The name Rotring will forever be synonymous with the tubular technical pens on which their business was built, so it easy to forget that they were also highly regarded for…
The other day I broke my own rule of not buying any more of those turn of the century imported student-quality sets sold in vast quantities, primarily by Jackson Brothers, but…
The Bennett "Marvel" Geometric compass is a classic example of the torturous development and ultimate failure of an overcomplicated solution to a problem that never really existed in the first…
Not to be confused with Galileo's compass, the Staedtler Galileo could be considered one of the last radical redesigns of the modern compass, literally turning the usual fine-adjustment spindle concept…
School geometry sets have always been tangential to my main interest in professional drawing instruments, but occasionally something odd will catch my eye. This particular set attracted no attention on…
While researching a couple of new W.F. Stanley finds this weekend, I happened upon a couple of very exciting early sources (well, exciting for me anyway) that had until now…
The Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, gets its name from the flamboyant baroque imagery that covers 40,000 square feet of its interior walls and ceilings. Designed…
Today's featured set is a very nice quality wallet case originally retailed by the University of Toronto Engineering Society. It was interesting to discover that this society still exists today,…
While hunting around for more background on Taguel's mould-breaking elliptical compass, I came across a long and detailed paper entitled "Elliptographs, and the Application of Elliptical Curves" by Frank J.…
There are some drawing instruments that seem almost designed to stand out from the crowd, be it aesthetically or as the result of a radical departure from established archetypes. One…