Lost Art Press

Wrong Continent for this Animal

Posted on by Lost Art Press

london_bridge_roorkee_leg2The last few days have been all-Roorkee chair during all hours. I’m building a pair of them that reflect the two ends of the chair’s design spectrum – one chair from 1900 and one from Kaare Klint in the mid-20th century.

And, of course, I’ve been drawing leg profiles like crazy for the chapter on Roorkee chairs. As it turns out, these legs are difficult to trace from photographs. No matter what I do, the turnings look odd. A snarky reader might blame the turner. But I blame perspective. I wish we had never invented it, and we all still lived in a parallel projection world.

So I’ve taken to simply drawing these legs instead of tracing a Photoshopped image.

Now all my leg profiles look like penguins to me.

At least they don’t look like my first tracings – lumpy penguins that had spent too much time in the reactor core.

Tomorrow I’m cutting leather.

No, that is not a euphemism.

— Christopher Schwarz

So Many Whimsical Projects

Posted on by fitz

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Mr. Miſt,

Since the World, of late, has run into ſo many whimſical Projects, prithee, for once, publiſh the following, to ſee how they will encourage a good one.

The Projector, by long Study, has attained to a certain Method, of melting down Carpenters Chips and Saw-Duſt, &c. and running them into Planks and Boards of all Lengths and Sizes. Hereby all Gentlemen, Builders and others, may, upon ten Days Notice, be furniſhed with Boards and Planks adapted exactly to the Dimenſions they want, at leaſt twenty five per Cent. cheaper than yet has been known.

Theſe Boards will be free from Knots and Sap, and delivered grained or not grained, as ſhall be desired. The Projector promiſes himſelf, that he ſhall ſhortly be able to give them a Tincture of Marble Shade, or any other fine Stone Colour, which ſhall exceed all Painting. The Compoſition in theſe Boards has a ſecret Vertue which prevents their ſhrinking, and deſtroys all Bugs and Vermine that come near them.

Propoſals for erecting a Company, and raiſing a Joint-Stock of One Million five hundred thousand Pounds, on very advantageous Terms to the Subſcribers, will ſhortly be publiſhed, and the Projector will be glad (in the interim) of an Opportunity to confer with any Gentleman of Ingenuity upon so beneficial a Scheme; and, for that Purpoſe will give daily Attendance at Exchange time, at the Cock in Birchin-lane.

Yours,
PHILOTECTENOS.

Mist’s Journal – February 27, 1720

This letter was written by Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe (1719). If it was not obvious last week, the description of this imaginary joint-stock company, which was the source of Thomas Coliflower’s joke, was meant to be satire. It is meant to draw attention to the gullibility of the public, who were investing large sums of money in concepts that were too good to be true, leading to one of the first great stock market crashes, known as the South Sea Bubble.

—Jeff Burks

Gross Victorian Excess

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Victoria-era campaign chest, circa 1890
Victoria-era campaign chest, circa 1890

Victorian taste varied widely according to social class and the not-always-closely-related matter of economic status. To begin with, many members of the nobility and land-owning gentry, who lived in homes their families had occupied for centuries, found themselves surrounded by Elizabethan, Jacobean and 18th-century furnishings, and unless they were self-consciously interested in contemporary taste, they were often unlikely to replace perfectly good furniture or silver, however old and out-of-fashion, with any examples of new taste. A conservative, prosperous, but not particularly wealthy member of the squierarchy, like Ralph Carbury of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, had no fashionable furnishings. Similarly, members of the working classes, farm workers, and unemployed poor, who together made up far more than half of the Victorian population, did not have the resources to furnish their homes with properly Victorian things.

— George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University

Hints to Cadets, With a Few Observations

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Kinsman_trunk

One of the books I’ve read in my research for “Campaign Furniture” is “Hints to Cadets, with a Few Observations on Military Service” by Lt. T. Postans (Wm. H. Allen Co., 1842). I thought the book might discuss the things that cadets should purchase, such as barracks furniture, for a tour in India.

I was wrong. He spends about a paragraph on that.

Most of the book is how to prepare you psychologically for the journey. How to be tolerant of other cultures and religions. How not to make an ass of yourself in India.

But one of the tools Postans thinks cadets should bring is a drawing pad and instruments, to record the landscape and the cadet’s surroundings in the quiet hours.

You can find it on GoogleBooks, though you might find it a cure for insomnia. I, however, found it a surprising book.

— Christopher Schwarz

Tom Fool O’ Muncaster

Posted on by fitz

charpentier_viollet-le-duc_1873

In an age when it was the fashion both at court and elsewhere for the higher families to keep a household fool for the amusement of their visitors and themselves, the Lord of Muncaster had a noted one, who, like many a better fellow, was apt to resent an insult when he thought it was carried too far.

During those days when each feudal lord held jurisdiction over his manors, evil deeds were done and punished or passed over at the will of the lord.

Tom was a favourite with his master, and one hot day he found the castle joiner in his workshop taking a nap after dinner, with his head resting on a block of wood for a pillow.

Calling to mind the many instances of the joiner having made more sport of him than was agreeable, he took an axe and chopped off the joiner’s head, hiding it among the shavings. He then capered into the hall in great glee, saying—” When the joiner wakes he will have some trouble to find his head.”

It is said of that far-off time, that a good joiner was easier to find than a good fool, and Tom’s exploit was overlooked.

William Dickinson

Cumbriana; Or, Fragments of Cumbrian Life – 1876

(Tom Skelton, aka Tom Fool, was a court jester of Muncaster Castle in the 16th century.)

—Jeff Burks