10 October 2015

Some "new" family heirlooms

You never know your luck in a big city small German town, close to the French border. Today there was a handicrafts flea market in the hall behind my daughter's school. There were lots of balls of wool and ugly material that no one wanted any more, some old junky bits of sewing notions, and some beautiful old sewing things too.

I judiciously avoided the junk and found some old insertion lace, some old threads on beautiful wooden reels - so much more lovely than today's plastic reels, some antique copper monogram stencils (never seen anything like them before), an old tape measure and a random assortment of buttons. Because we are so close to the French border, some of the goods were of French origin, including from companies based in Mulhouse, historically an important textile manufacturing city, less than an hour away. Mulhouse is the home of the embroidery thread company DMC, and also my Weiss family.


Top left is a reel of sewing cotton made by DMC. Top middle is a ball of Cordonnet Spécial crochet cotton also made by DMC. As explained here, DMC stands for Dollfus Mieg et Cie, and I am distantly related to one of the founders, Jean-Henri Dollfus.

On the tape measure it says "Employez le 'Fil Schlumberger' pour la couture a la machine et a la main". Schlumberger is also a Mulhousien surname which is related to my Weiss family.

So I picked up some beautiful things, some of which have real family history significance to me. You never know your luck in a small German town, close to the French border.

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