Mark Frauenfelder Old School
>> Mark Frauenfelder is editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine. mark@boingboing.net
When I was at a thrift store recently, I came across a collection of over 100 booklets from the 1950s that had been, as stated on their back covers, “Prepared especially for the GM Men and Women by the General Motors Information Rack Service.”
The booklets covered an astoundingly wide variety of topics, including craft-related titles such as Transformagic: How to Make Old Furniture into New, You Can Make Art Your Hobby, Easy Patterns: How to Sew with Only Simple Pieces of Material, and my personal favorite, There’s Magic in Clay.
Can you imagine any major corporation today handing out booklets to its workers titled There’s Magic in Clay In this slim volume, potter Kay Harrison teaches how to make a half dozen clay figures, including a clown, which “makes a very good conversation-piece when the neighbors call, and builds up your ego to no end,” and “Jug Head,” an anthropomorphic liquor bottle whom Harrison assures her readers will be a “cunning woman’s home companion on the nights that papa is ‘out with the boys.’” (One can’t help but wonder if Harrison’s magic was in the jug rather than the clay.)
The instructional utility of the booklets vary widely from volume to volume. The sewing book, for instance, provides detailed instructions for making garments such as a romper sunsuit, a pinafore, and a cuffed box jacket.
The art book, on the other hand, glosses over four years of art school in a dozen pages with nearly useless advice such as “Don’t worry about perspective ... Learn it by drawing!”
Even the silliest of the books are a joy to read. I’m sorry large companies are no longer encouraging their employees to enjoy life, but I’m glad that in the last several years, people have rediscovered the joy
The craft booklets shown here are just a few of the
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