I Remember Rubylith

Although I am not an artist of any kind, I am pretty familiar with how graphic artists ply their trade. Back in the '80s, being an editor in a publishing company meant working closely with the book designers, so we editorial types had to understand their lingo and equipment just as much as they had to know what our arcane system of editing marks meant. Indeed, I recall being required (well, strongly encouraged) to take a "Principles of Book Design" course when I expressed interest in editorial production. By the early '90s, the designers were mostly using software (Quark was a revelation back then), but we all still had the old tools and supplies lying around for when we needed to (or just wanted to) kick it old school.

I can't describe the nostalgic joy I had when I came across The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. Of the 104 items on display, I am familiar with most of them—man, it feels like yesterday that I used a waxer (#19)—and I actually own more than a few:

1. Proportion Wheel
3. Haberule Type Gauge
21. Xacto Professional Kit
22. Pantone Thing
32. Drafting Brush
34. Scale-o-Graph
51. Loupe
64. Burnisher (I have the white one on the far right.)
70. Non-Repro Blue Pencil
81. Stainless Steel T-Square

After vacation, I fully intend to go through my storage boxes at home and see if I can find something else worthy of submitting to the collection. (via Neatorama)

Comments

[Mark]

I just knew that my beloved Rapidagraph was going to be there, but I forgot all about Skum-X! Takes me back to my high school mechanical drawing classes.

Most of the rest of items on that list are at the bottom of my drafting table drawer at work, "just in case" I might one day need them. Except now I don't even use my drafting table at work anymore.

[Nancy]

I'd never heard the term "Haberule Type Gauge"--at the newspapers where I worked as a copy drudge, we called it a "pica pole." Six picas to an inch. You never forget that stuff.

Oh, and it's a Pantone *fan*, not a Pantone "thing." Harrumph.

Skum-X! Never heard of it, but man, what a great name!

Revisiting these art supplies reminds me of all the ancient consumer products we discovered while clearing out our parents' house: http://tinyurl.com/4ve474
(While digging out that post of mine, I discovered that it had been picked up by Typography Digest-- http://typography.shmuggi.com/?p=138 --which makes me very proud.

[Florinda]

My husband has a Fine Arts/Illustration degree and works as a graphic designer, so I sent that link to him. He said that he recognized "way too much of that stuff."

[Henry]

Just a reminder that a designer worth his/her chops would never deign to use a proportion wheel or "scaleograph". (Would a shushi chef use a Cuisinart?) Victor taught you better than that.

[Karen]

You're right! And I realize now that my Scale-o-Graph was in fact a remnant of my high school yearbook editor gig.

[Erin]

Wow, I recognize most of those, too. I remember my mom talking about using Bestine to get adhesive off glass--even though we never actually did it at home, I knew what it was for. (She's been doing graphic art since the late '70s or so.)

[Heather Haber]

My great-grandfather, Max Haber, invented the Haberule. I have been collecting them, but know almost nothing about how they were used. Needless to say, although a friend used to call me "the Haberule heiress," no one in the family saw a dime from it.

[Martin]

A pica pole is a different animal than a Haberule. It's a stainless or brass ruler marked in various scales (inches, agate, points, picas, etc.) with rounded ends (so as not to wear a hole in your pocket) and a step on the zero end that you could hook on the end of a line or column of lead type for faster measurements. Most were 12", but there are 18" and 24" ones floating around. Used in type composing through the paste-up era, although the step on the end became pretty useless with cold type.