Orders as art

      The result of more rummaging about, not in the plans chest but this time up in the loft, resulted in finding this old Orders and Accounts book from the late 1920's, it goes without saying that it became a distraction from the job in hand. Whatever that job was, I don't remember.
      The old leather-bound loose-leaf book was originally used by the South Durham Iron and Steel Company in Middlesbrough, well Cargo Fleet to be precise, to track orders for steel that would be used by shipbuilders, the Admiralty, bridge builders and civil engineers.

      The book is in fact a little bit of family history and my grandfather was the man with the beautiful handwriting. When he returned from World War One, minus a leg and badly gassed at Passchendaele, his old pre-war employers gave him an indoor job where he could cope with his disabilities and there he stayed until his disabilities finally caught up with him in the mid-nineteen thirties.
      Get out those old dip pens and bottles of coloured writing ink and see if you can do it. Oh yes, I found some old boxes of steel nibs too.
      No excuses then.