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Timber framing became popular in the United States during the last quarter of the 20th century though to the present. One of my favorite mid 19th century American carpentry texts is William Bell's 1858 opus: "The Art And Science Of Framing, Or, Carpentry Made Easy". Yes, that is the title. Bell published the first American carpentry text on the subject of combining timber and balloon frame construction, a method just coming into use in the United States at that time. Earlier books had discussed balloon framing in general. Bell was the first to delve into the details of how to combine the timber frame with the balloon frame. Ballon frame buildings made more economical use of locally sourced and milled materials than did the log cabin.While balloon frame construction had been in use in parts of Europe for centuries, the relative isolation of the American colonies called for locally published texts for the practical carpenter and builder.

Bell answered that need. The Art And Science Of Framing was in print for over 60 years, beginning with the first edition of 1858. Apart from a few additional chapters, the first edition remained as published, a true testament to the importance of Bell to local farm and town carpenters. No big box stores. No battery operated tools. No digital gadgets computing angles, stress and dimensions. A framing square and a carpenter's slide rule along with the axe, adze, chisel, saw and hammer built this structures. Local water and steam powered lumber mills supplied the raw material.

I purchased three copies of this text just to produce the images used here. Foxing, annotations, finger prints and more usually obscure early trade texts. That is to be expected when working with160 year old books. Plus I have an excuse to buy more old books. I add minor "old paper" texturing to meet the aesthetic expectations of the prospective buyer. The goal is to retain the "look and feel" of aged paper while addiing to the ambience of the room in which the art is displayed.

I hope you enjoy looking over these as much as I do working with them.

Once upon a time I owned a dozen or two 19th century city directories. Back then no one wanted them so I bought them for $10 each from a book dealer. Now they go for $200-$600 each. Oh well. At least I did scan in a set of advertising pages from en 1881 edition. Oh how I wish I had scanned in all! In any event, I'm adding full page archival scans for variety. All are imaged at sRGB, original x/y pixel dimensions and 600 dpi. I know. DPI is irrelevant here. I work with Fujitsu commercial grade scanners and Vuescan software. Setting dpi is necessary. My marketing for now is through my personal blog/site, Bluesky and a little bit of FB and IG. Marketing takes time, effort and a bit of legerdemain to convince prospective customers they must own these!

Hope you enjoy these old advertisements as much as I do!

I have a thing for 19th century advertising, in particular letterpress and early hand set printing. Newspapers, trade catalogs, billheads, city directories, trade journals, you name it. Most of my stuff is related to crafts, trades and industries. A decent amount of other topics snuck into my archives over the years. From here on in such Advertisements will be the focus of my shop with an array of related early photography too. Why? Such material is an accurate record of a given time period. Rather than a modern interpretation, period printed material is as close as we can get to being there. My shop is new and slowly filling out. I have a ton of archival digital material I have scanned and hoarded..., errr, collected. Even when I had to downsize, I kept my digital archives. Thankfully, multi-terabyte hard drives are now affordable. Enjoy the history!