My 30 year old Kenmore sewing machine recently needed repairs for the first time. This was sort of a drag but it ended up leading me to H. Matthie Repairs in the South Hills and to something of a kindred spirit.
Mr. Matthie repairs sewing machines, vacuum cleaners and nothing else. I hadn’t anticipated finding this interesting but it was. His shop was a microcosm of industrial design domes a domestic history. There were old black Singers, tank-like industrial machines, shiny new white plastic Berninas. On the opposite wall, the vacuums — red Kirby uprights, various 1950s styles with swooping chrome, 80s canister vacuums that looked like R2D2 from Star Wars.
Mr. Matthie politely declined when I asked for permission to take pictures of the shop, but as we talked he brought out a couple of particularly interesting things and said I could photograph those.
This is a 1928 Singer red eye (so named for the motifs with red centers). When this was new, it was the best machine you could get. The white mold can be wiped off with a cloth. Mr. Matthie will repair, clean and oil this machine and it’ll be good as new. These are still good machines, he said, if you don’t need all the fancy stitches.
The vacuum cleaner brand most represented in the shop was Kirby. New Kirby vacuum cleaners cost about $1,200, which shows why the old ones are still in use — they’re very good machines (also very heavy).
Vacuum cleaners differ widely in shape and reflect fashions in design more than sewing machines. This 1950s Electrolux vacuum is attractive enough to leave out. It doesn’t have wheels and instead slides across the carpet on runners, like a sled. This wouldn’t work so well if you didn’t have wall-to-wall, but it looks so cool.
The items waiting for pickup included fab machines like the Rainbow, which resembles a cute space capsule and collects the vacuumed-up stuff in a water tank rather than a filter or bag. Or the 50s Kirby, with gently curved aluminum body and vinyl bag with a yellow and black graphic print.
It’ll be a while before we have something else to take to Mr. Matthie. Our vacuum cleaner is new, plastic and works fine, but you never know. Among the shapes and styles of the past were plenty of new ones — he fixes those too.
UPDATE: My sewing machine was fixed, oiled, cleaned and returned with a piece of fabric to show that he tried each of the stitches to make sure it worked.