Shaw & Clark Sewing Machines
Shaw & Clark manufactured sewing machines in 1860′s in Biddeford, Maine, and later in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts before closing in the mid-1870′s.
For years the company was one of the more successful manufacturers of these machines, although their product was in direct violation of several existing patents. Their most poplar model in this period was known as the “Monitor”.
In 1864 legal action forced the company to license their machines at $7.00 each from the Sewing Machine Combination. To help carry this new expense for their relatively inexpensive machines Shaw & Clark introduced two new models,
one with a circular-section fire-hydrant top and skirted bottom, and the other with a square pagoda-topped hydrant which could come in open or closed form. These machines, and each one they made after the date which the company began to pay license fees was sold with a brass plate listing the patents for which licenses had been bought. The company produced these machines for around three years before moving its operation to Massachusetts where it produced a third model, again with the brass patent seal.
Today these later post-license models are far rarer than the earlier, and illegal, Monitors. Of the two later designs, the circular tower is the rarest.