Art & Artifacts Record
Images
Metadata
Object Name |
Wheel, Leatherworking |
Collection |
Wellmade Glove artifacts and records |
Object ID |
M1986.3.50g |
Year Range from |
1940 |
Year Range to |
1963 |
Dimension Details |
1" H x 8 1/8" W x 8 1/8" D |
Description |
Buffing pad from Wellmade Glove. HISTORICAL NOTE Wellmade Glove (later Wellmade Gloves) was a glove shop and manufacturer specializing in fine gloves produced from fabric and goat skin. The company was located at 480 Seventh Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, and was owned and operated by Louis Lebman (1880-1969), a Polish immigrant who served his glovemaking apprenticeship in Gloversville, N.Y. Lebman lived with his wife, Rose, and their daughter, Maria, in the same building that housed Wellmade Glove. |
Place Names |
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) Park Slope (New York, N.Y.) |
Subject Headings |
Business enterprises Immigrant business enterprises Leather garments industry |
Personal and Corporate Names |
Lebman, Louis, 1880-1969 Wellmade Glove (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.) |
Collection Finding Aid |
Wellmade Glove records and artifacts (ARC.224) |
Curatorial Notes |
Around 1906, Polish immigrant Louis Lebman (1881-1969) arrived in Brooklyn. Like many of the hundreds of thousands of European immigrants settling in the area, Lebman sought stable employment. City directories show that Lebman spent the next decade in Gloversville, New York, then known at the time as the "glove making capital of the world." His upstate training working with leather and glove cutting machinery allowed Lebman to return to Brooklyn with his young family by 1920, where he continued working as a "glove cutter." In the early 1940s he established his own business, Wellmade Glove Inc., which operated into the 1960s. The records and artifacts from Lebman's Park Slope Wellmade Glove workshop highlight the operations of a mid-twentieth-century small-scale manufacturer within a quickly vanishing industry. Unfortunately for the Lebman's, Wellmade Glove operated at a time when gloves were falling out of fashion as everyday accessories and when the work of skilled tradesmen was being replaced by automation and cheaper imports. Today, these artifacts preserve the essentials needed for creating and selling fine leather gloves: leather pelts, glove patterns, fabric cutting molds, and sewing machines, along with a stock of finished products in a variety of styles, cuts, and finishes. |