Slide-Talk:
[Working Title] Work in Progress
postponed due to snow
NEW DATE: Apr. 9
NEW DATE: Apr. 9
Charter Oak Photographic Society
Elmwood Community Church
26 Newington Road, West Hartford
This variation on my usual “Finding Brass Valley” talk will explore issues I faced and strategies I found as a photographer and how writing and photographing Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry changed my photography.
The talk is free and open to the public.
The photo below was taken last week at the former New England Pin Co.
PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: The point is that although needles need eyes where pins need heads, one might think the manufacturing technologies were similar. However, pins may be needed by the dozens, and before machine-made pins, they were hammered out by tinkers; yet one good needle, properly sized for the task at hand, will finish the suit or the saddle; it must be as slender as possible and it must not bend under pressure; it must be highly polished and hard but not brittle. Before manufacturing, the best needles were jeweler-made, and a fine needle might be made of silver and passed down through generations. While there is extensive history on pin-making in Connecticut, I have found few references to needle making here.
From the 16th to the 20th century the best needles were said to come from Redditch, England, but over eighty percent of common pins in America came from Connecticut. Around 1870 Redditch needle factories were producing 3,500 million needles per year. Not too much later the New England Pin Company, one of many pin-makers in Connecticut, was turning out 3,900 million pins per year. In spite of Redditch fame, Yankee inventors in Brass Valley transformed the manufacturing of both pins and needles.
Brass Valley is the birthplace of modern pin manufacturing. John Ireland Howe famously patented technology that mechanized pin-making and opened his factory with land and water rights he bought from Anson Phelps along the Birmingham Canal in Derby in 1841. Soon there were pin-makers throughout the Valley. New England Pin Company founded on the Mad River in Winsted in 1854 was among them.
Brass Valley is also where the critical technologies were put in place to make the needles for the first sewing machines that Elias Howe (no relation to John Howe) was making in Bridgeport. In 1841 Howe had invented a machine that would sew but not the needles that would let it stitch. Needles at the time were too crude and failed. It would be 1866 before Orrin Hopson and Herman Brooks developed the "cold swaging” process of pointing and working the metal. The Excelsior Needle Company opened its factory along the West Branch of the Naugatuck in Wolcottville in 1866 to manufacture needles by cold swaging. Excelsior Needle would soon make all kinds of needles and bicycle spokes and would eventually become the Torrington Company with operations around the world.
Too my knowledge, Howe’s pin-making machine was never used for needles and Hopson's & Brook’s cold swaging process was never used for pins. Despite the success of Torrington’s needles, Connecticut's fame is for pins, and the histories of the two industries seem oddly disconnected. What is it I’m missing?
From the 16th to the 20th century the best needles were said to come from Redditch, England, but over eighty percent of common pins in America came from Connecticut. Around 1870 Redditch needle factories were producing 3,500 million needles per year. Not too much later the New England Pin Company, one of many pin-makers in Connecticut, was turning out 3,900 million pins per year. In spite of Redditch fame, Yankee inventors in Brass Valley transformed the manufacturing of both pins and needles.
Brass Valley is the birthplace of modern pin manufacturing. John Ireland Howe famously patented technology that mechanized pin-making and opened his factory with land and water rights he bought from Anson Phelps along the Birmingham Canal in Derby in 1841. Soon there were pin-makers throughout the Valley. New England Pin Company founded on the Mad River in Winsted in 1854 was among them.
Brass Valley is also where the critical technologies were put in place to make the needles for the first sewing machines that Elias Howe (no relation to John Howe) was making in Bridgeport. In 1841 Howe had invented a machine that would sew but not the needles that would let it stitch. Needles at the time were too crude and failed. It would be 1866 before Orrin Hopson and Herman Brooks developed the "cold swaging” process of pointing and working the metal. The Excelsior Needle Company opened its factory along the West Branch of the Naugatuck in Wolcottville in 1866 to manufacture needles by cold swaging. Excelsior Needle would soon make all kinds of needles and bicycle spokes and would eventually become the Torrington Company with operations around the world.
Too my knowledge, Howe’s pin-making machine was never used for needles and Hopson's & Brook’s cold swaging process was never used for pins. Despite the success of Torrington’s needles, Connecticut's fame is for pins, and the histories of the two industries seem oddly disconnected. What is it I’m missing?
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