Category: hand tools

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1532 Press

german-press1

 

This is a detail from the 12 brothers foundation, a link is listed in the post below.  A few thoughts about the press pictured in the portrait of Hans Landaver, dated 1532.  Foote identifies this as a small standing press.  I think it is a German style press that is lying on it’s side– often these are used to clean spines or tie up when covering. It would make little sense to press a book like this once the bosses and corners were attached- more likely it is holding the book for purposes of illustration.  Especially when viewed from this angle, it is uncannily similar to a sewing frame– in fact the edge of the bench almost mimics a top crossbar. This press is puzzling, and I can’t figure out how it would function.  I assume the squarish nuts that form the ends of the screws would be used to tighten this press, but the smaller circles on them seem to indicate they don’t move along the thread.  Possibly the wood is directly threaded? Maybe they function to keep the threads from pulling through, and both pieces of wood are drilled for clearance, and a nut would be attached from the other side?  The thread angle is roughly 45 degrees, which would be unusable, but it is a fairly common artistic convention for the time.

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Good Diehl

Edith Diehl’s “Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique”, thanks in part to an inexpensive and ubiquitous Dover reprint, is perhaps one of the most common introductory bookbinding manuals.  Although frequently maligned for propagating innacuracies, especially the historical section, the practical section is informative and well done.  I use her sequence of leather covering steps when teaching– it is a clear, calm list of what needs to be done. Panicking students, covering their first full leather binding, often find it reassuring.  Her diagrams in general are concise and present the relevant information in an easy to follow manner.

 

diehl-hammer2

 

This hammer came from her studio, via Gerard Charrier, who purchased many of her tools. It is a large London pattern cramping hammer and according to Salaman, Barnsley’s 1890 catalog of cobblers tools lists six sizes of them, this one is a “No. 1”.  It is similar to a French hammer and is used to paning the sole edge, heel breast and waists of shoes. He also notes that this style of hammer was already going out of fashion by 1839!  The head is quite large, 55mm, so I don’t use it for binding- more often to tenderize pork when making tonkatsu, or in place of a proper beating hammer.  Even though I don’t use it for binding, the feeling of using historic tools remains somewhat inexpressible. Touching the  smooth worn areas at the end of handle, examining dirt near the head, or polished areas around the cheeks, gives me direct tactile and visual information about how Diehl held it.  The makers mark is fragmentary, but it starts “CHAMMO…” with “CAST STEEL” stamped underneath.   This hammer must have been the one she copied for the illustration below, unless she had more than one of them.  The illustration is from page 143 of the Dover edition.

 

diehl-hammer

 

Diehl  likes a large and heavy  hammer, feeling they are less likely to damage signatures by leaving small indentations in the spine.  She also makes the point that when using a heavy hammer, its weight does most of the work, so there is less danger of forcing it and damaging the signatures.  She specifically recommends that the hammer should be weighted so that the face balances even if no one is holding the handle, as both the photo and figure clearly show.  I find it a bit odd, given the attention to detail in most of her diagrams, that she didn’t depict the eye in this one. There are two photographs of students using a similar London pattern hammer in Palmer’s 1927 manual “A Course on Bookbinding for Vocational Occupation”, found on the frontispiece  and on page 38. One is using the face to back a book, the other the  peen. 

I also have a book from Diehl’s library. Her gold stamped book plate is quite lovely. It only measures 35mm high and 27mm wide and I assume it is St. Jerome.

 

diehl-bookplate1

 

 

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hot-wash-stick

 

I bought this stick a couple of weeks ago at an antique store.  It is about 12 inches long and the squared end on the right is about 1 inch thick.  I didn’t know what it was, but liked the smooth, worn surface and seemingly intentional shaping.  As I paid my three dollars, the mother of the owner of the store, who was 85, asked me if I knew what it was.  I replied that I didn’t.  “It’s a hot wash stick,” she said.  “I used to use one like this when I was a girl.  When we had really dirty cloths, we would bleach and boil them on a stovetop. We would use a stick like this to lift them out.” Then she demonstrated how she would hold the knob on the right, while poking in the pot with the other end. 

Suddenly this old stick was transformed into a useful tool- desiccated from being repeatedly dipped in hot water, the left side bleached  and the handle darkened from hand oils.  Although simple, the squared handle is quite comfortable to grasp, and could easily be used to stir the pot as well.  Without this verbal labeling, this tool most likely would have spent the rest of its life as an odd shaped stick.It is similar to another tool, called a spurtle, which is a traditional Scottish wood rod used to stir stews. 

Usually, I analyze the material makeup of objects, the technologies used to create them and examine evidence of use to theorize about what an object is.  Here, however, information not directly contained in object gives it context and meaning.

How many other extant objects have lost their labels?