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…
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…
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…
Jopling’s Double Cranks
Occasionally it is worth buying something just to find out more about it, such as the box of jumbled geometric shapes that turned out to be Stanley's version of Archimedes'…
Purple Reign
Tangentially to my recent post on Bagshaw's patent diagrammeter, I was reminded of something that had always puzzled me, but until now had not seemed of any particular significance. As…
Plumbago, Canada!
Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends! This year to mark the occasion I decided to dig deep - beyond the ubiquitous Schoenner and Eichmüller wallets, past my lovely…
A nineteenth-century stencil set
Before the advent of CAD, laser printers, photocopiers and even that old favourite Letraset, stencil plates were widely used to apply standardised and decorative lettering to technical drawings. They were…