Saturday 5 January 2013

A bargain Linoleum book!


A useful reduced, (new) book store in Hull is closing in a weeks time, the staff having been made redundant between Christmas and New Year.........out of the blue. 
Such a shock and shame for them and a store I often popped in and frequently bought from. 
Yesterday I paid the £2 for this US $30 book ............and no, I'm not a linoleum fetishist.....
..........each to their own and no offence intended lol

It's actually an interesting read about the product and its growth and decline in popularity.
It's specifically about the early linoleum made of linseed oil, resins, cork flour and pigments on a burlap backing and I wouldn't have guessed these were the ingredients for lino! 

This is not about vinyl mind, it's about the lino invented in 1863 and all but replaced by vinyl in the 1960s and features a great many photographic reproductions of vintage designs.
There are some wonderful vintage advertising reproduced too........but its the pattern colour plates that took my eye....
one of the end plates below for example below.









Patchwork layouts and above a couple of applique possibilities maybe?

And whats not to love about this next page!!! 
I've never seen lino or vinyl in such a fun kids pattern. 
I bet it wasn't cheap and our home had the very basic lino's as I recall from my childhood days.



The other thing that I think is interesting are some of  the vintage edging designs, which would lend themselves as unusual but attractive, quilt edging designs.
If you can pick it up at this bargain price, it could be inspirational for fabric placement designs, but its perhaps also worth taking a look at it in the library if you can find it. 

It's about 10" square, quite heavy and printed by Gibbs Smith of Salt Lake City in 2003 and the authors tell us that Linoleum has been relaunched in the past 20 years....who knew - certainly not me!
The current suppliers listed are all in the US and Second Hand Rose in New York ( shades of Streisland lol) supplies vintage linoleum if your interested!
: )

4 comments:

  1. an inspirational find. a couple of those patterns look familiar. i might be remembering some linoleum from my 1940s days.

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  2. I really enjoyed reading this, Lyn -- I'm hoping to put real linoleum, Marmoleum, in our kitchen. It needs a bit of special maintenance, other than cleaning, so that's sort of been the one thing that's held me back. Maybe by the time we get it, they'll have improved the product! Although we all probably grew up with real linoleum and I don't remember my parents doing anything special to it other than having us girls scrub it on hands and knees! Ha. xoxo

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  3. I just found you via grow your blog. Your blog is great! Just yesterday I posted on my blog about some books I bought at the Works when I went back to visit home for Christmas. I love cheap books :)

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