Over the Shoulder Boulder Holder

 Take a look at this marvel of engineering!  My poor dress form is not up to displaying a brassiere of this magnitude.  This is a size 44 Camp fan-laced brassiere.  Made of sturdy, flat-felled, pink polished cotton, you can see that you can adjust your lift with the underbust slings and buttons.

Hooks and loops on the left side got you into this marvel.  Then. . . .

You pulled on the elastic garters to cinch it up and flipped down the catches, like a girdle garter.

You know I'm going to look up the patent!

Adjustment Buckle Structure
Samuel H Camp, Jackson, Michigan, Assignor to S H Camp & Company, Jackson, Michigan, a corporation of Michigan

Patent number: 2053600
Filing date: May 25, 1934
Issue date: Sep 8, 1936

Here is a link to a wonderful collection of fan-laced corsetry.  Fan-Lacing Corsets  I can't do any better than referring you to their pages to "read all about it".  There is one brassiere shown, though not like mine.  Here are some more fan-laced corsets.

Samuel Higby Camp was born 29 September 1871 in Jackson, Jackson, Michigan, the son of Henry N Camp and Ella M Higby.  He was single when he patented his corset closing system in 1908 and was 46 when he married Mary Margaret Hammond, age 49, on 29 June 1918.  He died in 1944 and his Find-A-Grave entry is here.  

Even though a bachelor, he paid attention to his mother's and sister's clothing needs and invented a corset stay improvement in 1896, an adjustable waistband for skirts in 1903, an abdominal support device in 1916, as well as other orthopedic improvements.  I must admit, however, that I was not able to find the 1908 patent referred to, above, which I found quoted in several places.

This is a page from The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery by The American and British Orthopaedic Associations, in October of 1944.  (That back looks more like a front to me!)

Samuel and Mary Margaret did some world traveling after they were married and he put out another book about women's anatomy for physicians and surgeons.

The only other thing I could find about this inventor was that his company is still in business putting out support garments for injuries and back problems and there is a Samuel Higby Camp Foundation that makes grants, but I was not able to find a website.

Humping It

Here are some more nice hairpins still in their original cellophane!  I looked up the patent holder, Solomon Harry Goldberg, owner of the Hump Hairpin Manufacturing Company, and it seems he was a busy fellow.  In addition to these hairpins, patented in 1903 while he lived in Danville, IL,  he also was involved with collar buttons. In 1909 he improved his hairpin.

Here is a patent for a new improved hairpin box from 1922, and a hairpin container from 1923.

He got pretty whimsical with this hairpin holder from 1909.  Seems you spread apart the strands and stick the hairpins in the skirt.  That would be a fun thing to find!

With the success of his hairpins he had another brilliant idea for a safety pin built along those same lines.  His explanation says it enables more material to be pinned all the way to the end, and would lie flatter.  I have never seen one of these.

A man who worked for him patented a hairpin forming machine.

Things were going good until Irene Castle bobbed her hair.  Solomon regrouped and called his invention a bobby pin and kept accumulating his fortune.  At the end of this article is a rather long scholarly essay on bobby pins that mentions Solomon H Goldberg's contribution near the end.

And here we have it:  the modern bobby pin, patented in 1929.



Cards to sell them on.

In the 1930 census, Sol H Goldberg, born 1885,  and his wife, Ruth, their three children, the oldest 7 years old, three maids, a nurse, and a governess are living in Chicago, IL.  With all that money, he is renting an apartment at Jackson Tower Apartments for $1000 a month.  He is a Manufacturer and financier, Hairpins, etc.  He was born in Ohio, his parents Germany and Austria, and Ruth was from Vilna, Poland.

In the 1920 census he is lodging in Chicago, IL with his two sisters although he is marked as married.  He is a Manufacturer of hairpins.  He was born in 1881.

In 1910 he is the head of a household that includes his brother and sisters and he is a Manufacturer of Roofing and Req Supplies.  That answers the question I had when I was reading the patents.  I kept seeing shingles and roofing apparatus being patented by a Solomon H Goldberg of Chicago and assumed it was a different man.  So in 1910 he had patented his hairpin and improved it and was still running the roofing business and hedging his bets.  He was also involved in the retreading of tires in 1920.  He also invented several means of packaging fragile items.  A busy man.

Here's what he did before.  He also invented a machine to print the design on sheets of asphault.

So-Me-On

Isn't this a cute little guy?  He's a sew on or glue on applique from the 1920's.  The stamp at the bottom says the company that made him is "Hollander's".  Try doing a search on THAT!  Not one to give up, I went to my favorite search engine, Google Patents.  I put in the work "applique" and voila!  (Results after the pics.)

Here is the back.  So many choices.  Such small pictures.

When I put the work "applique" in the Google Patents search engine I got a whole list of things.  I checked the box to arrange them oldest to newest and started browsing in 1828!  When I got to the 1920's, to my amazement I started finding appliques done in the same style as this one.  The third one was this!

Others in the series follow.

It was Hollander's after all!

These were all designed and patented by Kurt Lehmann for the So-Me-On Corp of New York City.  You know me, I had to see if I could find out about this guy.  Google yielded way too many current-day Kurt Lehmanns so I went to the 1930 census.  I  found 3 Kurt Lehmanns in New York.  One was 40 and an insurance salesman, one was 15, and one was a 20-year-old carpenter.  Hmmmmm. Not to be dissuaded I  took of an "n" and tried again. From Manhattan a 30-year-old waiter and a 26-year-old mechanic.  Branching out, because maybe just the patent attorney lives in New York I found a laborer in Detroit and a truck driver in Wisconsin.  Striking out!

So I went to the 1920 census to see if he had moved out of New York.  Looked at the insurance salesman again.  Bingo!  In 1920 he was a manufacturer of laces.  That sounds more like it.  Kurt was a 1908 immigrant from Munich who became a citizen in 1914.  (They did that back then.)  He was married to Sylvia, a native New Yorker, whose family came from Pennsylvania and New York.  Son, Kurt Jr, was 5 and they had an Austrian maid.

You will notice that the term of the patent is 3-1/2 years.  Maybe after that time he sold the patents and became an insurance salesman.  In all I found 21 patents for appliques.  When I changed the search to "Kurt Lehmann" I found that he switched to designing fabrics with embroidered designs on it in 1938 and 1939.  Evidently insurance didn't do well during the depression.

Of Bodkins and Braids

Here is a great little item from my collection.  The braid was used mostly for replacement laces for corsets, but could be used for other underwear applications as well.  The bodkin, for those who don't have a clue, is used to run the braid thru the casing or holes in the lace or garment easily.  It wouldn't work for lacing a corset, however, and the ends of the braid would have to be tipped or hardened in some manner to pass easily through the eyelets of the corset.

That's where the bodkin would go if it was still with the package. :(

This patent took me longer to find, as there was no number--but there was a name and a date. Here it is, by Edwin M Goldsmith, of Philadelphia, PA.

A little more exploration into the patents database turned up Edwin M Goldsmith patenting lots of varied items including a Pneumatic Gun in 1899, a Lamp Chimney Raiser in 1891, a Carrying Device for Pocketbooks in 1900, a Soap Holder in 1902, some kind of coin-operated Clock in 1903, a Pencil Sharpener and point protector in 1903, a Paper Holder in 1905, another Braid Holder in 1913, a Ribbon Reel in 1916, a Holder for Elastic and Braid in 1915, some kind of washing Scrubbie in 1918, a Hair Curler in 1923, and the arrival of grandchildren probably prompted this Washable Doll in 1919. Edwin would have been a fun grandpa to have! He even invented a waterproof bathing suit  in 1930. Unsanitary public bathrooms prompted his invention of individual tissue towels wrapped around powdered soap for one-time use in 1925.  I think his Buttonhole Tape in 1930 is my favorite because I really hate making buttonholes. Edwin had a few other inventions involving ribbons and tapes and reels to hold them.

Edwin Meyer Goldsmith and Sarah Virginia (Jennie) Friedberger got married in 1891 and had Cecilia in 1892 and Henry in 1893.  They lived in Philadelphia, PA.  He and Jennie were both first-generation Americans whose parents were born in Germany.  Son Edwin, Jr came along in 1902.  In 1900 Edwin, Sr was a clothing manufacturer.  In 1910 Edwin was a manufacturer of (something) and lace.  In 1920 Edwin Sr was a manufacturer of chocolates, which seems quite contrary to all his other interests. He was 47 when he patented his bodkin and braid invention.  In 1930 Edwin, Jennie, and Edwin, Jr were living in Longport, NJ and Edwin was a textiles manufacturer, so his inventions must have paid off. A search for Edwin M Goldsmith on Google turned up an Edwin M Goldsmith, III, Philadelphia lawyer, his father dying in 1991. Edwin took out a passport in 1923 so he and Jennie could visit France, Italy, and Egypt and here is their picture from that document. Edwin Jr accompanied them for "study", and had his own passport.

They had been overseas at least three other times before 1923 without a passport, and no previous passport was listed on the 1923 one. I will have to research when passports became necessary for travel. I'll bet World War I had something to do with it.

Edwin died in 1944 and Jennie died in 1933; both in Philadelphia.

Here is another Lingerie Braid Holder with Bodkin called Jewel Lingerie Braid by RitCo, and looks like Fig 5 in the Goldsmith invention, above.

There is an illustration of a lady and the back of her corset under the braid.  Also the following copy:  "Jewel Corset Laces combining maximum durability and elasticity, will make your corset easy to adjust and comfortable to wear.  Ask for Jewel Corset Laces wherever Jewel Lingerie Braid is sold."

Buttons

These have no company name, but a patent search reveals they were invented by Hans Kanoffsky of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1921 and patented in 1925.  He also patented it in Canada that same year.  His idea was to have flexible buttons that would stand up to use and washing and ironing and be flexible.  Well, these are no longer flexible, but they have outlived Mr Kanoffsky!

I found Hans and wife, Martha Wallschlaeger, on the 1930 Milwaukee census.  They were both 50 years old and had been married for 10 years (Martha was actually 5 years older).  He was born in Bavaria and she in Wisconsin.  He immigrated in 1892 and was naturalized.  He was a chemist with his own shop and she was a department store artist.  I didn't find either of them in the Social Security Death Index or at Find-A-Grave.

Note the cigarettes on both cards.  Why is it that men are always portrayed with a stink-weed from the '20's through the '50's?  Is it supposed to be sophisticated?  Devil-may-care?  Urbane?  Note the half-closed eyes of #2.  He is trying very hard to look cool.  #1 is laughing, but won't be in 30 years when his face looks like an old shoe.