What a fantastic find on that Alamy image! That is definitely the same cabinet, and notice the name on the machine head: Black Diamond. Valentino97, Thank you, but when the machine isn't a Singer, I fail quite a bit. But apparently its a pen and ink ad that is from the public domain that has a drawing of the exact cabinet! The text with the ad seems to imply that it might be Canadian? Or maybe anti-Canadian, I can't seem to tell. In case you were interested I was able to find one more thing- it's sort of weird, it's from a stock imagery site. Thank you keramikos for all the research.
Here are some vintage sewing machine resources: I am not an expert, and you might want to try some of the vintage sewing machine forums, such as the one at quiltingboard dot com, as there are many very knowledgeable vintage sewing machine enthusiasts there: Singer is a standout in that sense, as is White to a somewhat lesser degree. Most of them didn't last long, and didn't leave comprehensive records. There were hundreds of sewing machine companies back in the 19th and early twentieth century. Is your machine a Diamond Sewing Machine Company product? I don't know. In 1883, the company was sold to Diamond Sewing Machine Company. The two-story building was located on Kensington Road. N 1875, John Sigwalt relocated his foundry business from Chicago to Arlington Heights. Yet more (plus a picture of the Diamond Sewing Machine Company employees): It seems to have disappeared in 1888 (see page 68). I did a search of Grace Rogers Cooper's 1976 edition of "The Sewing Machine : Its Invention and Development" for "Diamond Queen," but found nothing:Ībout the only reference to "Diamond" was a company called the Diamond Sewing Machine Company of Chicago, IL. That cabinet does seem reminiscent of White, and White did make some machines badged with other names. Yet another place for people to look for serial numbers. So, potentially that "2007895" underneath the split slide plate is the serial number. However, your machine does bear some resemblance to the VS1, VS2, VS3, 27, 28, 127 and 128 machines in that it has that little trapezoidal access panel on the front, and the split slide plates: I think you're quite correct that your "Diamond Queen" is not a Singer, because insofar as I know, Singer never engaged in badging machines with another name.