To Give a Fine Color to Mahogany and To Make a Strip Carpet, Earlier 19th C. Handwritten Instructions old celluloid dice The covers on these are

The covers on these are pretty rough--detached in the case of two of them--but I've got a weakness for these old drawing instruction books

one sword bared and rifles slung over shoulders

which to my eye lends her a bit of mystery and perhaps even scandalousness

Overall: 7 1/4" x 5 3/8"

with carved reamer and turned handle terminating in a great fat rounded end

To Give a Fine Color to Mahogany and To Make a Strip Carpet, Earlier 19th C. Handwritten Instructions old celluloid dice The covers on these areSince finding a wonderful "Reipt" (receipt, widely used instead of recipe in the 19th century) "to tempur [sic] edge tools" some months ago, I have been keeping a close eye out for other examples of manuscript instructions of a related nature, which feel both so immediate, as if just being passed along from one person to another, and also so much of their time and place. And not just one but two here on the reverse instructions for making a "strip