Evelyn and Larry Eidelberg

White Plains residents and married couple Evelyn and Larry Eidelberg share personal stories of doll making, sewing machine collecting and of NYC's fabric and garment design industry.
For podcast audio with images go to ArtsW's YouTube Channel

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Sewing Community is part of ArtsWestchester's Folk Arts Program, made possible in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.   

Transcript

Evelyn Eidelberg: 0:07

Hi, my name is Evelyn Eidelberg. I learned how to sew o n a sewing machine when I was four years old. An old treadle, of course, and made my doll's c lothes, f irst out of paper. Then my grandma showed me how to make simple patterns, mostly out of necessity because we weren't rich enough to be able to afford ready-made things. I grew up in a very poor section of Brooklyn, which was called Oceanhill Brownsville. When I went to college, I majored in textiles and minored in education. So it wasn't surprising that I became a junior high school sewing shop teacher. At that time, we were not allowed to wear pants at all. So I made all my own dresses and skirts. And finally, when they a llowed p ant s uits, I made my own p ants s uits. After teaching for 12 years, I really was missing wanting to be a designer. I left teaching and I got a job selling i n a textile design studio in the garment center. Before long, I was making sample garments for showrooms, for fabric converters. When a salesman came up, instead of showing them a bolt of fabric, they would hold up a dress or a vest that I had made from their fabric. So it was more understandable and so that they could see it within their line. Necessity made me leave the garment center because I got into it kind of late and I wasn't being paid enough, but I started to do freelance designing, especially for women's coats. While I'm walking around with a huge portfolio of textile designs that I'm showing to designers and t o converters, in walks another man, w ho's also carrying a large portfolio and somebody had overbooked. And the man sitting next to me with the large portfolio became my husband. My interest in sewing led to a 50 year a ntiques collection. One day while I was in a shop, I looked down at the floor and I saw a small painted box with a flower on it. I opened it. I thought it might be humidor. L o and behold, it was an actual sewing machine from the 1880s that was made to sit on a table with no bobbins. And that became my interest. For the next 50 years, I scouted out hand machines, toy machines, pin cushion dolls, anything relating t o s ewing. I l ike the toy sewing machines. T hey a re very sweet. They really work. They're tiny and they're cast iron. The shapes on them are very graceful because the regular hand machines are cast iron and heavy and bulky. The t oy sewing machines of that era were absolutely charming and delicate. And even in a studio apartment, I would always have shelving that went around towards the ceiling and the room would be wrapped in sewing machines on high shelf. Then I discovered the pin cushion dolls, which of course, again, had two things in my life that meant a lot to me...dolls...I was a g irly girl who remembers the name of her first doll. Also f rom my g randmother showing me how to...my grandmother was a doll maker in a factory. My whole family came from Russia or the Ukraine, depending on what year it was. My father never really made it here. He never really had time to develop a lot of skills. He was the youngest of the children when he came, he was nine. His siblings who w ere 12 and 15 and 18 and 20 and 22, most of them never learned how to read and write in English. They never really had jobs other than working in textile f actories, sweater factories, or being cutters. So they never really made it. They really couldn't overcome their beginnings. So there wasn't...there wasn't ornament in the house. I mean, we didn't have nice things. I never wore anything n ew. Everything my mother sewed to shorten, take in, because she was remaking clothes that would have been for a woman that was now going to a little girl. I was the little girl, of course. I was embarrassed by it and I was ashamed of it. When I was about five or six, a cousin of mine was getting married and we had to wear a fancy dress. And so my mother was forced to buy me a new dress and it was turquoise. I remember twirling in it. It was nylon and i t was sort of iridescent and it was magical to me. And to this day, my favorite color is turquoise. And when I wear it, it makes me feel like that happy little girl. When I was a little girl, they had this doll that came out called the G inny doll and it was like four or five dollars. And it was the first doll to come out where you could buy clothes, a bed, playground. She had all kinds of accessories. We couldn't afford that. So my mother bought me a$1 k nockoff in the Quarries, like a Woolworth's. An outfit for the doll was like$3. Guess what? I was wearing dresses t wo for a dollar from M ay's basement. So they weren't spending$3 on a doll's dress. So I'm sitting in my girlfriend's apartment, three of us, and they both have Ginny dolls. And it came with a little pink case. Mine was a shoe box that I put pink construction paper on. And u m, they said, okay, everyone let's pretend our dolls are going to a party now. So they're g oing t o all get dressed up. So J anie and Sandy t urn around and they, they open the little pink closet a nd they put a dress on the doll. And I opened my shoe box and I put one of my homemade dresses on the doll. And my friend says to me, let's pretend y our doll is the maid since she doesn't have any good clothes. A nd right then and there, I said to myself, I'm going to learn how to sew well enough so that my doll never has to be the maid again,

Larry Eidelberg: 8:00

I'm Larry Eidelberg. I'm currently a Westchester resident. I have lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn, my home borough. And for about two years or so in the 1980s, a friend who owned a fabric design studio, asked me to sell for her..to sell artwork to manufacturers of garments and fabric. And I took it on as a, as a challenge. I knew nothing about the industry at the time. It was fascinating working with artists who came up with ideas that they hoped would sell in the market. They did a sample of paintings on silk and I, as a salesperson would take them to designers and fabric companies and try to sell them. And then they would take those designs and put them on the fabric that they would then create. It was interesting to learn about an industry that often made decisions based on whim and what they thought would be selling, what they thought would be current, what they felt would be fashionable. And I was often asked"what's selling?" as though I was a Maven about trends. I wanted to learn more about it. So I took a course at the Fashion Institute on fabric design. Not the artistic side, but the process of design, how fabric is printed, how it's designed. It was not a world I planned to stay in, but it gave me an insight into the garment industry, fashion, that I didn't have before and that has been a mainstay of New York city and the New York area economy for decades. So my interaction with fabric is more on the sales side, but it also enhanced an understanding and an appreciation of design, clothing, selling and creativity. My grandfather had been a tailor, a very talented tailor of women's clothing. He did come here from Poland at the age of 16, I believe. Spoke, no English. Came alone and had some tailoring skills, I understand,from Europe and parlayed them into a business and a career and an income stream that then raised a family. He's an interesting, and not uncommon example of a successful immigrant story. But I did know that the women's wear that he created was appreciated. He sold to women with some money in Brooklyn and he made some beautiful outfits. I have one memory of him visiting in his store. Whenever I visited him, he would have his sewing machine in the front of the store and he would be sitting at it and he'd look up and he'd always have a piece of thread hanging from his lip. He never used the scissors. He always bit the thread. And that's my image of him with his thread hanging out.