BRAVE SEWESSMAN

What do you think is shown in the photo? Hint: made of marble, weight 3 kg. Paperweight? No. Pincushion? It's getting closer. This is a seamstress. A sewing device that was actively used by both peasants and urban aristocrats in the era of home-made production.

“The History of One Thing” is a joint project with the Tomsk Local Lore Museum

Peasant seamstresses were strikingly different from urban ones - if you put them side by side, you can’t say that we are talking about objects with the same purpose. Here, for example, is what village wooden seamstresses from the collection of the Tomsk Local History Museum look like.

These seamstresses came to the museum at different times and have different stories. But the design is the same for all - they consist of a bottom and a column, and are very similar to ordinary spinning wheels.

The seamstress in the middle of the photo was the first to enter the museum - in 1924. It was brought from the Narym expedition by one of the first directors of the regional museum, Mikhail Shatilov (the museum now bears his name). The training camp was held in the Ostyak village of Yurta Tyukhterev, so this Russian seamstress could easily have lived in an Ostyak family.

The two seamstresses on the left came to the museum in 1959 from the Kargasok region. Two seamstresses on the right - in 1984 from the Old Believer villages of the Verkhneketsky region.

“If we sew two pieces of fabric by hand,” explains Elena Malofienko, “the tension of the fabric is constantly changing, and the seam will probably turn out deformed. And we do the stitches quite slowly. And such an invention as sewing, firstly, speeds up the process, and secondly, we get a higher quality product. It’s like the seamstress has a third hand!”

The principle of sewing is simple. At the top of each post was attached a rag or, as in the Russian north, a pad with wool. The fabric that needed to be processed was pinned to these elements with a needle. The craftswoman put the seamstress on the bench, sat on the bottom, pulled the well-fixed fabric and laid a seam. Smooth, neat, fast.

There were several types of seamstresses - pillow-shaped seamstresses (attached to a handmade table with clamps, like a meat grinder), bird-shaped seamstresses (Tula, steel, the fabric was held with clamps), box sewers.

In 2003, another type of sewing was brought to the Tomsk Local History Museum, a mention of which the museum staff has not yet been able to find in the literature or on the Internet. Tomsk resident Lidiya Aleksandrovna Kharlamova replenished the museum’s collections with a rare marble seamstress, which was used in her family for several generations.

“This thing is factory-made,” says Elena Malofienko, “but it bears traces of home repairs. Here you can see a ledge along the edge - this sewing machine was once equipped with a cap. The thing is ancient - I think it dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, because in the second half of the 19th century, all wealthy families in the city already had sewing machines. The donor Lydia Kharlamova, she was about 80 at the time, said that she remembers this item from childhood, in particular, the moment when the pad was being repaired in the sewing machine, and that by that time the cap was no longer there...”

Inside the marble block there is a planed wooden base and wool covered with carpet fabric. The product that needed to be sewn was attached to this woolen pad. Who and when produced such seamstresses is a mystery to the museum staff. Therefore, they plan to consult with colleagues from the mineralogical museum to find out in which deposits such marble could be mined.

Seamstresses at one time made a small technological revolution in the sewing business. Just as wheeled spinning wheels increased labor productivity by 7 times compared to conventional ones, so seamstresses allowed the population to sheathe themselves faster and with better quality.

The history of seamstresses ended with the invention of sewing machines, or rather, with their mass production. While sewing machines were an expensive pleasure, seamstresses continued to be used in the villages - all the wooden exhibits of the Tomsk Local History Museum were produced in the 20th century (Old Believers, for example, date back to 1940-60).

Now the seamstress is not even a passing away, but a completely departed nature. You can touch it, perhaps, only in a museum.

Tags: Tomsk, Tomsk region, Tomsk Museum of Local Lore, sewing, history of one thing