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

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There is hardly a village so small that one man or woman could not make in it or eke out a living by repairing different objects. In towns and cities the demand for such work is much greater, for there ladies break expensive fans and jewellery, and children their dolls and toys, for mending of which the “rehabilitators” require “much moneys,” especially in the United States, where prices for anything out of the way are appalling.

I would therefore beg all people who are gifted with some small allowance of “ingenuity,” tact, art, or common-sense to consider that Mending or Restoring is a calling very easily learned by a little practice, and one by which a living can be made, even in its humblest branches, as is shown by the umbrella-menders and chair-caners in the streets. But common-sense teaches that any one who shall have mastered all that is explicitly set forth in this book ought certainly to be able to gain money, even largely; for, as I said, the opportunities of purchasing dilapidated works of art, mending and selling them, are innumerable, and Restoration is as yet everywhere in its mere rudiments and very little practised. That which might be a very great general industry of vast utility, employing many thousands now idle, only exists in a hap-hazard, casual way, as dependent on other kinds of work. But to me it appears as a great art by itself, dependent on certain principles of general application. And when we consider what is generally wasted for want of proper knowledge of this great art, it seems to me to be but rational that if we had in London a school for teaching mending and restoring in all its branches as a trade, with a museum to show the public, probably to its great astonishment, what marvels can be wrought by renewing what is old, it would be of great service to the country at large. A very little reflection will convince the least visionary or most practical reader that what is wasted or annually destroyed of valuable old works, which cannot be replaced, because they are no longer manufactured, if restored, would form the basis of a great national industry. It has not as yet, however, entered into the head of any one to conceive this, simply because no one has ever been educated as a general restorer, but only in a secondary, supplementary, small way as a specialist, generally as a botcher. And I maintain, from no inconsiderable knowledge of the subject, that the best menders and restorers by far are those who understand the most branches of their calling. The reason for this is plain; it is because a repairer, when he comes to some unforeseen difficulty—for example, in mending china—and finds the cements used are not exactly applicable, he will, if sensible, think of some other adhesive used in other kinds of work, or other combinations or appliances.