According to this page from the University of Glasgow* libraries, it's from an 1850 collection of Valentine's Day cards:

Quote

There are some 150 valentines bound up in our volumes. They are each printed on one side only of a sheet of cheap paper and are, for the most part, shoddily produced. Some were obviously published in numbered sets. The blacksmith shown to the right, for example, is numbered twenty and belongs to a set incorporating black borders bearing titles at the top; later examples from this sequence retain the border but lack any titles. Other examples in the volumes (such as the old maid and printer shown below) are printed without borders: these are occasionally still numbered but may not necessarily be productions from the same press.

https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/exhibns/month/feb2002.html

 

* Coincidentally, where my dad spent a year on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Very cool, thanks John. You're really good at finding this stuff. Comes from practice yes?

Frosty The Lucky.

14 hours ago, JHCC said:

shoddily produced

  I wonder why.

Because than as now, wares produced cheaply and in bulk were more profitable than high-quality products sold at a premium. We tend to assume that *everything* was made better then, because our perception is skewed by higher-quality goods being more likely to survive to the present. 

  Those that could only afford such quality were probably happy.  I found the wording rather amusing.  

  Here's another one.  After this I will quite bombarding this thread.  The creation of it (this thread) has opened my eyes to a lot of things.  Some great discoveries for me, some trivial.  It's all about learning in my book.  Some great rabbit holes.

An 1871 oil painting of a steam hammer invented by the Scotsman James Nasmyth (1808-1890) in 1839 during the Industrial Revolution. The steam-powered machine lowered a weight onto an anvil using gears which allowed for both precision and speed. The steam hammer allowed very large metal pieces to be forged and uniformly shaped, essential for large engineering projects like the construction of weapons, bridges, trains, and ships. Painted by the inventor himself.

https://www.worldhistory.org/image/17048/nasmyths-steam-hammer/

Good link Scott, I've bookmarked it in case I run out of rabbit holes to follow.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

" in case I run out of rabbit holes to follow."

  That reminds me of when Hillsideshortleg said - "I spend too much time in the junkyard".... 

Thanks for the link Scott, Randy's right it's quite the rabbit hole! 

For all these rabbit holes I wander around in, I know I'm going to find me a rabbit someday. Mmmmm. Hossenpfepher!

Frosty The Lucky.

The Museum of Work at Milwaukee School of Engineering has a bunch of sculptors and paintings of smith's.  If you're ever in the area. I highly recommend it. 

Also has anyone seen the video for the Longest Johns' song The Hammer and the Anvil?  A smith out of the UK spends the video forging an anchor.  Forge welds,  punching and drifting,  the works.   Very nice work.

This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGn7XgbBVms

I love The Longest Johns. I like songs that tell a story that aren't drowned out by the music, sea shanties fit the bill. I like rock and roll, always have but I really prefer being able to hear the lyrics.

Frosty The Lucky.

That's the one.   I do enjoy their music as well, but I listen to everything except modern rap and country. 

Sometimes I'll even break out the anvil chorus to warm up in the shop. 

On 1/25/2024 at 9:47 AM, Chad J. said:

The Museum of Work at Milwaukee School of Engineering has a bunch of sculptors and paintings of smith's. 

  Thank you for the pointer.  I spent some time on the Grohmann Museum website and find the images facinating.  My "bucket list" is beginning to overflow.  

I'm with you Scott, the longer I'm around the more I feel I have to see and do. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Okay, I can't quit.

Good!

Frosty The Lucky.

  Here's Hestohious's cyclops helpers.

  And a dubious one of him making armour.  It's a fresco though.

description: Hephaistos and 2 assistants work on the arms for Achilles: cuirass and greaves are already lying on the floor, the shield held up by Hephaistos and one of his assistants shows the mirror image of Thetis, sitting and watching the scene; the other assistant works on the helmet - period / date: third style of pompeian wall painting - height: 159 cm - width: 113 cm - findspot: Pompeii IX, 1, 7, amb. (e) - museum / inventory number: Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 9529

You find some cool art Scott! Those are pics of Hephaestos I've never seen. I printed of another version of the baby at the anvil for Deb for Valentine's day. It was a hit!

Jer.

  That's cool Jerry.  I have not been doing much actual making or creating in shop lately so I am spending a lot of time educating myself on all things metal, forging, processes (stuck on reverberatory furnace's right now ), the history behind it all in general, things that I wish I would have learned long ago, and that includes "Blacksmith in Art"!  Some of it's not very mindblowing but it's all fun.....

We really like the Saturday Evening Post cover 1931 New Years. First time seeing it. Thanks.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

If studying reverberatory forges becomes mind blowing you're doing it WRONG! 

I spent a lot of time reading about propane forges too, I was fascinated by all the different designs, how the maker swore theirs is the best and how little difference there really is. One trick that saved me a lot of work was seeing how easy it is to make one TOO recuperative. It's too easy to preheat the fuel air mix enough to make it ignite in the burners. 

I can't think of very many metal arts I'm not interested in. 

Frosty The Lucky.

  What I was referring to are reverberatory furnaces used in smelting and refining and their operation and history.....   What I mean by mindblowing is some of the things I come across are not.

7 hours ago, Irondragon Forge ClayWorks said:

We really like the Saturday Evening Post cover 1931 New Years. First time seeing it. Thanks.

  Your welcome.  

Oh yeah, I think most furnaces are reverberatory, heck a pizza oven heats the brick liner with gas, wood, coal, electricity, ? and the oven walls bake the pies. 

Big industrial furnaces are awesome. I don't know how long I tried to come up with a practical way to make a recuperative wall reverberatory propane forge. A double wall that the burner fires into the forge chamber and the exhaust gasses get circulated in a space between the inner liner and an outer liner keeping the fire in contact with the inner liner 2x as long transferring energy. 

The industrial versions are very interesting, I haven't looked at them i a while, maybe I should revisit.

Frosty The Lucky.

Up until the invention of the cook stove in the 19th century almost all baking ovens were the sort where you built a fire in the oven, got it hot, raked out the fire, and put in the bread to bake from the residual heat from the oven walls.  Few town homes except the largest had ovens.  So, the gudwyfe would make her bread dough and then take it down to the baker who would bake it for a penny.  Also, because it wasn't an even heat the bread closest to the walls often burnt while the loaves in the center baked evenly.  The lowest helper of the baker was often assigned to chip the black parts off the scortched loaves.  Shakespeare had an insult that someone wasn't fit to chip bread.  Sort of the 16th century equivalent of saying that someone couldn't pour pee out of a boot even if the instructions we printed on the heel.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

 I got interested in silver mining and extraction (see "Beehive Kilns.....) which led to copper, tin, lead and other things.  Smelting and refining being among them. 

  Okay, I understand the fundamental idea.  A simple picture shows it pretty clearly:

  I grabbed some stuff from wikipedia on reverberatory furnace's out of convenience as I am tired tonight:

"Chemistry determines the optimum relationship between the fuel and the material, among other variables."

  "Contact with the products of combustion, which may add undesirable elements to the subject material, is used to advantage in some processes. Control of the fuel/air balance can alter the exhaust gas chemistry toward either an oxidizing or a reducing mixture, and thus alter the chemistry of the material being processed."

  I don't think I took them out of context.  These are things that interest me.  I guess they are called metallurgical furnaces as well.  Metalurgy and chemistry interest me, too.  I usually like to exhaust my understanding and research of a subject before I start asking questions, so I probably shouldn't even have mentioned the subject earlier, but I was trying to illustrate why I was digging around finding old blacksmith art and posting it.  I always welcome input, comments and ideas, as you know, but I wasn't trying to derail this thread.