As everyone knows, sailors and soldiers of old dispelled the myth that tough guys can’t sew. Quick and clean needle-repair acumen was a valuable skill at sea or on the march, and the popular Army and Navy Needle Books capitalized on that military mystique to appeal to the general stitching public. The little kits were produced for many years and in many different countries; the battleship depicted is variously identified as the Iowa (as seen here), the Massachusetts, the Maryland, or some other such vessel, and sometimes features no name at all. Later-made books continued to sport the classic late 19th-/early 20th-century look. With their varying covers and quaint, colorful artwork, the needle books, as one can imagine, are desired collectibles.
Some bear the markings of having been manufactured in Germany, or Czechoslovakia, or—as in the case of this specimen in the collection of the Naval History and Heritage Command—somewhere even more far-flung. As seen on the cover’s obverse, the globe-straddling American eagle ironically features in its lower left-hand corner the words “Made in Japan.” Quite a few of these needle books were manufactured in post–World War II Japan, as well as postwar Germany (some examples indicate “Occupied Japan,” not just “Japan,” thus pinpointing a 1945–52 time frame). While the covering was cranked out in Japan, the needles contained therein are German. (Who says globalism is a new thing?) A set with its complete needle-arsenal would be the most highly sought for the avid collector, but with or without its full contents, an Army and Navy Needle Book is an evocative bit of 20th-century naval-art ephemera.
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