Читать книгу A Manual of Mending and Repairing; With Diagrams онлайн

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A friend adds to these remarks the suggestion that this work may properly be included among the presents to a bride as an aid to housekeeping; and it will probably be admitted that it would prove quite as useful as many of the gifts which are usually bestowed on such occasions.

I have truly said that, while breaking and decay are universal, there are literally nowhere any generally accomplished repairers—that is to say, experts who know and can practise even what is set forth in this book. Certain menders of broken china there are, of whom the great authority on fictile restoration, Ris-Pasquot, declares that none can be trusted with anything valuable. There are so few needle-women who can sew up a rent perfectly that a lady “to the manor born” paid in Rome two pounds, or fifty lire, for being taught the stitch, described in this book, by which it can be done. That it was a great secret to an expert and accomplished needle-woman proves that it cannot be generally known. A house-furnisher in London doing a large business once explained to me with manifest pride how he had, by dint of persuasion and treating, obtained from another what is really one of the simplest recipes for restoring a brown stain. All of this being true, it is apparent enough that any accomplished mender and restorer, lady or gentleman, can hardly fail to make a living by the art; and I sincerely believe that it is the simple truth that it is set forth in the following pages so fully and clearly that any one who will make the experiment can learn from it how to make a living. This is effectively, in all its fulness, a new art and a new calling, and it is time that it were established.