Escher’s pencil
I recently took some time out to see the M.C. Escher exhibition at Somerset House in London. Coincidentally, the day of my visit also happened to be Escher's birthday, which…
Mira, Mira
It is a rare treat to find a drawing tool conceived, designed and manufactured entirely in Canada, especially one as off-the-wall as the Mira. Packed four to a box, which…
Superbow Sunday 2026
As Superbow Sunday rolls around once more (or should that be "bounces erratically"?) this year's edition is well deserving of the name Superbow XL - yes, you heard that right,…
Elliott’s Great Newport Street proportional dividers: when German silver was still German
Prompted by David Riches' recent find of an early Watkins & Hill proportional divider in nickel silver (aka German silver, aka electrum), I finally got around to writing about another unusual example…
Thornton 1962 catalogue
For all the Thorntonites out there, I have uploaded my recently acquired 1962 AG Thornton Ltd catalogue (9.6 MB PDF) and price list (1.7 MB PDF) to the Internet Archive.…
Stanley catalogue sizes
In my earlier post on Stanley's 1966 catalogue, I noticed an oversight that deserved clarification. Having described the two formats of catalogue that Stanley relied on from the early years of the…
Ruling pen multipacks
A recent discussion about Stanley's 20th-century "Perma" cases and their ruling pens reminded me of an uncommon four-pen set that I acquired as part of a lot of modern drawing instruments. At…
Unknown maker, date, country – pretty much everything!
"Assume nothing" is my usual mantra when buying off ebay, but occasionally I still make assumptions that turn out to be completely wrong. On this occasion I thought I knew…
Superbow Sunday 2025
Superbow Sunday is here again, and if there is one thing people like more than the event itself, it's the commercials. So what better way to celebrate the day than…
Three Brunel compasses
At long last I got around to photographing my motley crew of three cased Brunel compasses, primarily to compare details with another example of the type recently acquired by David Riches. I…
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