It’s time for the first round up of links of the year.
Matthew D. Jordan pointed me to two of his sites. The first is a scenic-shop blog. I know some of you who work in smaller theatres have to do both scenery and props, so you’ll find it interesting, but even those of you who focus more specifically on props can still find some crossover in the topics this blog covers. His second is a Stagecraft Wiki. Like Wikipedia, this is a site you can edit and write yourself. The only way for a site like that to grow is for everyone to add a little bit of their own knowledge and tell their colleagues to check it out as well.
Welcome back from Thanksgiving (if you went somewhere)! Here’s a quick round-up of some new sites I’ve found.
Letters of Note – These are some great scans of old historical notes and letters. Besides the sheer fascination of exploring them for their own value, they are also a great source of historical typography, paper styles, and other details of ephemera.
Square America – Vintage snapshots and vernacular photography. What sets this apart from other vintage photograph sites is how it tags them by the contents and decade, so you can quickly search for useful images.
The Daily Scrapbook – A collection of scrapbook pages. It’s great to see some well-preserved ephemera which is usually thrown away, though it’s hit or miss what you’ll run across.
How to Use a Handsaw – The Art of Manliness has a nice post illustrating the various types of handsaws and how to use them.
My computer is still broke, so I’m having trouble keeping up with this blog. Until then, enjoy some websites on carpentry from elsewhere around the web!
The American Woods by Romeyn B. Hough, contains photographs of some 350 North American lumber types. You can browse by common or scientific name as well.
Lumberjocks has a number of great resources. In addition to projects and a blog, they also review woodworking tools and feature a heavily-visited forum.
I’ve been following the weekly tips at Woodsmith for awhile. They feature some good tricks for your shop and tools.
New Woodworker, like Lumberjocks, also has articles, reviews, tips and tricks. Their tips and tricks are organized by topic, making it easy to browse.
Check out the Ephemera Assemblyman blog. If you look at the right column and scroll down, you will see one heading labeled “resources”, and another labeled “images.” Each link points to even more vintage images. I’ve been looking at them for hours, and still have barely cracked the surface. Have fun!
I didn’t do a Friday link-o-rama, so here’s one for Monday. Hopefully I will be back to writing more better articles once we get out of tech for Bacchae.
Flower Power – The McCarter Theatre has to clean the uncleanable. Read about their solution.
Theatre on a Shoestring – A number of how-to articles on prop making, such as fake cigars, hefty chain, and sugar glass.
Model-Making Techniques – David Neat discusses tips and techniques for making scene design models. A lot of this info is also great for prop making.
Master of the Movie Prop – An interview with Kevin Hughes, the prop master for films such as Borat, Freddy Got Fingered and Boogie Nights.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
