What’s this? What’s this?
One of the particular pleasures of this show (the one we went to over the weekend) are the old tools. Several long rows of vendors selling old carpentry tools, car parts, gas cans, garden seats. Bunch of rusty junk, but often cheap and lots of fun.
The farm tools, like the ones above, are particularly interesting. They tend to be regional, locally manufactured (perhaps even by a village blacksmith) and intended for a very particular job. Like…I dunno…prying ant nests out of fields whole (that is a real tool I saw once, though I don’t see an example there).
Problem is, with many of these tools, nobody has the slightest idea what they were intended to do. The old boys have died out. We often ask, we sometimes get an answer, but more often not.
See if you can figure any of these out. Don’t try it from the little version: here’s a color pic (about a meg). The handles often provide the best clue.
There won’t be a quiz later, though. Just to break the suspense, I only know what a couple of these things were for.
September 13, 2017 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 21
I’m a steamroller, baby
Not just one steamroller. I bet there were ten, at least. Great big things.
We stood and watched them pass and the earth — I swear — dipped under a couple of them, like a fat man moved across a wood floor. This is solid ground that has been passed over by these things dozens of times, and they still left tracks.
This was the last country show of our season. Weather was predicted to be rainy, so some of the exhibitors ducked out at the last minute. That’s kind of worrying, to be honest. When these events decline, even for perfectly explicable reasons, sometimes it causes a chain reaction of decline. Several of our favorite events have vanished in the last few years, and several more have shrunk.
Expecting a big blow tonight. Not Irma-sized, obviously, but chilly and miserable. We’ve had fires at night for a week. September, huh! Glad everyone from Florida is still with us…!
September 12, 2017 — 8:38 pm
Comments: 12
This again.
Ugh. September 11 falls on a weekday again this year. I don’t usually post on the anniversary — I’ve already said everything I wanted to say about it. On the other hand, it feels wrong to post about silly things on this day, so I just give it a miss.
Don’t mean to be a drama queen, though. Feel free to talk about Irma or your weekend or whatever in the comments.
September 11, 2017 — 8:50 pm
Comments: 22
One that got away
I’m going to propose a law — let’s call it Weasel’s Law — which states that the very first time you look for something on eBay, you will find a splendid example of that thing, better than any subsequent example you will see, even if you look and look. And the Corollary: it will go for reasonable money and, like an idiot, you won’t buy it.
When I was grinding up old watercolors over the weekend, I got to wondering how much mullers were going for on eBay, and I found this beautiful little object. It is a tiny Georgian hand blown blue glass muller, about three inches high. In the days of powdered wigs and beauty spots, it was used to prepare makeup at m’lady’s dressing table.
Here’s the description from the seller:
This little glass muller is two and three-eighths inches high and the base is just under two inches in diameter.
It was hand blown from Bristol Blue-Glass and dates from 1700s England. The dead-flat base is honed to create friction during the grinding, and the top where the pontil was is simple cut off and polished.
Some types of pan make-up were made in the household of the lady who wore it, and the ingredients (often containing white lead!) would be put onto a small glass or marble sheet. The muller would be placed on the ingredients and spread with downward pressure and circular movements until it formed a fine paste with the base medium, which was some type of fat. The make-up could then be applied immediately.
This would go nicely with the patch-stand already in your collection!
Yes, you may see it in color. Isn’t it a pip?
When I first spotted it, the price was hovering around £14. Later, though, someone must have put in a pretty high bid, because every time I upped mine his automagically topped it. In the end, I let it go for £27. I just couldn’t see paying so much for a tiny, precious object I’d be terrified to use. Even though it’s less than most brand new ones.
Okay, that’s enough art sperging for one week. Tomorrow, we have Dead Pool Round Whatever. Back here, 6 sharp, getcher favorite soon-to-be stiff!
I leave you with this picture of Cornellisen’s painting grinding room back in the day:
September 7, 2017 — 9:17 pm
Comments: 28
You’re welcome!
Do we use the word “japanning” in the States? See, I’ve always been a Winsor & Newton kind of gal, and they’re a British company that sells japanned watercolor boxes, so I’m unsure of the origins. Well, anyhoo, it’s a durable, waterproof, shiny black coating on (usually) metal. Early car parts were sometimes japanned, for example.
It’s called ‘japanning’, by the way, because it was in imitation of Japanese black lacquerware. Proper lacquer is done with sap from the lacquer tree, duh. Here’s how Wikipedia describes it: “The sap of the lacquer tree, today bearing the technical description of “urushiol-based lacquer,” has traditionally been used in Japan. As the substance is poisonous to the touch until it dries, the creation of lacquerware has long been practiced only by skilled dedicated artisans.”
My new watercolor box is japanned (Brit style), and before it came, I had no idea how damaged it might be, so I set out to see if I could learn the secrets of re-japanning.
Viola! I give you A Handbook On Japanning, 1913 edition. It turns out, it’s just shellac and pigment baked in a 300° oven. No, I haven’t tried it yet. My box doesn’t need it. But I’m itching to japan something.
I’m a huge fan of shellac. Big, big fan. Shellac is not as common here, go figure, but I do have sources. It has a bad reputation among artists because it’s yellow, but I have samples that are upwards of 35 years old and, yes, they’re yellow…but no yellower than the day I first applied it. Same is certainly not true of linseed oil or damar varnish.
Anybody want to japan a thing and get back to me?
September 6, 2017 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 18
The grind…
My paintbox came with some old watercolor pans. I hadn’t intended to rehabilitate them — they were dusty, crusty old bricks — but I started totting up how much it would cost to replace them and I relented.
Some of the pans were nearly used up. There were paints from several different manufacturers spanning many years. In other words, whoever owned this box before me painted a lot. Like, a real lot. That makes me feel a bit funny. I wonder if this box will land back on eBay some day, anonymous again.
Watercolor, in theory, is infinitely re-wettable. Some people even believe the old materials are preferable. Not me; we’ve gotten better at manufacturing all sorts of things in our day, and I believe artificial pigments are among ’em. Particularly during and just after the War, there were some pretty shitty art materials on the market. But, hey, a half pan of cadmium red alone was going to cost £7, so let’s grind.
I sperged at length about making paint earlier this year. To rehabilitate watercolor, you really only need to smash it up with water but, since I decided for some reason not to bring my muller across the pond, that was easier said than done. All’s I had was a palette knife. I managed it in the end but it took some elbow grease and bent my favorite knife.
The recipe above is from L. Cornelissen and Son, a good old fashioned mid-Nineteenth C. London colorman. That’s what art shops were called back in the day, when you bought pigments and made your own. The paint tube (and therefore pre-manufactured paint) was invented about the time Cornelissen opened his shop and it took a while to catch on. (Incidentally, no paint tube, no Impressionism. Probably).
Well worth looking around their site. They still sell all the stuff! More paint recipes at the link, too.
Notice honey is one of the ingredients. It adds wettability and a certain slight gooiness. I had to add a bit to my grind, as these sad old paints were…whatever the total opposite of gooey is. Desiccated, I guess.
I suspect that Winsor and Newton, at least, still uses honey (or sugar syrup) in some of their colors, because I once had cockroaches attack a painting of mine back in my student apartment days. They neatly ate off the burnt sienna parts and left the rest. Weird.
p.s. That spooky bastard Carl has won another dick. That means a new Deadpool this Friday.
September 5, 2017 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 8
Supplies!
My new paint box. Why, sure you can see it in color. Hey, I had to have one to fit into my nice new leather map case, nay?
Yeah, given the choice between making art and fooling around with art supplies GIVE ME ART SUPPLIES! GIVE ME! NOW!
It’s not new, of course. I had to have something appropriately old and funky. Somehow, this was my first foray into the sinkhole of “vintage” art supplies on eBay.
I mean, there’s some awfully cool stuff in there, and some awfully old stuff, and some terrifyingly expensive stuff, sometimes all three at once. And then there was the pockmarked old Winsor and Newton field painting box that some dang fool was trying to get hundreds for. Because vintage.
As if. It looked exactly like one I bought in the Seventies, but more banged up. (Hm. I wonder where my one got to?)
Anyway. This one wasn’t too expensive and — YES! — it fits perfectly, with room for a watercolor block.
Pff! I guess I have to paint stuff now.
September 4, 2017 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 6
Guess what?
Deborah HH asked in the thread below whether I used my own chickens in the paintings I recently showed in town. I did indeed and, I must say, I was surprised and pleased at how well received they were.
I am become S. Weasel, Famous Painter of Chickens.
So it shames me to admit I cannot unravel the terrible central mystery of the chicken physique: how the HELL do all those poofy tailfeathers come out of that little dealie on the ass end of a chook?
I leave you to ponder. Have a good weekend!
September 1, 2017 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 21
In liberty…
Snapshot of the chooks from earlier this week. That’s Mapp (the old one), Colette, Rosie and Jenny.
I get mail, thanks to this blog. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten hate mail, which is a little surprising given that I do occasionally touch on politics and politics is so effing fraught these days. A get a smattering of fan mail, some questions and lots of interesting links (thank you for that). And then I get mail like this:
Hi Weasel Times & Stoat Intelligencer editorial team,
My name is Sam and I’m an avid reader of Weasel Times & Stoat Intelligencer. I just wanted to say that I appreciate what you’re doing at Weasel Times & Stoat Intelligencer to encourage an open dialogue from both sides of the aisle. Few Americans today actively engage in meaningful, objective discourse to address the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda today.
I subscribe to the Weasel Times & Stoat Intelligencer newsletter and regularly send your emails to friends and family. Thanks for being a voice of reason.
In Liberty,
Sam
Sam manages to work in “Weasel Times & Stoat Intelligencer” four times in this short message. I’m not sure, but that title might be in the header text (it’s not visible through ‘show source’ – I’d have to look at the page code), which is where a bot would grab it. I can’t find any obvious links in the message or nothing fishy. There is a first and last name, and they match the email address. Any ideas?
Sam — if you there is an actual human being named Sam — on behalf of the whole editorial team, thank you very much. I was afraid to hit ‘reply’. You write like a bot, dude.
August 31, 2017 — 10:17 pm
Comments: 14
Band of Bluehairs
Another from a church flower festival: handbell ringers. Yes, they’re wearing Union Jack hats. It was ironic. They put them on for this one number. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear what it was.
Land of Hope and Glory, I think.
Here is an important question: when these blue-haired bell-ringers passes on, will that be the end of it? Or will those currently young retire to the country some day and take up the bells?
Will they be allowed to?
Neh. Cold, miserable, wet today (stuck in the middle of a period of sunshine and loveliness). Me for a hot bath and a book.
August 30, 2017 — 8:37 pm
Comments: 20