I literally gasped when I saw these lithographed renderings from A.W. Faber’s late 19th century catalog of pencils and other office supplies. The pamphlet cover states that Faber has factories in France and Germany and “houses” in London, Paris and Berlin. But the company address is at 78 Reade Street, right here in NYC. I applaud the University of Houston libraries: another superb digital archive. I came to this collection first via Tom Lynch’s blog Went Sketching. One of his posts then led me to the over-the-top obsessed German pencil-centric blog Lexikaliker. I love the interwebs.

Old Chum is one of my favorite blogs. The photographs are always surprising. I mean, look at these!! What’s even better is that the imagery is compelling enough to engender a curiosity about things for which I knew almost nothing, but now want to know more. Ah, the beauty of the interwebs.

I don’t think you can argue with my position on this: This piece of hardware is utterly fabulous. As the city’s public schools are either gradually overhauled, or completely demolished, these knobs make periodic appearances on ebay, etsy and, I suppose, the auction circuit. I’ve also seen reproductions available here. The knobs themselves are cast brass and have a very satisfying heft and feel in one’s hand. They were manufactured by Sargent & Company and date from the early 1900s. This beauty was spotted at Matt and Jody’s house over the weekend. They very kindly lent it to me after I assured them I would return it. In this case, older is definitely better.

More buried treasure unearthed in move. Two nearly identical rulers found at the now defunct Grand Street flea market way way back when. Happy designer.

I am in the process of packing and moving most of my art supplies to our place upstate and into my new studio. Woot!!! (Hopefully this explains the infrequent postings.) I have a teeny tiny office space here in Brooklyn, but now I finally have the chance to spread out and work in a different way, and on multiple projects at once. The plan is to keep things confined to computer and sketch pad here in the city. I am beyond excited to be digging into the full-scale messiness of the design process. Most of all…I am over the moon about not having to clean up at the end of the day. In the midst of all this sorting and boxing up, I came across my paintbrush roll. A bamboo mat with strips of elastic woven through it in order to keep the brushes secured. It seems to be an item from another life.