Wonderful attic find in Berlin in the villa of the former factory owner of Lintz and Eckhardt Berlin. Lintz and Eckhardt founded in 1877 was the biggest factory for chainstitch embroidery machines in Germany before the war. The company sold thousands of machines worldwide because embroidery was very popular in fashion and drapery until the 1920s. The machines replaced the time consuming hand embroidery: they made up to 3000 stitches per minute instead of 25 stitches per minute in hand embroidery.
After the war in 1952 the company was expropriated by the GDR. Before that date the owner rescued 17 machines on the attic of his private villa. He also stored a lot of spare parts, thousands of needles, a lot of instruction manuals and documents, original correspondence and invoices of the company.
In the basement of the villa we found printing tools of the machines for printing the manuals in letterpress next to the original embossing forms to produce the typical badge that is on every machine.
It is incredible that all this survived the war and the 70 years until now – different to all the machine parts that were stored in an other villa and were scrapped 5 years ago.
We are happy to restore the 17 machines step by step and get them back in production for new goods. We already restored the Lintz and Eckhart No. 67 and use it now for customizing gloves, socks and basecaps.
