Spotlight: Original 1960s Featherweight Manual

Spotlight 10: Original Manual for the Featherweight!

Welcome back to Mukashi no Sewing and our tenth spotlight here on the blog! First off, thank you so much to all my loyal readers for your patience with my hiatus. My schedule has had absolutely no extra time in it this last month, and I hate to put out sub-par work so I had to set the blog and my sewing projects aside for a bit! But I’m back and with a new acquisition that was a complete surprise to me! ❤

I’ve sung the praises of The Featherweight Shop many times, but this deserves an extra helping of song. 😀 A couple of years ago when I first discovered the site, I searched their shopping section for an original copy of my Featherweight user’s manual. They didn’t have one in stock (not surprising, really), so I clicked on the “alert me when it becomes available” button, then bought a facsimile and completely forgot about it. Just as I was going to bed last week, my mail alert popped up, and…it was an automated message from The Featherweight Shop letting me know they had somehow acquired a 1960s 221K manual (printed in Britain, specifically), and that it was available for purchase if I so desired!

Heck yeah, I desired! 😀 I bought it straightaway, and it arrived two days later (as their shipping is very fast and they also are located just one state away from me). It’s in fantastic condition – only a couple of light creases and some foxing, but otherwise it looks like new.

Of course it’s super fun to have the original of anything, but why spend the money when I have a facsimile already? Well, for one, they’re actually different. The facsimile that The Featherweight Shop publishes is based on an older version from the 1940s.

For example, you can see above in the chart showing the appropriate needles and threads for different types of fabric that the chart in the facsimile (on the bottom) only features three columns of information and five rows. Whereas my original has five columns of information, and seven rows – including one for the new space age “plastic materials” that had come into common usage by the early 1960s. Because this chart is intended for my exact machine, it’s far more useful to me!

Second, there’s a ton that can be learned from original material objects that simply isn’t available in facsimile. Don’t get me wrong – having physical (or even better, digital) facsimiles of historical documents (and other objects) makes history so much more accessible to everyone, and I’m incredibly grateful for that! There are, however, things that can only be learned from the originals. Sarah Chrisman, one of my favorite material culture historians, shared a story on her blog once about an archivist who was selecting documents for further study based on the faint scent of vinegar remaining on them, which proved they were written from a time and place where an epidemic was raging (as vinegar was commonly used as a disinfectant during that period). A digital version doesn’t preserve the smell (at least, not yet!). 😀 So for me, having even something as simple as the original version of my Featherweight manual allows me to learn more about the time when it was built and used, and to improve my skill with it as well!

I am so delighted to have this little piece of history in my hands, and I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a peek at it with me! Thank you again for your patience, and I look forward to seeing you back here at Mukashi no Sewing next week for more history, crafts, and sewing! ❤