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.

En pointe: the finished collage

In the last post, I showed the initial idea for a new collage. Well, here is the completed piece. As it turned out, it didn't veer far from its start. I finished cutting out the figure and brightened her with watercolor markers, moved the pencil to the right, then added a gouge and a pen nib.

I toyed with some kind of landscape or stage for the background, then, went to my music file where I found piano music for "Air de ballet" by John Thompson that was published in 1929 by the Willis Music Co. of Cincinnati. Perfect. I glued it down, then added a layer of dance-related text from the 1927 edition of "Nursery Friends from France," one of the trio of My Travelship books published by Chicago's The Bookhouse for Children.

I didn't like the beige color of the papers, so I added layers of acrylic glazes in crimson, pink, bronze and buff, using a dry brush for some areas. It will be coated with a few coats of Hard Coat Mod Podge - a finish I'm testing for the first time to see if it is less sticky when dry than other finishes I've been using. Then, it will be topped by a spritz of acrylic UV sealer to help protect it from light exposure. 5" x 5" on archival mat board. [SOLD]

Note: The pen knife and other dancer will turn up tomorrow in a companion collage titled ... well, wait and see!