The Swiss company Caran d’Ache sells writing utensils for the price you can buy a decent car. Their pens are made out of gold, diamonds, pearls and other fine materials. I’d be too worried running around with a pen like this, or even keeping it in my drawer. Caran d’Ache also makes this straightforward but fine ballpoint pen. It is made out of steel and has a replaceable ink cartridge. I bought it on my last trip to Europe for less then fifteen Euros.
Caran d'Ache Ballpoint Pen
A legend says that sometime in the 16th century a Portuguese man was charged with witchcraft after showing samples of cloth, which have been repelled with rubber. When you think about it, rubber really is pretty magic. It seems like rubber is a modern product, but in indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest have been using it for as long as for 3500 years. Caoutchouc, it’s original name, was made into balls, figurines, bottles, fabric-coating and other products.
100% Natural Rubber / Goodyear Advertising 1918
I once suffered a ‘serious’ injury from a dysfunctional thumbtack. (Under pressure from my thumb, the needle lost its connection to the head and went out the other way). Since then I only use push-pins. They are easier to remove. The push-pin was invented around 1900 by Edwin Moore (1874 – 1916) in Newark, New Jersey. Moore worked at a photo lab and was missing a simple solution to hang up film to dry.
Moore Push-Pins
There are two simple tools that I use in my kitchen almost every day. One is a brush from Mexico with very thick natural bristles. It works great to clean out a cast iron steel pan. I don’t use it for anything else. The other one is a Japanese vegetable brush. It also has natural bristles which have a great feel to them. Both brushes are made of only two materials – the bristle and a steel wire. It can hardly get any simpler than that.
Japanese Vegetable Brush
Humans started making glass about 5000 years ago, which makes it one of the oldest manufactured materials in the world. However, major scientific breakthroughs in regards to glass didn’t come until the 19th century. In the 1880s, the German scientist Otto Schott (1851 – 1935) invented borosilicate glass, a new, much stronger variety of the material, and started selling it in 1893 under the name Duran. Schott still sells it under this name today. In the United States, borosilicate glass was first manufactured by Corning Glass Works in 1915, and sold under the name Pyrex.
Borosilicate Glass Beaker
It may be called “hǔbiao wànjīnyóu” in its native tongue, but it’s just Tiger Balm to me. I’ve been using this since my hippie mom rubbed it on my chest during the cold New England winters of my youth. The burn on my skin still has a calming, comforting effect on me.
Invented by Chinese herbalist Aw Chu Kin in the 1870s using the healing combination of menthol, eucalyptus, clove, cassia and mint oil. Kin’s two sons – Aw Boon Haw, a hell-raiser known for street fights and mad business skills, and Aw Boon Par, the gentler of the duo – made their father’s tincture a global phenomenon in the early 1930s, mostly just by being good guys.
Aw Boon Haw in China 1949
The production of synthetic plastics began in 1907 with the invention of Bakelite by Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863 – 1944). At the time, there was a thirst for a new material that w0uld fulfill the needs of the latest innovations – radios, electrical insulators and mounts, telephones, car parts, cameras, toasters, vacuum cleaners- any product that required a material that could resist heat, electricity, and be cheaply manufactured through mass production.
Bakelite Camera by Kodak
Wooden Crates
You see vintage wooden crates everywhere at flea markets. Many vendors don’t sell them, but use them to carry their wares from the car to the booth, and back to the car. They don’t consider a crate as a nostalgic thing, imbued with some hidden beauty. It’s just a convenient way to schlep things around. From these people you can get the best deals on crates. Although, sometimes, they don’t want to give them up because they know it’s hard to find another box that sturdy.
Golden Glow Beer Crate
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