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Springtime and your mind turns to making writing boards. That's right,it's just been so cold that woodworking has taken a backseat to the basic art of staying warm.
Now, with some warm days in sight, I can finally rip and finish some very precious wood into the most basic of writing tools.
My brother Clark manufactures storage buildings from cypress, a warm and beautifully grained wood that needs no additional finish – even if you want to leave your wood to the elements.
These cypress pieces are leftovers from his big projects, but suit my writing board dimensions just fine.
As any calligrapher knows, none of the fine lettering hands was developed on a flat surface. Angled writing desks provide comfort for the writer and the ability for the scribe to see what their nibs are doing. Plus, the angle of the board can be adjusted to balance with the viscosity of the writing fluid.
The standard boards are 18x24 inches and collapse to about 2 inches deep.
I sell the basic boards with 3/16 Plexiglas® for $60 plus shipping.
These cypress boards will be $80 plus shipping.
I can make smaller boards and bigger boards – but they are custom projects and their cost runs from $75-120 just because it takes so much more time to construct them – and the Plexiglas® has to be custom cut.
My flowers enjoy the sawdust and I enjoy giving new calligraphers the tool that really sets them apart from those that will struggle on flat surfaces,
Of course you can put a CFL bulb behind the plexi and make this a great trace and copy board.
Need a writing board? Let me know.
Got a writing board, ink, pens and a desire to write? Get your stuff out of the closet and get back to it. Let me know if I can coach you into making more and better letters. © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com
Sure enough, signs of Spring!
The rebud buds are about to pop and the anemones are already strutting their stuff - as much as much as a flower flatter than moss can strut its stuff.
We walk and talk quietly around these little flowers because they are as big as they can be and they are doing all they can do. We just appreciate the fact that the ground temperature is high enough and that there is enough sunlight to make the little bulbs announce the arrival of Spring.
PLUS, on Sunday we get our hour of evening light back. Daylight Savings Time arrives and we have some more LIGHT at the close of the day.
The idea of daylight saving was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin during his sojourn as an American delegate in Paris in 1784, in an essay, An Economical Project.
Some of Franklin's friends, inventors of a new kind of oil lamp, were so taken by the scheme that they continued corresponding with Franklin even after he returned to America.
The idea was first advocated seriously by London builder William Willett (1857-1915) in the pamphlet, Waste of Daylight (1907), that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September. As he was taking an early morning a ride through Petts Wood, near Croydon, Willett was struck by the fact that the blinds of nearby houses were closed, even though the sun was fully risen. When questioned as to why he didn't simply get up an hour earlier, Willett replied with typical British humor, "What?" In his pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" he wrote:
Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used.
Not everyone is taken with the idea of the value of more sunlight at the end of the day. You have to love this comment made in 1947:
I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves. (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)
To find out how the world participates in DST just hop on over to www.timeanddate.com.
I think it is just more fun in the summertime! © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com
