Greetings Workateers! It looks like this week's issue of
Work is the photography issue. It's front-loaded with two consecutive articles on the subject. Remarkable concentration by
Work standards if you ask me. While this seems like an excellent time to talk about how photography has risen to an unprecedented position of importance to the manual arts as they persist in an information-based era, I'm going to skip all that and just thank
Fryd.
ARTICLES FOUND IN THIS ISSUE:
A CHEAP ENLARGING CAMERA
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CYANOTYPES OR BLUE PHOTOGRAPHS
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A "CHEVAL SCREEN" ESCRITOIRE
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SIGN WRITING AND LETTERING (CONT'D)
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SMITH'S WORK (CONT'D)
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PANELS FOR WOOD CARVING (CONT'D)
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ARMATURES AND ASSAYING
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OUR GUIDE TO GOOD THINGS
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SHOP: A CORNER FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO TALK IT
<Fryd is a recent addition to the corps of maniacs who get things done here at TFWW. Specifically, she has taken on the daunting job of photographing and processing all of the issues of
Work into the web-ready PDFs we have come to know and love.
It's difficult work, and, as you might imagine, there is a hell of a lot of it to boot. So at this auspicious juncture in our discourse, I suggest we all raise a glass of some period-appropriate medicinal liquid to Fryd, who is, no doubt, currently slaving over a hot laptop so we can have our engravings fresh next Friday.
Skål!
On the furniture front: For those of us who got all hot and bothered over the Screen Secretary in issue No.10 (yours truly included), this week's strikingly similar Cheval Screen Escritiore represents the next level in fancy, gracile, bric-à-brac-shelves-cum-writing-desk. It's taller, fancier, more Japanese, and looks rather like it's about to topple over from an attack of
the vapors. Nearly passing out all the time was once highly fashionable, you know.
More importantly, the article is delivered with a sort of next level detachment that emphasizes design choices over specific instructions with rigid dimensions.
This theme is carried on in the article "Panels for Woodcarving." It's a masterful treatise about getting your act together when it comes to carved foliate compositions. It's almost as though the contributors are saying, "It's time to learn about guiding principles. You're on your own anyway, so get used to it and make something great." Maybe by issue 13 the editor has decided it's time to let the dogs off the leash a little. Maybe the readership was bristling against the profusion of easy-peasy beginner projects.
In any case, the ambition ranking for articles seems to be on the rise and I say it's about time. I could use the motivation. I could also use one of those sexy, all-inclusive Melhuish tool cabinets. Note the glue pot using the massive jointer plane for a shelf. Clever.
–TIM
• Click to Download Vol.1 - No. 13 •
Disclaimer: Articles in Work: The Illustrated Weekly Journal for Mechanics describe materials and methods that would not be considered safe or advisable today. We are not responsible for the content of these magazines, and cannot take any responsibility for anyone attempting projects or procedures described therein.
The first issue of Work was published on March 23rd, 1889. The goal of this project is to release digital copies of the individual issues starting on the same date in 2012, effectively republishing the materials 123 years to the day from their original release.
The original printing was on thin, inexpensive paper. There are many cases of uneven inking and bleed-through from the page behind. Our copies of Work come from bound library volumes of these issues and are subject to unfavorable trimming, missing covers, etc. To minimize harm to these fragile volumes, we've undertaken the task of scanning the books ourselves. We do considerable post processing of the scans to make them clear but please bear with us if a margin is clipped too close, or a few words are unreadable. We would like to thank James Vasile and Karl Fogel for their help in supplying us with a book scanner and generally enabling this project to get off the ground.
You are welcome to download, print, and pretty much do what you want with the scan for your own personal purposes. Feel free to post a link or a copy on your blog or website. All we ask is a link back to the original project and this blog. We are not answering requests for commercial downloads or reprinting at this time.
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For me the screen secretary could be a good useful modern furniture form. I think the Escritiore belongs in an antique store to display all those small bits of bric-a-brac that you buy on a whim and later wonder who would like it as a small present.