Taking thoughts places

 Tidying the studio has seen me holding and handling some things that have been tucked away for a long time. Oftentimes only because other things needed to be put away in the drawers or cupboards where they rested and I get momentarily distracted.

And so it has been with these rulers. I have collected these gorgeous things for years - picking them up at garage sales, secondhand shops, vintage shops or wherever they may be. I have never understood the longing, nor have I really ever known how I might use. them

For some reason I just love them.

For the first time I kind of sorted them to see if there were any that matched. A number of them are broken, so they weren't pairable; some were singular in style, so again no pairs. But I did find some where this goes with that kind of thing.

I have always loved the pairing of timber and metal and fine finish to them.

And here, where the metal has gathered patina over the years.

The flip side with lots of lovely metal markings. 

But I digress of course. The point of the exploration was not their beauty, but to see if they also offered some form of utility.

I wondered if in their fully closed state, they could somehow hold pages.

So I tested them with the thinnest of paper, using some sticky notes I had on my desk (where I could find them!!!)

Yes, they would close.

I kept adding pages until I reached this point - 8 sheets of very thin paper.

 

You can see how that looks as it closes.

And this is how they make the ruler appear when closed.

It looks like a bigger gap than it feels, and my sense is that I could probably add 8 pieces of paper within and make some kind of a book. The pages would be long and narrow, and I would need to test if 8 is really possible if they are fully overlapping each other rather than the partial overlap I used to count the number of pages. That's the next test.

I am also not sure if I need a pair, but that did offer a starting point.

No idea where this is headed but it was great to finally try a few things out.