International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society

Fostering the collecting of, and research into, sewing machines.

Graham's True Stories
Number 3, The Idiot

It was 6 in the morning at an outdoor antiques show in up-state New York. It was raining hard and I was not at my best.

But there, on a table under 10 sheets of polythene directing the water down my leg, was a super-rare sewing machine, dating from the 1860s. It was near perfect, but for the fact that some designer-type had converted it to act as a table lamp, and, I suspected, was going to be very expensive indeed.

Now I always try to set up a little rapport with the vendor in these cases - helps to crunch the price down, I find. Hoping to appeal to her innate love for antiquity I fired up with: "Now, what idiot tried to convert this fine machine into an ugly table lamp?"

She sniffed, looked me up and down, sniffed again and said: "I did".


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