So were these

Here, Curt Cable sews a Shaker-style broom. It's in a Johnson Improved Broom Sewing Vise, made many decades ago by the G. P. Johnson company in Amsterdam, New York. An original advertisement for the vise said it was "recommended by all leading blind broom makers and commissions, and is used in several of the schools for the blind throughout this country and in several foreign countries."