A PICTURE PROJECT.

It rained most of yesterday, pleasantly. Jim and I took a walk between raindrops, but mostly I worked on my picture file. After having tossed all of my pictures and getting most of them back, I’m disaster shy and decided maybe I’d like to publish some of my blogs in a book like they advertise on Lulu or Blurb or half-a-dozen other outfits. The save-to-disk feature was difficult and having one of those outfits print your blog for you is a somewhat complicated organizing task. I ended up buying, online, a new laser printer instead. It  will print my stuff out very professionally for less than the publisher could do it.  All of this explanation to get to a bunch of barn pictures that had been lost, now found. The ivy covered silo above caught my eye on a rainy day, somewhere in the east in 2010.

Eastern barns, because of winter weather, are much more substantially made. These were taken with my old camera, and I notice it very much when I prowl around old files.

In fact, most of them were taken through the window while moving down the road.

I continue to think of barns as endangered species, so I expect I’ll keep getting as many pictures of them as I can in my travels. There is a website I used to visit often of a woman who chose barns, gas stations, bridges, signs, I can’t even remember all of the subjects she chose. She would say, “…oh, don’t get me started on another subject!”  She would travel around the U.S. with one subject in mind to preserve them in photos. Her photos will probably be famous some day. That is not my aim, but I think it is a fun idea.  She actually pinpointed where each barn or beach or sign was located and gave the exact date she was there.

If I went back and read my blog for March 2nd or 3rd  in 2010, I’d probably know where I was. Does that make sense?

This barn resembles a California barn and may be a picture I stuck in the same file. I think I’ll  go back to my project and call it a day.

 

 

 

 

PRINTERS, BLACKSMITHS, WINERY, POTTERY AT QUYLES

Paul Quyle, left, brought his printer friend, Mark, from Campbell, CA. as his guest to meet us last night while we hashed over some CCTV business. Mark is a modern printer and Paul has a printing press from 1899. Paul gathered his type set and molds and showed how it was done in three videos. One of the videos can be seen on the link below, the next two will follow on the same website.
http://tinyurl.com/24p6jub Paul is a fascinating person from so many angles its hard to choose one. He is a blacksmith, a master potter, printer, and retired teacher. He studied Marine Biology, art, he took welding classes, saddle making, veterinary medicine. He has a woodworking shop, orchards and gardens.

He entered the printing trade from necessity, to print labels for his clay business instead of tediously hand stamping them. Now, he is a master printer and  has over 120 printers in his collection. But, the 1899 press, one of only 12 in the world, rarely gets used.

Paul, at 82, remembers the days when trade secrets were jealously guarded. If he couldn’t get into a guild, he’d figure out how to do the task himself, whether it was printing, making clay that didn’t explode, building a house or a kiln, he would do it. You forge something, fix something, make your own tools, a philosophy that today seems arcane in a throw-away, assembly line style of doing things. Self sufficiency is as ancient as the rocks where passing on skills to the next generation is the natural order of things. It works for the Quyles where a new generation of family artisans now run the ranch,  a winery, the pottery and continue what Paul started while he still plays with printing and blacksmithing.

People drop in all the time to see the works on Highway 4, just above Murphys, along with the pottery, paintings, glass work, and wine tasting from Bryce Station Winery.

Here students of Paul’s work in his blacksmith shop.