Perry Hall: The Baltimore Embroidery Company
by David Marks
Historian, Perry Hall Improvement Association
The next time you watch Michael Jordan dunk another one for the Chicago Bulls, look
very closely at the emblem on his uniform. It might be made in Perry Hall.
Sports emblems are just one of the many designs stitched by the Baltimore Embroidery
Company, one of Perry Hall's oldest: and perhaps quietest: industries. This narrow brick
building, which produces everything from athletic logos to Scouting and Olympic patches,
has churned out world-class goods for over eighty years.
![[ Photograph of the Baltimore Embroidery Company ]](hist_pe_embroid.jpg)
Photograph of the Baltimore Embroidery Company. |
In the late Nineteenth Century, a young girl named Lina Barth was living
in Heimishub St. Gallen, Switzerland, a small village renowned for its lace-making
industry. Here, Lina Barth and her two brothers, Alfred and John, became employed in a
local embroidery factory, learning the skill of lace-making at an early age. When their
mother died in 1892, the father brought his family to America, where they settled in
Fairbury, Illinois. Lina Barth eventually married John Tanner, a stone mason from Austria,
and the couple moved to Richmond. They settled in Perry Hall in 1911, where the couple
bought a farm at the corner of Belair and Joppa Roads.
It was in 1914 that Lina Tanner applied her knowledge of lace-making to the family
business. With her brothers and husband, Lina Tanner opened the Baltimore Embroidery
Company, building a small brick factory on Belair Road.
The company has manufactured a variety of items throughout its eight decades of
operation. It began exclusively as a lace factory, but then national demand compelled the
opening of an embroidery business. The first products manufactured were embroidered towel
sets? with the embroider stitched directly on linen and Turkish towels. The company also
embroidered scarves, pillow cases, and bed spreads. Later, the Baltimore Embroidery
Company developed insignia, from the navy emblem on uniforms to colorful dragons on shirts
and dresses. This became particularly popular in the 1960's, with orders received from as
far away as California.
Embroidery work is done by a huge machine with 1,021 needles in the front, then a
corresponding number of shuttles in the back. The material to be embroidered is spanned
the entire length of the machine between the shuttles and the needles. At one end of the
machine is the pattern from which the design is threaded onto the material. Until
recently, a trained stitcher was needed to delicately follow this pattern with a
pantograph. Now, however, this is done automatically. In many companies, the operation is
computerized, with the machinery costing at least $250,000 to purchase and $90,000 to
install. At the Baltimore Embroidery Company, though, the same gears that stitched fabric
in 1914 are designing emblems in 1996. The two mammoth machines, in fact, date from 1904
and 1929, with their legs planted firmly in eight feet of concrete below the building.
The Baltimore Embroidery Factory still stands, now located next to the 7-11 convenience
store on Belair Road. Six members of the Tanner family still operate the factory, which is
busier than ever.
So pay attention the next time an Olympic athlete pulls an insignia-covered jacket over
his body, or when the Chicago Bulls symbol pops up in the middle of an intense basketball
game. Those are Perry Hall creations. And remember that despite change all around us,
family and good old-fashioned enterprise can still make a difference.
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