Archive | Stuff

‘Make do and mend‘ – a glorious wartime idiom that we seldom use in today’s disposable society. There was a time when chipped, cracked or broken household items of value (particularly china and glass) would be taken to menders and metalsmiths to be repaired. The repairs; inventive and created with integrity employing laborious techniques would often produce whimsical results. Traditionally antique dealers considered these pieces to be damaged and of lesser value. However, with craftsmanship in decline, the value of work is now being recognised and highly valued by dealers and collectors alike. Keep your eyes peeled, look in that $1 box of cast-offs and you may strike broken gold!

Via our World Wide Corrospondent –  Stimpson, J.

A drawing for an article in the Boston Globe – ‘Astonish Me‘ by Maggie Shipstead

Way back in 1978 plans were laid for ‘A Paperless Society’. People began to champion the idea that one day we might achieve a utopian society that was devoid of paper. After all, the soon world of a coming electronics revolution would make void and useless the need for paper documents, mail, letters, etc.

I confess to a love of paper, it is to me a delightfully interesting medium of using, marking and making things of every sort. I enjoy finding discarded scraps of paper on the ground, the smell of a newly opened ream of Hammermill 24 lb. bond, and reading long ago and current books, magazines and newspapers. Just the other day while unpacking a box of studio ephemera packed in 1998, I found it equally interesting to read the articles and ads on the pages of the newspaper used for wrapping as viewing the contents of the box the paper was protecting.

In 1978 when reading of the coming paperless society, I recall thinking about the Eloi, inhabitants of a future time on earth in a novel by H.G. Wells ‘The Time Machine’. They didn’t use much paper, but I’ll bet the Morlocks were manufacturing bales of it down below in their dirty machine infested caves.