Art Metal Work and Jewelry by Louis J. Haas, 1916
I’ve always loved this 1916 book. It informed me at the start of my career and taught me much about the workshop, making chasing tools and more. The book is completely full of excellent drawings, wonderful pen and ink sketches, first of tools, then a bench with all dimensions, then a series of step-by-step projects, 23 of them.
This book is Manga for jewelers. It is like watching a video, each step is artfully drawn, a wonderful visual cartoon for goldsmithing. Each sketch is accompanied by distilled, clever, text. The projects chosen contain all the skills one needs for making jewelry and basic silversmithing. There are great tips on riveting, soldering, sawing, and so on. I really can’t over-emphasize how wonderful and readable the drawings are. The details of making are masterfully portrayed, and for those of us who learn visually this book is really a treat. Spend some time enlarging the images and paying attention to each one as so many are crammed onto each page (Haas must have had some severe restrictions from his publisher.) Its forty pages could easily have been eighty.
A lot of the projects are larger than jewelry scale, bookends and more.
Here is a list of the sections and projects:
- Tools and equipment
- Making a bench and its measurements
- Making an Escutcheon (a decorative plate that fits over a keyhole)
- A letter opener
- A decorative corner for a box or case
- Desk pad corners
- Decorative hinge plates for furniture
- A drawer pull
- Forming an ash tray
- A card tray
- Raising a bowl
- Polishing and Finishing
- A stamp box (square)
- A vanity box (round)
- Making Chasing and Repousse tools
- A tray with a repousse border (how to chase)
- Art Lamps
- A bar pin with pinback
- A repousse brooch
- A repousse watch fob
- A scarf pin
- Casting a ring with cuttlefish
- A wire pendant
- Lost wax casting a ring
An excellent, collectible, important book.
File Size: 3.08MB, 40 pages.
