I ask you, what does an old book have in common with a Stanley #55? Or even a #444??
The answer is, drum roll please... lots. Sorry if that was a letdown in the excitement department. Hey, you made a choice in reading this blog post. I just write the stuff when the spirit moves me.
Lately I've been researching authors of 18th, 19th and early 20th century books on the trades. Mostly on woodworking, but also on leather, bookbinding, textiles, and even design. What surprises me most are the number of authors and titles that are never mentioned in our current crop of literature on trades, crafts and the use of tools. There are authors whose names pop up over and over again: Hasluck, Hodgson, Jones, to name a few. This short list got me to wonder'n... weren't there more authors, titles and publishers and what happened to them all? What happened to all the copies of the currently famous titles? Many were reprinted for anywhere from 20-50 years, some even longer.
They were used up. Bought, read, sullied with the grime of working hands, dipped in coffee or tea, marked with heelprints and generally abused as any working tool would be. When the hinges failed, the binding threads rotted out and the pages become fodder for the compost pile (where there compost piles in the 18th C? Or just pig troughs?), the books were tossed. Now how does this relate to the Stanley #55, #444? Use begats compost. Disuse begats a long shelf life.
I contend that many of the better books on trades and crafts of the past centuries have been used up past their life spans. Sure, the influx of acidic paper beginning in the mid 1800's introduced an auto-destruct cycle worthy of Dr. Strangelove. Yet I find that authors and titles that were in print for a good many years are now either rare or in such poor shape they barely qualify as books. Some authors, in my humble opinion, surpass the much bally-hooed works in reprint today. And that brings us back to the #55 and #444. Made a tool with all the bells and whistles, and what do you have? A possible member of the Hall of Hand Tool Infamy. And a tool that continues to be found in such a miraculous state of preservation to make the heart of any tool auctioneer swell with dollar signs.
There were some truly great publishers, such as Henry Carey Baird or Upton Gill, who produced troves of excellent mateiral for the burdgeoning manual trades market. The really good stuff was read, referred to, pages through and used up. The so-so material, the stuff that tried to cover everything or covered it too little, too late or too haphazardly... well, those titles hung around. It's like a tool. The well used tool worked as it should. The spiffy clean mint-in-box tool was purchased, tried (perhaps) and relugated to the shelf, waiting for a future collector to snap it up for display in the "who has the most tools at death, wins" challenge. I, of course, have never been a collector of anything. Things just follow me home and I have a soft heart for strays.
These meandering thoughts started to bother me while reading a new acquisition, a two volume, 1896 reprint of Joseph Moxon's Mechanic Exercises, or The Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing. In the preface, the author, DeVinne, notes that Moxon printed very few of the first set of Handy-Works serials. Which explains why so few of the first edition exist today. The so-called third edition (no one really knows for sure just how many times it was reprinted) was printed for a greater length of (unknown) time. Yet even there, the total number of books was limited. My copy of the trades Mechanics Exercises is well used. Heel marks, finger prints, what might be ages old tea drips and so on abound in it's pages. I'ld hazard that only the value of the book to the various owners caused it's existance today. In looking at later 19th century titles, I often find the same thing. Books that were in constant re-issue over the decades are hard to find in good condition. Books that saw little use or were in print for relatively short periods of time are often found in very good or better condition.
Which brings me back once again to the #55 and #444. My old low knob #4 has seen a better day but it still works just fine. Disclosure: I have never owned a #55 or a #444 and never will, unless someone wants to send one to me just for laughs. Give me a well-used book that shows it's value through the owner's marks. Give me a book that was in continuous print for decades. Give me a book that was written by someone who knew their craft and wished to pass on their knowledge not solely for fame, but for love of the craft. Paint spots on a book cover tell me it was read in the shop. Finger worn page edges tell me which chapters the reader valued. Broken hinges tell me, well, they tell me the quality of book binding had suffered with the change-over to mechanization. Not to mention the ubiquity of wood pulp.
I'm returning to my search for authors and titles long lost to our shelves.
Till next
Gary
