Jacob Schiess started the first commercial embroidery manufacturing establishment in 1848 in New York. He came from Switzerland and within a year had his own embroidery plant in operation. All the stitching was done by hand by fifteen woman stitching exquisite designs by hand.
The development of machine embroidery did not take place until the 1800s. Joshua Heilmann from Mulhouse worked on the design of a hand embroidery machine. Though he did not sell many, it revolutionized the embroidery industry. Heilmann’s invention was quickly followed by the “shuttle embroidery” and the “chain stitch embroidery” methods.
The beginnings of shuttle embroidery dates back to the 1860s when Isaac Groebli, from St. Gallen, Switzerland, was inspired by the work produced on the sewing machine.
To the next thrust, the embroidery industry rose in 1863 with the invention of the Schifflistickmaschine by Isaac Gröbli (father of the mathematician Walter Gröbli). An experimental machine was first built in Winterthur, and later went into series production at the Adolph Saucer AG in Arbon.
Around the 1870s there were fourteen companies manufacturing embroidery machines in Switzerland manufacturing hand loom embroidery machines. Today, there are four companies manufacturing schiff embroidery machines.
In 1873, Alphonse Kursheedt imported twelve of the ten new embroidery hand looms from St. Gallen, making him the first American to use a mechanized embroidery process. The looms used multiple needles and were an unbelievable improvement over the age-old process of stitching by hand. They were, however, powered manually.
Immediately afterwards, Isaac Groebli of Switzerland invented the first practical Schiff Embroidery machine. This machine was based on the principles introduced by the newly invented sewing machine. Groebli’s machine utilized the combination of a continuously threaded needle and shuttle containing a bobbin of thread. The shuttle itself looked similar to the hull of a sailboat. “Schiff” means “little boat” in the Swiss dialect of the German language, so his machine came to be known as a Schiff machine.
In 1876, Kursheedt began importing a number of schiff machines to America, thereby making him the real founder of the Schiff embroidery industry in the United States.
Dr. Robert Reiner, founder of Robert Reiner, Inc., of Weehawken, came to the United States in 1903 in his early twenties. Realizing the potential of the embroidery industry, he persuaded the Vogtlandishe Machine Works of Plauen, Germany, to appoint him it’s an American agent. This began a mass importation of embroidery machines into northern New Jersey’s Hudson County. The banks arranged long-term credit to purchasers. Dr. Reiner made it possible for hundreds of Austrian, German, and Swiss immigrants in New Jersey to become manufacturers of embroidery.
The industry grew until 1938, when suddenly the two sources for the manufacture of machines in Platen, Germany, and Arbon, Switzerland, ceased operation because of World War 2. No additional machines were produced until 1953, when Robert Reiner Inc. introduced the first American-made schiffli machine. Gradually in time, improvements were made to the machine in America as well as in Switzerland and Germany.
Today computers are playing a major role in the embroidery process.
Nowadays, there are some nine large companies producing computer-driven machine embroidery imitating hand embroidery, while there are some smaller companies left that still operates in the traditional manner with hand embroidery machines.
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