Now here is something that you absolutely do not see every day of the week. Behold the humble Moldacot – the world’s smallest (and possibly, the world’s most ineffective!) pocket-sized lockstitch sewing machine!

I purchased this more as a historical curiosity than anything else, but what a curiosity! And what a story!

The Moldacot Pocket Sewing Machine was invented in 1885, and manufacturing this tiny machine (tiny? It’s 8 inches from top to bottom!), commenced in 1886 in London. Touted to the world as the world’s most robust, and compact pocket-sized lockstitch sewing machine, it took the world by storm when it first appeared on the sewing machine market.

Featuring a bobbin-winder, optional hand-crank attachment, stitch-length adjustment, tension-adjustment and almost everything else that you expected to find on a MUCH LARGER full-sized domestic sewing machine, the Moldacot was held up upon high as being the latest, greatest thing in the world, the next big (or small) thing in sewing machine technology to come along since the needle!

Was it?

…Um…no.

For all its pomp and circumstance, the Moldacot was a TERRIBLE sewing machine! It was rushed into production and the initial design was never properly tested or quality-controlled. As a result, when it hit the open market, the resulting machine was riddled with design faults. About the only thing it had going for it was that it was, undoubtedly – the most well-built failure in history! The pieces were all milled and cast brass, instead of cheaper stamped steel or tin. But that counted for little, when you consider the fact that the machine barely worked.

Originally, the Moldacot retailed for anywhere between 10/6, all the way up to about 16/- (ten shillings sixpence, and later on, 16 shillings). It was supposed to be cheap enough for anyone to buy, and be the most robust and portable and useful machine ever made, or so the advertising material said…but because it couldn’t even do the one thing it was supposed to – sew fabric together – the machine never made it off the ground. Even in its day, it was little more than the most hyped-about laughing stock ever known in the sewing machine industry, which in the 1880s, was booming!

The sad thing was that the Moldacot was basically a scam. The idea was to build something too good to be true and make it look and sound as fantastic as possible! Get loads of people to invest in this amazing new device, and then produce a product that barely works, then take the money and run! The owners of the Moldacot boasted that they could produce an initial run of up to 5,000,000 machines!!

If only.

The Moldacot was such a terrible machine that the company directors weren’t even able to get that far! By 1888, the company had collapsed, crashing and burning and being done in by its own product’s failings.

In theory, the Moldacot was a brilliant idea. But with terrible management, ineffective design, poor quality control and even worse manufacturing practices, it was just never going to get off the ground. It cost too much to produce for too small a profit, and as previously mentioned – suffered grievously from design flaws. Instead of using investors’ money to improve the machine and make a better model, the company owners simply cranked out thousands of poorly-designed, albeit, impressively robust, and ultimately – useless machines – which nobody would ever want to buy!

The Moldacot came in two general categories. Earlier plunger-type machines (like mine) and a slightly modified, later model, with a hand-crank attachment on the side. Either type are pretty rare, and exactly how many Moldacots (of either type) were ever made is a hot topic of debate.

Like I said, the company that was in charge of producing Moldacot pocket machines were basically running a scam, and the kinds of production figures they threw out at the press were probably little more than fantasies. There are certainly enough out there for the really die-hard antiques collector to possibly get their hands on one, but they were certainly never made in the quantities of machines that other companies like Singer, White, Jones, etc, produced their machines.

Noted sewing-machine historian, Alex Askaroff estimates that perhaps tens of thousands of Moldacots were made…which sounds like a lot…and it is…but when you consider that thousands were probably thrown out, trashed, bombed out in wars, lost, or simply just smashed up…and that a few tens of thousands is NOTHING in comparison with the MILLIONS or even BILLIONS made by other manufacturers of sewing machines – the Moldacot is still pretty damn rare!

So Why the Hell Would you Buy One?

To sew with? Hell no! For one thing, the bobbin and shuttle are damn near microscopic, and hold only a few inches of thread! Today, the Moldacot is a pretty rare machine. It’s the type of machine that you buy to add to your collection as a historical curiosity. And they don’t get much more curious than this! The world’s smallest lockstitch sewing machine, a fantastic little gimmick and piece of late-Victorian engineering, and a great example of a retail scam that went catastrophically wrong!

If nothing else, it’s something that’s so weird and unusual that if you have this in your collection, most people will have no idea what it is! And for some, that alone, would be reason enough to have it!

Now I’m sure some of you might be asking – surely the machine wasn’t that much of a failure, was it?

Well, The Times newspaper, upon the collapse of Moldacot in 1888, called it “The Mouldy Cat” sewing machine…ouch! Talk about scathing reviews…

So in summary – the Moldacot is fascinating as a piece of industrial history, an example of Victorian ingenuity and engineering, and as a glimpse into shady business practices and how to run what coould’ve been a really interesting idea right into the ground…but it is definitely not a sewing machine! Or at least, not one that you would want to have to rely upon for anything.