Marking time on collecting
Another Daniel Marquis photo
I have just acquired another carte-de-visite photo from the studio of Daniel Marquis. It’s a scruffy specimen but I am glad to have it. I’ve added it to my online museum. On the back is some writing in a language-other-than-English. Would anybody care to identify the language, and tell me what it says, please?
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Where is this?
I’m intrigued to know the identity of the Queensland bush township in this old lantern slide.
»more»At last, a Daniel Marquis photograph
I am now the owner of an original carte-de-visite photograph by my distant relative Daniel Marquis, proprietor of a photographic studio in George Street, Brisbane. He established the studio in 1866, not long after arriving from Scotland. He died in 1879.
»more»Shovel collection
The Stonehill Industrial Heritage Center at Stonehill College, Massachusetts, holds a vast archive of documents and objects about the shovel-making enterprises of the Ames family in the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection includes 755 shovels — something Eric Olthwaite could only dream of.
»more»circusmuseum.nl
Enjoy the fabulous collection of historic circus ephemera at circusmuseum.nl. There are thousands of colour lithographic posters from the Hamburg printing firm of Adolph Friedländer, each one catalogued, digitised, and available on the web. The website nicely explains, in Dutch and in English, the provenance of the collection.
»more»Radioactive tools of trade
The Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum aims to chronicle the scientific and commercial history of radioactivity and radiation. The collection includes a shoe-fitting fluoroscope.
Fruit crate labels
Dwayne Rogers collects and sells old fruit and vegetable box labels. His website displays hundreds of labels, classified by theme and by product. (via Coudal Partners).
»more»Materialism: the drawing cure
Danny Gregory’s everyday matters blog is one of my daily diversions. He is a compulsive sketcher who makes drawings that examine the way he is living. In today’s post he feels a surfeit of objects around him: I feel like I own too much and appreciate it too little. Having diagnosed his own condition, Danny prescribes a cure for himself:
I like the idea of a journal diet. Draw everything you own. Everything. Every single book, every stick of butter and shoelace. Now that would be a humbling experience. Or just draw everything you eat for a week. You’ll be thinner, calmer and happier.»more»
Collecting Airstream caravans
In this month’s special places piece about the Farnsworth house I mentioned Lord Palumbo, owner of the house from 1968 until a few days ago. A little googling today turned up another mention of him.
»more»Doggy-do bags
Last year, my sister Fiona commented here: Our local dog-friendly park provides doggy-do bag waterproof receptacles. This is a refreshing alternative to sharps containers… Each doggy-do bag contains a handy rectangle of cardboard for use as a scraper. Whether you want it or not, I will send you one. An unused one, be assured.
»more»Cabinets of curiosities
I’m grateful to Caterina for pointing out the website Cabinets de curiosités. If you understand French you can read about weird collections of objects from the time before museums became public institutions. If French is a foreign language to you, just look at the pictures or use google to translate.
Guitar and banjo museum
As vintage instruments come into his workshop for repair, Frank Ford photographs them for his museum. He explains his motivations like this:
»more»Denis O’Donovan’s library
In 1874 Denis O’Donovan became Queensland Parliamentary Librarian. He was an unlikely arrival in the colonial frontier town of Brisbane — capital of the state of Queensland, separated from New South Wales 15 years before. O’Donovan was a cultivated man, educated in Ireland and France.
»more»Looted treasures
I enjoy the messages I get from people who don’t know me, responding to things I write on this website — like one today from Suzanne Charlé, mentioning a story she wrote for the New York Times: Tiny treasures leave big void in looted Iraq:
»more»stoveburner.com
This is yet another website that consists of an ordered collection of related objects. Burners from discarded gas appliances are collected here, and sorted into piles: from stoves [subdivided into stovetop, broiler, hot plate], from heaters [space, hanger, hot water], and from commercial kitchen equipment. Lined up for inspection, these burners invite us to enjoy and compare their physiognomies.
»more»A Lewis Hine scandal
The Atlantic Monthly website has an article by Richard B Woodward, Too much of a good thing: photography, forgery, and the Lewis Hine scandal. Here’s the blurb:
The theoretical physicist who ignited the biggest firestorm in the history of the American photography market was simply trying to figure out if his vintage photos were genuine. By the time he learned the answer, two of the country’s best-known photography scholars had come under a cloud of suspicion.»more»
Tool patents online
Some of my cheerful companions on the OldTools mailing list have helped to build the Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents. This is a searchable database that opens the historical records of the US Patents Office. Here you’ll find patent specifications for great leaps in American tool design (like Justus Traut’s 1888 plane iron lateral adjuster, used ever since by the Stanley company), and for thousands of smaller steps forward.
»more»Another toaster museum
Here is another web collection of toasters to add to the one I pointed out last year.
»more»Collecting saw handles
As a harmless distraction from war and mayhem, consider the aesthetic merits of saw handles. Like this one — the beech handle of a nineteenth century dovetail saw made by Thos Turner & Co, of Sheffield.
»more»A collection of cartes-de-visite
Instead of sitting in a rustic chair in the company of birds I have spent a little time scanning Queensland carte-de-visite photographs so you can see them here.
»more»The wooden library
The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences maintains the Alnarp Library, which specialises in horticulture and landscape planning. Its collection includes a wooden library. I’ll quote from the library’s website:
»more»Conserving photographs
I spent today at a photographic preservation workshop, looking closely at daguerreotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes and other early photographs, and learning how to care for them. Thanks to Lydia Egunnike, conservator at the State Library of Queensland, for an excellent session. My little collection is in for some tender loving care.
»more»Japanese manhole covers
Thanks to the Museum of Online Museums for pointing out this collection of Japanese manhole covers. The text is in Japanese (which I can’t read) but the colourful covers speak for themselves. I have previously mentioned manhole covers in Chandigarh and other places.
»more»Toaster museum
German web designer Jens Veerbeck indulges himself with a toaster museum attached to his business site. Like the letterpress museum this is a collection that can be filtered various ways — in this case, by country of origin, by features, and by manufacturer. Our host writes:
Letterpress museum
Briarpress.org has a delicious online museum. Dozens of virtual printing presses are here, richly linked and organised, displayed with other tools of the trade. And there is an illustrated glossary of letterpress terms — handy if you don’t know your frisket from your tympan. I admire the clarity of words, pictures and navigation. My congratulations to Eric Nevin and the other authors.
»more»Collecting bread tags
Here’s another one for the ratbag file. Someone known as Transactoid has an online collection of bread tags, with illustrated notes about tag types and terminology for collectors. Compared with this, even banana stickers or vomit bags sound engaging.
»more»The Russian avant-garde book 1910-34
Thanks to Andy Crewdson for pointing out the website of this exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
»more»Musee Mechanique reprieved
David Nebenzahl of San Bruno, California has sent me a cheery message: My sad story about the Musee Mechanique has a happy sequel.
Musee Mechanique to close
Read about community upset over closure of San Francisco’s Musee Mechanique. The National Park Service plans to refurbish the historic building where the collection is housed.
»more»Museum of Jurassic technology
The MJT is my special place for this month. Here’s a selection of websites that illuminate that remarkable institution:
»more»National Quilt Register
This is a note of appreciation for the National Quilt Register, a web-accessible database of historic quilts in Australia. Details and pictures of more than 1000 quilts from around the country are already available. Some are in museums, some privately kept but, as the blurb on the website says, the quilts stay where they are and the stories are shared.
»more»More manhole covers
German photographer Roland Mühler’s website includes a gallery of fine photographs of street manhole covers. Remember my snapshot of the one in Chandigarh? Roland’s are much nicer (and there are 45 of them).
»more»Ratbag of note: Erik von Sneidern
Erik runs the Disstonian Institute, a website full of arcane information about Disston saws. Henry Disston started making saws in 1840 and for the next hundred years Disston saws were the best in America.
»more»The Fritz collection
In 1993 in a bric-a-brac store the Viennese artist Oliver Croy discovered somebody’s oeuvre packed away in rubbish bags: 387 model buildings and a collection of ca. 3,000 slides. He bought them all for about 500 Euro. The slides document the period from 1965 to 1975, often showing an obese man, a bald-headed person of regular habits, orderly dressed, wearing old fashioned glasses. The slides are also showing several travels together with his female collegue and his wife, on the trip with their VW beetle. The destinations were, with few exceptions, the Austrian Alps.
See the article at designboom.com.
Planespotting
If you pick up Stanley planes in junk shops and wonder how old they are, I have a suggestion. Print out this web page and carry it with you. It’s a dichotomous key: Answer a few yes/no questions about the tool to discover its date. You might find a Type 1 (1867-1869), worth a lot of money to an obsessed Stanley collector.
»more»Virtual museum: HistoryWired
New from the Smithsonian Institution is HistoryWired: a few of our favourite things, a showcase of objects and stories. You can navigate the collection of objects with a very clever map that shows thematic connections between them. The site design builds on the experimental Revealing things website I wrote about in the Ironic column.
»more»Object of obsession: the clutch pencil
Dennis B Smith runs a website he calls leadholder.com, subtitled the online drafting pencil museum. This seriously obsessive site catalogues all known makes and models of clutch pencils (which Americans call leadholders). The site is very nicely designed and written.
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