to the Salon of

Harriet Keith Fobes

Featuring her April 1895 article
for THE DELINEATOR Magazine

"BURNT WORK."
SECOND PAPER.—THE TOOLS AND THEIR USES.

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BURNT WORK. SECOND PAPER.—THE TOOLS AND THEIR USES. by Harriet Keith Fobes THE DELINEATOR Magazine, April 1895 issue, pp. 561–563. Butterick Publishing Co., London & New York.

In this second of eleven monthly articles on burnt work, American artist Harriet Keith Fobes mentions the centuries old method for poker work, named because of the type of tools used, and then goes on to describe in their "natural order" the four then modern ones. The first two she notes are actually modified adaptations of the third, which was the early adaptation of the Dr. Paquelin cautery tool (a very large tool thought to have been invented separately in both Germany and France in about 1888). However, she leaves any details about the use of that early large version (see the second image in the E-Museum's Antique Hall) for a later time. The fourth—the electric tool—Fobes does not go into in detail, as it was mostly unknown and in little use at that time, because electricity was still in its infancy.

In this second article, as promised at the end of the first, Fobes introduces the popular tool that had been designed for pyrography, which is the one in the illustration. In the remainder of the article, she describes the tool's parts for her readers and offers them, step by step, some basic strokes and a simple project on leather to learn on.

For more about some of these antique pyrography tools, see the E-Museum's Tools and Techniques Hall and for more antique articles by various authors, see the E-Museum's Library Exhibit.

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If you have either any questions to ask or any information to offer regarding works or articles by Harriet Keith Fobes, please e-mail the E-Museum Curator.

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