Our Winter Headquarters

When people start emailing me wondering whether they've accidentally fallen off the newsletter list (since it's been so long since they've received one), I know I'm overdue for an update. Several weeks ago Brian, Declan and I all packed up for a month-long house swap in Minnesota. Being at "our winter headquarters" (as Brian called it) was a ton of fun. Lots of ice skating, hockey, and time with the family. The house swap was great and I'm seriously lusting over several apartments in Paris for our next trip. I know we'll make it there some day.

For me, it was most definitely a working vacation. I visited 20 different archives, scanning some of the most amazing engravings and lithographs--the oldest from the 1700s. Some of these images I will turn into collage sheets (like the Marie Antoinette painting in the upper left corner). Others will be made into calendars and greeting cards by some of my larger commercial clients. All together, I think I scanned more than 1000 new images. Here's a small sample (click on the image to zoom a bit). Now it's time to recover from the "vacation," catching up on everything I let slide while away (like the 1500+ feedbacks I still owe). Yikes.

Confessions of a Completist

I'm a completist. Not so much in the sense that I always finish what I start. In fact I wish that were more often the case. But more along the lines that when I start something, I want to do every single aspect of it thoroughly.

Let's take the example of a great book from 1912 with 300 steam engine parts. Instead of picking the 30 or 40 best engravings, which really should be all that I need, I will sit and scan all 300 ... just in case. In case of what exactly, I'm not quite sure.

So last week when I went to my favorite archive in the world--the one where I travel 1700 miles each way and only visit twice a year--I was prepared. I stopped by earlier in the week for several hours to narrow down my focus to about 100 colored plates that I knew I wanted. I told myself I would be steadfast in my determination and stick to just the 100 best to scan.

And of course you know what happened when I went back with my scanner. I spent the first several hours wandering around in complete bliss, pulling out all kinds of ephemera until I had amassed literally 3000 different colored plates, engravings, chromolithographs, and other fun bits. Then I proceeded to spend the next two hours whittling it down, and then the final few hours madly scanning as much as I could as quickly as I could.

In the end I was exhausted from hauling everything around, covered in a thick layer of red dust from all the crumbling books, and completely content.

Because while I'm not quite sure what I will ever do with this:
I also found these:
And these:

It was a lovely haul, including 31 really grubby botanical engravings from 1846; another 12 German floral sets from the early 1900s; almost 15 bird eggs, another 15 bird nests; and nearly 100 French Fashion plates. Many of the scans I may never do anything with. But so much of the joy is in the discovery. And at least I will have them ... just in case.