The Delights of Vintage Sewing Machines

I love old sewing machines.  They are wonderful feats of engineering, are incredibly sturdy and hard-wearing and they look great to boot!  I have three.  I'm trying hard to be reasonable and stop there because who needs more than three sewing machines?  (Actually I have 4 as I also have a modern, electronic machine).  

What got my love story started was when I found an old Frister & Rossmann for £15 in a charity shop several years ago.  Then I bought a beautiful 1937 Singer 27 hand-crank which was in perfect condition.  And lastly I thought I really needed a treadle machine and that's my 1913 Singer 15 with oscillating shuttle.  They are all great machines and I treasure them.  

However, this blogpost is about a new machine.  My youngest daughter decided she'd like a sewing machine of her own, one she can keep and take with her when she sets up her own home.  A few weeks ago, I saw one again in a local charity shop...  I went in and turned the crank but it was really stiff and barely moved, the machine was dirty and I couldn't quite tell how well it would run.  I returned to look at it again with my daughter and after a bit more examination, she decided to purchase it.

I had not heard of this make before:  Mundlos (a German company) which was sold in the UK under the name "Royal".

It was a bit dusty and dirty... but the metal appeared in good condition everywhere.

Interestingly, it says "Foreign" on the back.

Some of the parts, caked in old oil didn't move at all.  But after a good cleaning, dusting, wiping, oiling, and spinning, it turns out this was a good buy!  Everything works on it and it's now shining and running smoothly.  It's a nice compact machine and I know it will give my daughter many good years of service (no doubt her lifetime in fact if she looks after it!).  I'm pretty sure, from looking up its serial number, that it was manufactured in 1938.

It has an interesting pattern on the metal plates which can be found on that small front plate, on the face plate and on the back one:

At some point in its life, someone had glued (I think?) a small metal pin cushion on the lid of the side container box.  Update 05.11.21:  Thanks to Anke's comment and her pointing me to a website about these machines, I now know that the pin cushion was an integral part of this machine.  They were sold like that, with that small pincushion attached to the lid of the side container.  Neat!

It had saw dust in it but had become so hard over the years that it was practically impossible to push pins into it.  The old pink velvet was also in bad condition so I removed everything and made a freshly filled pincushion to put back into the metal casing, in green.  There is it, ready to be used.

All in all a very good machine.  It has a reverse gear and even an unusual little lever to lift the bobbin up from its carrier.  It can be seen next to the bobbin winder in the main photo.

I bet there are several of you, reading this, who also own vintage machines.  I'd love to hear about them so please let me know what you have!

Best wishes,

Frivole