutches that are shown here, and my dad has some at his shop as well. i intend to reproduce some of these things in limited quantities, but not for awhile. i'll keep you posted.

w.m. finck's detroit special weekly time book

2009-10-24T15:49:00.015-04:00

william muir finck was born on june 25th, 1854 in lyons, new york, which is nearly equidistant to rochester and syracuse and north of the finger lakes. his introduction to the production of overalls and such was in 1878 through his uncle, charles fitzsimmons, a man who was considered a pioneer in the manufacturing of overalls. finck was originally hired to work as a clerk in fitzsimmons' clothing store in penn yan, new york. soon after, he was promoted to manage his uncle's overall factory that supplied the store.

under finck’s management the overalls factory flourished and soon outgrew its original location. that growth, in addition to a local labor shortage, prompted fitzsimmons to move the factory to champlain street in detroit, michigan in 1885. finck had lived in detroit between the ages of 16 and 24, working for the detroit & milwaukee railroad, so he must have been familiar with the city and its booming manufacturing community.

the move initiated finck's official partnership with his uncle and the business was renamed fitzsimmons & finck. the partnership lasted about 6 years, until 1891, when he left to direct manufacturing for hamilton carhartt & company. his association with carhartt lasted 11 years and in april of 1902 finck left to strike out truly on his own, forming w.m. finck & company.

this time book, i believe, is w.m. finck & company's first and has content that makes it my favorite. the first line of copy in the essay “finck’s facts” enthusiastically identifies with unionized labor, then continues on for a few pages to describe the perspective with which the company would operate. The page before last is an endorsement written by the president and secretary of local 47, united garment workers of america, and is dated april 5, 1902. the date and tenor of that endorsement are details that convince me this was finck’s first time book.

and then there's the illustrations on the jacket, which are excellent drawings in their own right. the front is drawn in such a way that you see the burden of hard labor in the faces of the workers leaving the factory. the detail in the overalls the gentleman on the back cover is wearing is stunning. a railroader, carpenter, housepainter, founder, mason, and blacksmith are all represented throughout the copy that introduces the company and its philosophy to the consumer.

the respect that w.m. finck had for the workers that toiled in his factories and others is clearly illustrated in this time book and the advertising that followed is just as compelling. finck's products were as "high grade" as the visual culture that was created to promote them. attention to detail throughout the manufacturing and retailing process is what differentiated finck from the throngs of other manufacturers of the time. he understood clearly, in my opinion, his place in history and knew how to innovate with respect.

i don't want to give the wrong impression here and be accused of nostalgia. finck's philosophy very well may have been a necessity for the business' success. detroit was a hotbed of unionization in the early 1900's, and the reality of the market to which finck was catering was that it was heavily organized. strikes were at an all time high nationwide and numbered 3,162 in 1902 followed by 3,494 in 1903. just over half of those strikes concerned wages, and about 2% were "sympathy strikes", an action that was ordered by a union in support of striking brothers in a different trade. However, the quality of this particular time book, with the endorsement of the garment workers union bound between its jacket, makes me feel that w.m. finck's support of labor was sincere.

the oster manf'g. company overall girl

2009-10-24T08:34:00.007-04:00

the oster manufacturing company was founded in 1893 in cleveland, ohio for the production of pipe threaders. oster's history as told by the company itself can be found on its own website. i like old tools, but i have to be honest with you, antique pipe threaders aren't my thing. i do, however, like advertising of women wearing overalls, preferably from before 1917, when overalls started to be designed and marketed towards women. this real photo postcard is definitely from before 1917, when a woman wearing overalls would be considered racy in some way.

the image was not fixed properly during processing which probably did not matter at the time, but now it is slowly turning a silvery gray. at least it will survive digitally in this condition as long as my blog lasts.

real photo postcards

2009-10-13T21:34:00.004-04:00

here's a few highlights from my collection of real photo postcards. the card of the boy is dated 1909 on the back, and i believe the other two are from roughly the same period of time. each one has some detail that i find interesting: the boys' overalls are matching and have a single front pocket; the four men are wearing bandannas that we would consider huge by today's standards; the seated gentleman is wearing a nice pair of balmoral style boots. i can't afford mike disfarmer's pictures, so i buy real photo postcards like these instead.

deep craft interview

2009-10-02T17:39:00.004-04:00

there's an interview with me at deep craft. check it out if your interested in reading about my life as a maker of things.

turner, beeton & company

2009-09-27T18:43:00.019-04:00

john herbert turner and henry coppinger beeton established turner, beeton and company in 1878. turner directed the business, which was located in victoria, b.c., on the west coast of canada. beeton was the sole agent for the business in london, england, purchasing wholesale merchandise to be resold at the company’s victoria store on wharf street. previously the business was called turner, beeton, and tunstall, but in 1878 tunstall was shot in the infamous lincoln county cattle wars. that story, my friends, is too long for my blog but definitely worth looking up. tunstall’s life would make a great movie, maybe it already is, but i wouldn’t know as i rarely watch movies.

of the two partners in the business turner is the most interesting. details about his life are easily found if you search his name but, in short, he was the mayor of victoria from 1876-81. in 1886 he was elected to the british columbia legislature, served as finance minister, premier, and then finance minister again.

turner had the “big horn” shirt and overall factory up and running sometime in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s at 506 bastion square. in 1939 hall & co. took over the label and continue on with it today, but they don’t produce anything like what the women are sewing in this real photo postcard.

i’m fond of this image for a few reasons, for one my wife grew up in victoria. the other reasons actually have to do with the image itself. i’m pretty sure that the woman in the detail is sewing buttons onto striped overalls. at first i thought she was sewing the button holes, but there are all those boxes sitting next to her that look like they are for buttons, and i think there would be more cones of thread feeding that machine if it was a buttonholer. maybe there is a singer expert out there that could verify this for me.

and then there is the sign in the background that is actually the label art for the garments. i didn’t realize that it was label art until after i scanned the image. in the past, designers worked large and then photographically reduced their deigns. it is a lot easier to draw a letter or number that is 4” tall as opposed to 1/8” tall and when the design is reduced it looks way cleaner.

lecture at sonoma state university 09/22/09

2009-09-16T01:53:00.006-04:00

if you live in northern california and would like to see a presentation of things that i like to make, i will be lecturing there next week. the talk is tuesday, september 22nd from 12:00 noon - 12:55 pm in room "art 102", sonoma state university, 1801 east cotati ave, rohnert park, ca 94928.

photo: todd hido

custom made early american furniture

2009-09-10T06:12:00.004-04:00

this is a great roadside snapshot of what you would see driving by my grampa's place "the putter shop". the sign is what i really like about this picture, and it tops a structure that was a sort of easily closed showcase in the chance of sudden rain. as the shop was maybe a mile from the shores of lake erie this would have been a regular occurrence. the putter shop was set back from route 20 at least 100 feet so grampa would have all his kids take the furniture to the roadside to let travelers know the shop was back there. most of what you see in the picture is sized for children.

portrait of ole edwin christensen III

2009-09-06T15:51:00.005-04:00

this is the only studio portrait i have ever seen of my grampa. my dad says this would have been for his eighth grade class picture which was his last year of formal education. he went to work in his mother's bakery in wesleyville, pa after graduating. i'm not sure when he started working as a carpenter in the erie, pa area. see my previous posts for more stories about my grampa.

headlight overall manufacturing company time book

2009-09-03T06:51:00.005-04:00

it is amazing to me that abner e. larned was 26 years old and david s. carter was 27 when they started larned, carter & company in 1897. their first production facility was located at twentyfourth and dalzelle streets in detroit, michigan and initially employed about eight people. by 1905 they had 300 union employes and by the 1920's they had branches in st. louis, mo, san francisco, ca, perth amboy, nj, port huron, mi, and toronto, canada.

carter retired from the company in 1921 and it was incorporated, becoming the headlight overall manufacturing company. sometime later (i don't have a date for this yet) they partnered with crown overall, hence the illustrations on pages three and four of the crown overall factory in cincinnati, ohio and the stonewall cotton mills in stonewall, mississippi. in the 1960's, carhartt acquired both crown and headlight.

there's an advertising claim on page three that helps to date this book to the 1930's, but the union pacific m-10000 streamline passenger train the railroader is standing over on the back cover makes the earliest date for this time book 1934, the latest date being 1942 when the train was scrapped for the war effort.

army library

2009-08-26T21:09:00.001-04:00

"murphy" naval tailor matchbook cover

2009-08-14T06:32:00.007-04:00

this little matchbook cover is a mystery to me. i've tried to find out something about this tailor but to no avail, so i am content to appreciate it for what it is. someday, i am sure, in some random context, i will find out a little bit about this tailor and the types of things he made and share it with you.

1920's signal time book and radio log

2009-08-03T22:40:00.008-04:00

signal shirt company was located at 1232 mound avenue in racine, wisconsin. incorporated in 1899, their president was william hilker, vice-president william f. hilker, treasurer and secretary john wiechers. the inside of the front cover advertises the now legendary signal railroad shirt made from stifel's white polka dot indigo fabric. signal was the first company to produce work shirts in the "coat style" that we are accustomed to these days, advertising them as early as 1909. by the 1920's, when this time book was printed, the coat style work shirt was more common, but there was still plenty of men that preferred the traditional pullover.

there is a couple of nice details in this time book, one being the last radio station listed in the center spread, WWJ, which was the country's first news radio station. the radio call letters in the center spread are actually how i was able to date this book to the mid-1920's.

the other is the store listed on the back which was located in the same city as the signal shirt company. c. d. skow (carl d. skow) was a danish immigrant who opened his dry goods store in 1889. he devoted a great deal of his time and money to the lutheran church. his success, however, was not limited to business - he and his wife raised nine children, all of whom appeared to have been active in the church and community.

carter & churchill trade card

2009-08-03T05:48:00.012-04:00

in 1877 w. s. (william) carter and f. c. (frank carroll) churchill created "carter & churchill". they manufactured overalls, woolen and cottonade (a cheap, thick cotton) pants, woolen and cotton shirts, and were also wholesale dealers in small wares and yankee notions - what are yankee notions anyway? they manufactured in lebanon, nh and had an office at 240 devonshire street in boston. both men seemed to have been indefatigable, especially churchill who was politically active and extremely well traveled for his time.

the reverse of this card (i am showing my bias here as there really isn't a front or back) advertises "eureka buck gloves" . the eureka glove manufacturing company was located at 10 main street, littleton, nh, and was founded in 1876 by nelson parker (president), charles parker (treasurer), henry merrill (secretary), oscar parker, william f. parker, and porter b. watson. about fifty people are said to have worked at the factory, cutting the glove and mitten parts from dies. they were then sewn together by upwards of five-hundred people outside the factory. this side of the card is interesting to me as it shows the outwork the business relied upon for its success, typical of early workwear manufacturing.

"putter shop" giant sign-chair

2009-07-24T10:07:00.005-04:00

recently i found this in a folder of old photographs i scanned a few years ago when i was visiting my father. i forget who he said the baby was or maybe he didn't know. this chair sat at the front of the property where the "putter shop" was located in ripley, new york. it sat there for years and i am sure was used in a number of photographs similar to this one as it was a minor local attraction. i have to verify this with my dad, but i think the chair was there from the 1950's to the late 1980's.

aunt glady with a "putter shop" rocker

2009-07-22T12:21:00.001-04:00

my aunt glady (my father's younger and only sister) with a rocker made at "the putter shop". see my previous posts for more on the putter shop. when i lived in california i met two different people who said their parents had bought them a rocker from my grampa's shop when they were travelling around lake erie. i know this may seem banal, but the detail i like the most about this photograph is the hang tag on the rocker.

toys for hobby

2009-07-08T06:19:00.000-04:00

my grampa ole and my father jim (james rickenbrode christensen) in "the putter shop" sometime in the 1950's. they did pretty well making childrens furniture and toys up until the mid 60's, i think. that was when interstate 90 took all the traffic from route 20 in the town of ripley, new york, where the putter shop was located. route 20 was ripley's main street and travelers would pass through. the road connected erie, pa with buffalo, new york. they'd see the over-sized chair (see my earlier post} advertising the shop and stop in to browse. i've met people from all over the country that knew about my grampa's shop. the article implies that my grampa and father are of swedish descent - my grampa was from norway.

i love what they are wearing. i wish i had that jacket of my dad's and the apron my grampa is wearing to put with my collection of old workwear. the erie times ran this short article and i'm wondering if they have this photograph buried in an archive...

1877 sweet, orr & co. letter to singer mfg.

2009-07-03T23:12:00.001-04:00

Oct. 12, 1877
Singer M'f'g. Co
New York

Dear Sirs,

Yours' of the 10th inst(this month)* is rec'd(received) & contents noted. In reply. The 'Sifter(s)' which we desired you to replace, were through mistake sent to your office at Newburgh. When mistake was discovered, we directed your Newburgh folks to forward them to you by express & at our expense & presume they have done so, they are a lot that was sent some time since by your president(?) to us without charge. they are not adapted to our machines & consequently could not be used. as stated before, we have sent a sample of what suits, & we would thank(?) you to use extra pains in making them as sample. we are in immediate want.

Yours Truly,

Sweet, Orr & Co.

i've typed what i think the script is saying in this letter. writing from the past is sometimes like reading some cousin to english; the letters are drawn in unfamiliar ways and the structure of the sentences sometimes feels odd. the "sifter" that s.o. & co. is asking for is also a mystery to me. if anyone has information to contribute that would help with the understanding of this letter, please do.

*inst. is an archaic abbreviation for "this month". my original copy was corrected by andrea from www.unsungsewingpatterns.net.

1899 engineers' memorandum book

2009-06-28T21:43:00.001-04:00

there's an old magazine called "carpenter" in which an ad claims that james orr originated the overall in 1849 in wappinger falls, new york. i'm not sure about that claim as the overall seems like the kind of garment that would not have been designed by any one particular person. sweet, orr & co. was established in 1871 and had a new york office at 345 broadway. at some point they established a factory in newburgh, new york that was in addition to their operation wappinger falls but i don't have an exact date for that building. i'll list more information as i put the sweet-orr story together.

this engineers memorandum book is from 1899, and it is the oldest "time book" in my collection. there are more pages with advertising than i'm showing here, mostly jingles extolling the virtues of sweet, orr & co.'s product line. in particular i like the tickets (we call them labels now) that you are being directed to look for, and the narrow pencil stall pocket on the overall's apron.

e-mail me if you would like to see images of the other pages in this book.

factory workers

2009-05-23T19:27:00.001-04:00

this photograph is unmarked, but judging from the hats, shirt collars, and the way the workers are wearing their overalls, i am guessing that it was taken sometime in the twenties or thirties. i don't know what kind of shop these guys worked at either, but i am thinking that it was a foundry of some sort. it's interesting to enlarge this scan to see what each man was wearing and there is a really nice bag on what looks like a scale on the left side of the picture.

ole rushing a chair

2009-05-09T06:21:00.000-04:00

here's a great picture of my grampa ole rushing a chair. that's my uncle skip (deceased) behind the chair with my dad as a toddler wandering off in the background. i'm not sure if the chair was one that he made or if it was just a repair. as i'm obsessed with old workwear, i wonder who made his pants and shirt, but i bet he ordered them from montgomery wards.

ideal clothing company

2009-05-05T12:24:00.001-04:00

the ideal clothing company was incorporated in 1892 in grand rapids, michigan. its president was nelson w. mills, vice-president was raymond l. mills, and secretary and treasurer was arthur h. mills. their products were pants, shirts, overalls, mackinaw, corduroy and duck clothing. i'm not entirely sure, but it looks like they never had more than 100 employees during the early 1900's. this card is apparently from 1911. i've seen and own other "overall girls" ephemera - some on postcards, others on pocket mirrors. i've never seen any garments by ideal in person, unfortunately.

cloth cutters

2009-04-18T07:01:00.000-04:00

three interesting images from the new york public library's digital gallery. the collection that holds these images is called the "pageant of america" photograph archive. the photographs show cloth cutting for shirts as done in the 1920's. they don't look too staged, but certainly the photographer chose a decent factory to document and i don't think that these three guys would have had the floor to themselves... (digitalgallery.nypl.org)

bob

2009-03-31T22:09:00.001-04:00

this is an old picture postcard of a man named "bob", or at least that is what is written in script on the back of the picture. i think that he's wearing "hercules stripe suit" overalls, which were manufactured by the ideal clothing company using fabric from otis mills, but it is really hard to tell and they could also be wabash stripe overalls. either way, the overalls, wing collared shirt, spectator boots and bowler hat make for about the the most bad-ass outfit i've ever seen, not withholding the double-barreled shotgun and pistol. i'm working on a pattern for the overalls and eventually the shirt so hopefully i'll be able to reproduce this outfit sometime soon.

the putter shop

2009-03-24T06:57:00.000-04:00

this is "the putter shop", my grampa's antiques and furniture-making shop. i think that my dad said that this picture was taken sometime in the fifties, and that he would get 5 cents a rung when he worked on making rockers in the shop. these rockers are all for children - my dad and grampa were well-known in the area between erie, pa and buffalo, ny for their kid's furniture.

ole christensen

2009-03-22T07:07:00.001-04:00

from left to right, that's ole christensen (grampa, and that's how i said it), dian (sister, deceased), tina (cousin), me, and wendy (sister and twin with dian). my grampa made this giant chair to advertise his antique shop in ripley, ny, which is on lake erie right next to north east, pa. his antique shop and the little woodshop he had behind it is where i like to think my interests in making things started. i'll post more about ole and his antique shop in the future.

workwear store

2009-03-22T05:42:00.000-04:00

this has to be one of my all-time favorite photographs. in the upper right hand corner there is a poster advertising "boss of the road" overalls. i'm no expert at dating things, but this picture was definitely taken before the label was bought by eleosser-henneymann from the neustadter brothers, so that would be the early 1900's at the latest. a good friend of mine is a descendant of the neustadters and his family has a painting in their collection that has a very similar aesthetic. i have a high resolution scan of this that i could stare at for hours...