The Two Machines in the Advertisement

In an 1873 newspaper advertisement, two machines are listed for heavy work:

Singer No.2 and Grover & Baker No.1.

Now both of those machines are in my studio.

This is the kind of fact that is harder to explain than it first sounds.

It is not simply that I own old machines.

It is that machines named in a historical document are now physically present in front of me, more than 150 years later.

And for me, the important part is not ownership itself.

What matters more is that these two machines are connected to my present work and thinking.

When researching the early structure of jeans, most things remain as text or photographs.

But when the tools themselves still exist, and still function, the situation changes.

The understanding of structure begins to gain a physical presence.

Singer No.2 and Grover & Baker No.1 are not just antiques to me.

They are also tools for thinking more concretely about a time before jeans were fully absorbed into factory division of labor, when heavy work was sewn within the limits of a small number of machines.

There is still a large difference between reading a document and standing in front of the actual machine.

The names that appear in the advertisement now exist in my studio as black iron.

Lately, I have been feeling the weight of that fact again.