Monday, September 19, 2011

Tool time



I've been gathering and scanning copyright free images of hand tools for quite some time. Some of the originals have turned up in collages while I've been tinkering with the scans for a line of greeting cards. I've found the images in a number of sources but my favorite, by far, has been a scruffy copy of "Educational Wood Working For School and Home" by Joseph C. Park.

It was created, wrote Parks, because of "the increased popularity of manual training as a part of the curriculum of the public schools and the demand for a text-book that can be put into the hands of pupils so that they may be held responsible for important subject matter in connection with woodworking." He was affiliated with the State Normal and Training School of Oswego, N.Y. (see postcard below). The first edition was published by MacMillan in 1908.

The author received engravings from a variety of American tool and machine manufacturers, as well as information on their products to use in the book and some of the pages are more than suitable for framing on their own, such as the ones showing nail varieties. Each time I page through the book, I seem to discover an overlooked image - so, the scanning continues.