Everyone and his Brother
ISMACS News 26, 1990
This is only a small part of the Japanese film crew which took over Maggie's small London flat.
BROTHER WILL celebrate "Sewing-Machine Day' in Japan on March 4th by way of a TV film it sponsored to have made in Brit- ain during December.
Scenes were shot at the Jones + Brother head office in Audenshaw, Manchester, the Science Museum, Patent Office and at the London home of Maggie Snell. Although the giant electronics firm came to sewing-machine manufacture late in the overall scheme of things - in 1924 with a straw-hat-making machine - its take- over of Jones gave it an instant 100-year-plus history.
The modern head-office complex is built on the site where Jones starting making American models in 1859, before going on to design and manufacture his own models for the domestic and industrial marke tand becoming England's largest maker.
Today, Jones + Brother together probably hold the world record of 131 years marketing sewing machines from same site.
Maggie, as she will appear on Japanese television, with the Tokyo-based American presenter they flew to London specially for the programme
The historical roots of its industry must have got through to the PR and advertising team at Brother's home base in Japan, because it also intends, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of sewing-machine invention in 1790 when Thomas Saint filed the first sewing-machine patent although he probably never made a machine.
The TV company filmed the copy of the Saint machine that Newton Wilson made and donated to the Science Museum, together with the original patent applications. And they spent hours with Maggie, photographing and filming her collection and interviewing her for the programme about her sewing-machine-collecting hobby.
Brother's PR and Advertising managers with Shuji Suzuki (left) and Tsuneharu Utsumi admiring the 1903 Kimball and Morton Lion machine that was the star of the ISMACS Convention in May last year