BCPL History and Genealogy - Perry Hall - The Baltimore Embroidery Company.
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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.

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.

This page is provided by the Baltimore County Public Library, Towson, Maryland USA.
The text version of this page was last revised on 26 August 2008.
The graphics version of this page was last revised on 26 August 2008.
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