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…
1966 and All That – Stanley’s last catalogue
1966 may have been a memorable year for England's football team, but what about for the venerable English instrument maker WF Stanley? Having finally managed to track down a copy…