Saadatmand

The nostalgic sewing machine manual

This was originally a Twitter thread, posted on September 17, 2022. I’ve made some edits for this post.

A while back while cleaning my father’s library, I found a battered Urdu manual for the Singer Sewing Machine (Model 109H), which my mother used to own back in the late ’80s:

Cover of the Urdu manual of Singer Sewing Machine Model 109H. It says “سِنگر سِلائی مشین، ماڈل ۱۰۹ ایچ کے استعمال کے متعلق ہدایات”. Below this text is a drawing of the sewing machine on a green background. The cover is visibly old with several wrinkles and stains, and its colors are faded in multiple places too.

Cover of the manual

I don’t really remember the sewing machine, nor do I remember seeing this manual before, but ever since finding it I’ve been fascinated by it, and often thumb through its pages for inspiration.

Let me tell you why.

First, some specifics. The manual doesn’t mention a date, but it’s safe to assume that it was produced in the ’80s. It does mention that it was printed by “Lithocraft Corporation, Karachi”:

A note that says “مطبوعہ لیتھوکرافٹ کارپوریشن، کراچی ۳۸ ٹیلیفون: ۶۸۱۴۶۵”. The text is set in a simplified naskh font.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen this old, simplified font.

Interestingly, this note about being printed in Karachi is the only thing that is not handwritten. Everything else in the manual is scribed in Dehlvi nastaliq, with some Indian naskh (a simplified flavor of it) sprinkled for headings and emphasis:

A block of text from the manual. Heading (“مبارکباد”) is written in simplified Indian naskh. Body is written in Dehlvi nastaliq.
Another text block from the manual. Heading (“۴- آزاد سِلائی”) is written in simplified Indian naskh and in green ink. Body is written in Dehlvi nastaliq in black ink.

But being handwritten is almost expected, given the manual’s age. It’s the other design elements that stand out to me…

First, its striking use of color, which is a rarity in the modern, black-on-white manuals we usually get in Pakistan. I mean, just look at this spread:

A spread from the manual that details parts of the sewing machine. Verso shows a drawing of the sewing machine in light green and white colors with a black outline. The full background is dark green. Above the drawing is the text “ا- اپنی سلائی مشین کے متعلق واقفیت حاصِل کیجئے” in Dehlvi nastaliq and in white ink. Parts of sewing machine are labelled in black ink. Recto is in cream color, and shows a numbered list explaining the various machine parts labelled in verso.

This spread is where I fell in love with the manual.

The manual also utilizes color for highlighting specific parts in its many diagrams. A few examples below:

Page of the manual showing various illustrations. Two illustrations at the top are in black and grey. A green box at the bottom has another illustration that uses white color to highlight the significant parts being talked about.
Page of the manual showing two illustrations. The one at the top shows the outline of the sewing machine; a part is highlighted in white. Another circle shows the highlighted part in detail. Second illustration is simpler and shows the detailed outline of the needle.
Page of the manual that shows three illustrations. One shows how to pick a bobbin out if its case. The other two are inside green boxes, and highlight the relevant parts in white.

Next: Urdu digits, which are gradually (and sadly) falling out of use in today’s Urdu media. Even I have neglected them on a few occasions, despite being their big fan.

A page from the manual. A semi-transparent dark overlay has been added to the image, with cut-outs that highlight various Urdu digits in the text: One in the heading; some in numbered lists; and a page number at the bottom.

Most Urdu books do not include an index at the end (which they should, in my opinion), but this little manual does. Curiously, its index entries are not sorted alphabetically, and the title is “فہرست”, which I’d normally use for a table of contents. And speaking of table of contents, they are titled “مندرجات” in this manual:

Index page of the manual. Entries are laid out in two columns.

Index of the manual

Table of contents (TOC) of the manual. Main heading of the page (“مندرجات”) and section headings in the TOC are written in Indian naskh; everything else is in Dehlvi nastaliq.

Table of contents

The following page shows a bit of everything—a nice, clean table layout; naskh for creating hierarchy; elegant use of color; and Urdu digits:

Page of the manual that recommends threads, needles, and stitches for various kinds of fabric. Main heading is in Indian naskh; subheading in Dehlvi nastaliq. After a paragraph of text, a table begins. Table header and columns headers have a dark green background; other tables cells have a light green background and are divided by thin, cream-colored borders. Main table header is in Indian naskh; various categories of fabric are also written in Indian naskh to differentiate them from the following text written in Dehlvi nastaliq. Urdu digits are used extensively.

A couple of illustrations suggest that they (and possibly the colors and layout, too) may have been copied from an English or Western counterpart (which I couldn’t find in my father’s library or anywhere on the web):

Illustration from the manual that shows a woman who is wearing a skirt and operating the sewing machine via foot pedal. The caption below says “پائیدان”.
Illustration from the manual that shows decorative stitching. The design being stitched is a stylized, swash lettering of the initials “MR”. The caption below says “طُغرے اور ڈیزائن بنانا”.

Even then, Singer deserves the credit for thoughtfully adapting the source material for their Pakistani audience, instead of churning out an uninspired copy void of any character (which is sadly the norm these days for user manuals).

For those who’d further like to bask in the glory of this nostalgic manual, 🙂 I have uploaded it on the Internet Archive.