Old Sewing Machine Guy Comes of Age
ISMACS News
Issue 93
by Maggie Snell
Cyril Chapman in elegant frock coat and top hat flanked, from left to right, by Michael Speaking, Elisha Hughes, Saturday sales girl Stacey Clement and Cyril’s daughter, Carol Richardson-Hill
If you ask Cyril Chapman what he’d be doing if he didn’t work in the sewing machine shop started by his father in 1937, he’d say playing golf or chasing blondes.
He’s 82 now - that’s 71 years in the business if you count the Saturdays he worked before starting, full-time, age 14, minus a brief spell fighting as a paratrooper for King and Country during WWII.
Cyril claims to run the oldest sewing machine service in the country and certainly the oldest, continuously owned shop, in Camden Town, North London.
In June this year he and his staff celebrated by dressing up in Victorian costume over a three-day period.
Their customer base ranges from Holloway prison to Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals as well as the Versace and Chanel fashion houses, the massive Hamley toy store in Regent Street, London’s equivalent of New York’s F A O Schwarz, and the Madame Tussauds waxwork museum, which also operates the London Eye.
And he even once delivered a machine to Buckingham Palace, but wasn’t invited in for tea on the lawn with the queen.
Stephen Bogod, who’s family-run firm distributes Bernina machines throughout the UK, also came to the party
Cyril believes strongly in encouraging younger people to take up sewing and has servicing contracts with many London schools. But he also teaches what he preaches.
He trained his service engineer, Leon Petane, as a teenager back in the 1950s. Leon’s huge workshop behind the quite-small shop/display area is packed with machines and vacuum cleaners waiting for him to work his magic and get them back into action.
20-year-old Elisha Hughes is much more than a sales assistant. She is a fully trained demonstrator, who can also service and repair machines, and has attended Bernina’s training school in Switzerland.
Chapman’s is an accredited Bernina main agent and two executives from the Swiss Company’s UK sole distributor, B o g o d M a c h i n e C o m p a n y, came along to support the celebrations.
Stephen Bogod is one of three brothers who took over the reins after their father Michael, who founded the company, retired and Jane Thorne, who is responsible for in-shop training, demonstrating and dealer support.
Despite the current economic climate, Cyril is quite chipper about the future of his longstanding business. He has found that more and more people are now buying sewing machines to mend and make clothes.
The original plan was for Michael Speaking to dress up as a Victorian policeman - but they decided that the many tourists visiting the area would pester him for directions to the underground and the famous Camden market, so they swapped his outfit for that of a New York cop. Be assured that the gun on show is a replica.