Mark Frauenfelder
Old School
>> Mark Frauenfelder is editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine.
mark@boingboing.net
A Crafty Worker Is
a Happy Worker
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
