2016 APL 2016-02-03 Three new publications

NEWS

Well, we made it into the New Year. And we made the public funding ratio limit too, thanks to many small donations, and some big ones, and a lot of ebay, etsy, and marktplaats sellers and also forum members who were willing to share images, photos and scans of their treasures. Thank you all!

From the Yahoo front: I've privately bought software that promised to save all our forum members addresses and all our messages. I thought I'd believe that when I see it, but it was cheap, and well, we can but try. And surprise, surprise, it did work. Although I had to restart several times because Yahoo does not take kindly to requests for thousands of messages, all is safe now and backed up daily, and searching through messages was a lot easier. For those interested, it was PG-Offline, and it cost me I think 24 dollars. So if Yahoo pulls the plug on Groups, you'll find in your mailbox a nice invitation to another group, and in the meantime it's not an emergency anymore.

This year the regular fundraising will start in September again, Deo volente. And I'll speed up the publishing as well. Often I wait with publishing an ebay donation until I've charted or reconstructed the pattern. But the backlog is growing so much that I think I'll just publish them as-is and when I get round to charting, add the chart afterwards.
Of course if you keep a sharp eye on all auction sites and save every image for your own scrapbook, you'll have much of we do on this site - and maybe more, since we don't always get permission to publish and those images must remain private.

PUBLICATIONS

 The first item is again Japanese - at least, that's what it looks like. G. Sermon donated images of small Japanese stencils, that he found somewhere in the attic, kept together in an envelope with a notice on it that these were for egg-painting, and the date 1933. Well, comparing with the authentic from-Japan-really-old katagami, this is a set of mini-katagami. This time they are shown black on white instead of white on black, so it should be easier to print and then cut out and make your own stencils. And nobody forbids the use of these patterns as embroidery patterns, of course. Thank you, G.!

The second is three songs from an 18th century songbook. The music is interesting, but what I really like is the illustrations at the top. These scans were donated by Nettie Kraaij, and only needed light editing to make them presentable. Thank you, Nettie!

The third one is a small Berlin woolwork square. I was tempted to put in part of the original scan too, the pattern had darkened so much that in essence it was dark brown on black, on a tan background. But with some editing the original colors became clearer. Sometimes, when a pattern is damaged, you can see the original colors in the scratch or the damage, but this one was near-perfect and I'm not going to ask people to scratch patterns just to make the editing easier. Still, if you think the colors are a bit too bright - I'd understand - of course you can choose more muted versions. This scan was donated by Willem Kraaij. Thank you, Willem!

(By the way, Willem and Nettie are currently scanning five years of issues of Der Bazar, a German publication much like Godey's or Petersons Magazine, but a bit larger and thinner. They've built a special installation in the living room to handle those big fat heavy books! Go go go!)

FUNDRAISING

Click here or on the image to start shopping with Amazon Smile

  

Click to support the Antique Pattern Library project to pay for such things as database and website development, web hosting costs, data entry, scanning equipment.  

Scan donations count! They save us room (for the books) money (for the shipping price and customs duties and believe me, those can bite), and time for scanning. Of course, money is always welcome. And scans are equally welcome. In the meantime, you can also support us via Amazon Smile.
The limit of small donations is 700 EUR, a bit more than 700 USD. It may increase if we get more small donations. That's the limit to what you can donate per year and still have it count towards the small donations. It's recalculated every year. If you donate more, the IRS puts your donations on the other side of the public funding ratio. So, if you were planning to donate just above the limit, give some to another organization, buy a cup of coffee and donate just the limit amount. ;-)

Also, we are looking for people who can afford a one-time larger donation to support our goals for 2016, which will cost us some money.
It will help speed up our publication speed, and make more time available for the actual library work, which is sadly suffering. Judith and I have spent most of January on bookkeeping and IRS compliance and stuff like that.

We've had one large donation already. That one has helped to improve the programming for the site so that now somebody else is able to do the entire round of publishing (except writing special notices and the blog) on her own, without help from me. That's going to make it easier to keep publishing every week, even when I'm on holiday.And I can spend more time on editing the acquisitions, and visit people with laptop and scanner in a bag, if they have a suitable book and live within reach.

Basically, what I'm looking for right now is to get professional help to scan the really large publications, sized A2, A1, and maybe even A0, of which we have a chest full. Some leaves are so fragile that we get the chance to scan them once, then they fall apart. I've inquired at a nearby photographer, and they will have to build an installation too (just like Willem and Nettie, but larger), in order to get the sheets properly photographed. The more money I plonk down, the more sheets they can do. And of course, the building and taking down of the installation, as well as closing the studio for one day, will cost money of itself. So, money is very welcome!

If you can't afford to give anything, which also happens in these difficult times, introducing the Library to people who don't know of it yet, is very useful, since it broadens our user base and therefore our donor base. I'll try to publish a flyer in black and white which can be printed and used as handout, for anybody wanting to do that. It would be more useful than a visiting card.

Anything you donate for the Library, goes to the Library. The donations of the larger donors are far more than enough to cover our overhead, so what you give, goes straight to Library improvement.

The publications are free to download and to share, not to sell. Also the screendumps and later the text pages are published under the creative-commons licence - enjoy, but don't sell. If ever you see a PDF for sale, especially with the Library creative-commons copyright notice or something that looks like it, we'd be glad to hear. Most we've heard of so far are legitimate sellers of their own copies, but every now and then there's one that isn't. In such a case, please email us privately with your concerns and give as much detail as possible. We don't want peoples' names aired about before we've had a chance to look the matter over, in order to protect the truly innocent.

Thanks to all the donors and volunteers, for all the help and new or improved material you provided.

Enjoy this new set.

Best wishes all,
Sytske