The Art of Book Design: The Swedish Fairy Book

Klara Stroebe, ed. Translated by Frederick Martens. Illustrations by George W. Hood. The Swedish Fairy Book, New York, Frederick A. Stokes, 1921.

I really enjoyed Pasakas, the Latvian book of fairy tales sent in by rq, so I thought I’d check out some other foreign tales. There are a myriad of Swedish fairy tale books, but this edition caught  my eye. In the preface to the book the author tells us that,

 There has been no attempt to “rewrite” these charming folk-and fairy-tales in the translation. They have been faithfully narrated in the simple, naive manner which their traditional rendering demands.

The tales might be traditional, but the artwork isn’t. The cover art and interior plates are all rendered in soft, flowing watercolors more typical of the art nouveau period than the Medieval period. Enjoy! [Read more…]

Z is for Zaffre

From Nightjar,

Z is for Zaffre

Zaffre.

A deep blue pigment obtained from cobalt ore. I thought these Lithodora prostrata flowers were close enough.

 

Link to previous alphabet post

♦♦♦

It’s obvious that Nightjar put a lot of time and thought into this project and I thank her so much for sharing it with all of us. The series has been full of surprises and gorgeous photography and along the way I learned a few new colors and fell in love with a jet black cat, who is my final choice for favourite – B is for Black Mia with the soft green eyes.

 

Jack’s Walk

Queen Anne’s Lace, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Well, call me sleeping beauty because that’s about all I’ve done in the past 24 hours. Yesterday after my injections I lay down. That was around 7 pm and I more or less slept until 2 o’clock this afternoon. That’s 19 hours of sleep, one right after another. I must have gotten up to pee once or twice because I didn’t pee the bed, but I don’t remember. I don’t think I’ve ever slept so long, not even as a slothful teenager.

Since I’ve woken up I’ve managed to take Jack for a walk and… nap. It seems that 19 hours was not quite enough sleep because every time I sit down I conk out. I’m pretty sure if I go to bed now I’ll sleep until morning so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Night, night.

Jack’s Walk

Stick out your tongue and say aahh ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I were out pretty early this morning because I had an out-of-town doctors appointment that took up most of the rest of my day. About every 3 or 4 weeks I get lidocaine injections along my spine that help control pain and muscle spasms related to scoliosis and fibromyalgia. It’s a bad day in a good way. The injections are exhausting and wipe me out, but that’s partly because I can feel the relief of my muscles relaxing. It’s a bit like breathing out after holding your breath for a really long time. I’m a bit dizzy, a bit light-headed and a bit groggy. That’s with a successful set of injections. Not every set is as good as every other, but I’ve been with this Dr. for a few years now and she’s gotten pretty good at figuring out the twists and dips of my spine. So, now I’m going to toddle off to bed and by morning I hope to have my cheerful back.

The Art of Book Design: Little Curiosity, The Story of a German Christmas

J.M. Callwell. Little Curiosity, The Story of a German Christmas. London (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin), Blackie and Son, 1884.

Surprise! It’s July 25 –  the perfect day for mid-summer Christmas. I love that this cover has none of the usual trappings that appear on later books about the season. There’s no snow, no crèche, no tinseled tree and nary a gift in sight – just a happy little bird singing.

 

via: University of Florida Digital Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries

 

YouTube Video: What Can House Elves Teach Us About Slavery? (Harry Potter Theory)

In the past, I have expressed the opinion that just about the only really decent person in the whole Potterverse is Hermione Granger and I stand by that statement. Every single wizard was way too keen on having slaves.

I found this guy’s pronunciation a bit difficult to understand, but I got over it and the video was informative. I did not know that the argument “slaves are happy” was actually really used in the UK by anti-abolitionists since education about the minutiae of slavery is not really part of the curriculum in our schools.

Jack’s Walk

Lean on me ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I are enjoying being outside this week. The heat wave has finally broken and so has the high humidity, making it ever so much easier to get out for walks. We don’t have to get up before dawn or go out late at night and even the mid-afternoon is an acceptable time to be outside if there’s a bit of shade around. We’ve also been able to turn the air-conditioning off at home which is the biggest plus of all. I’d much rather have my windows open and tuned to the sounds of my neighbourhood than listen to the droning hum of the A/C unit.

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 13 – Headscratching Curls

These are the three blades that were quenched by using protective stainless steel foil. The function of the foil is to prevent decarburization during the extremely high temperature at which this steel needs to be held at for prolonged time in order to get all carbides into solution.

My initial thoughts were that the blades warped because they are ground too thin. Well, that is not true. Today I have measured the thickness and they are indeed way thinner than I should have made them – all are just 0,35-0,45 mm thick at the cutting edge – but three of the remaining blades are even thinner, three are in the same range and only four are thicker. And of those thinner or just as thin as these, one has very, very slight bend towards the tip that should be possible to correct, and the rest is straight.

So the blade thickness is not the cause. I cannot imagine what else could it be, I do not believe that the foil could have such impact, not to mention that these blades were pulled out of the foil prior to quenching.

My second guess would be decarburization, maybe the experimental protective coating did not work as well as it should and the steel has lost some of its carbon, making it less prone to warping in the quench. But it should also leave it much softer post quench, and I just do not see that.

I have tried my hardness assessing gauges on bought kitchen knife – that big fat stainless steel overpriced junk to be precise – and I got the same result as for the softest one of these – that is, approx 52 HRC.

This means that the blades where my 62 gauge does not scratch are definitively the hardest blades and harder than the store-bought one. And the 62 gauge scratches all these three, but it does not scratch 3 of those where I used the experimental protective coating. And to add to the confusion, one of those three hardest ones is also one of the thinnest. This to me rules out decarburization as the deciding factor for the warping, although it might have caused the high variation in hardness.

I do not believe it is due to my grinding skill, because that should distribute the warping randomly and not only on the three blades that were quenched with foil.

Currently, I am just scratching my head. Any opinion is welcome.

My next step can be either to make these blades circa 5 mm narrower by grinding away the curly parts or trying to re-harden them with the protective coating and maeybe even trying plate-quenching instead of oil. I have never done plate quenching, maybe this could be a good opportunity to try it out…