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…
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…
"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 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…
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…
A huge thanks to Robert Pilla of the Drawing Instruments group for helping me solve the mystery of my Elliott Bros dial dividers posted back in January. His reference to…
Interesting European drawing instruments have been a bit thin on the ground here in the UK over the last couple of years, but occasionally something unexpected still turns up. In…
As today is St David's Day, the traditional feast day of the patron saint of Wales, I decided to showcase a drawing instrument that was actually manufactured in Wales. The…
I heard it on the grapevine that today the USA celebrates "Superbow Sunday", apparently an annual national event of great importance - and who am I to argue with that?…
In the same vein as Staedtler's Galileo, the 1990s also saw Rotring trying to reinvent the compass, in particular the spindle-adjustment master bow. The resulting design is unusual not only in…