Badrabbit's Journal

More from the Museum

Badrabbit
July 11, 2020

A while back I had a post with a little about what I call our Museum. Here’s a bit more, but just one photo.

I became enthralled by woodworking around 1980. I found a book at a local university library about early French Canadian furniture and that gave a push. We lived in a house which was barely furnished. I like to do things with my hands.

Woodworking at first was a huge challenge. I had almost no tools of any sort. I didn’t have a place in the house to do woodworking. I had a tight budget.

My first tools were the sort of things one would find at a hardware store. Mail order catalogs soon provided a much broader range of tools to choose from. I gleefully chose; I have an unused pit saw stored away—sometimes desire overwhelms reality.

The best source of tools ended up being antique stores and flea markets. The old stuff was better quality and was economically priced. That led me into the tool collecting world where collector gatherings, tool catalogs, and auctions were even better sources.

Early on while learning the craft I decided to focus on woodworking done solely with hand tools. I cheated a bit with an electric drill used for odd occasions (I much prefer a brace and bit). All the sawing, planning, shaping was done with hand tools and I loved it.

The collection broadened to include not just tools I was using but also reference tools and tools a woodworker in the late eighteenth century owned. I fell in love with the plane and all its varieties and that’s what the photo shows. The top plane is circa 1800 English, the plane lying on its side is circa 1800 American made by Nicholas Taber of Massachusetts. That’s the same plane shown in the Museum post. These bits of history are my way of better understanding the common person and their world. The other two planes are early nineteenth century American. One is a special type of sash plane with two blades for sash window bars.

Over the years I made furniture for our home and used some of the same tools and techniques to build our current home. I do less woodworking now, but oh how I still do love it.

Four-up Willie Photos

John Willie | Photography
May 24, 2020

Sometimes there appear in the marketplace four-up prints of John Willie LA bondage photographs. The overall print size is 8×10 inches, which has four 4×5 inch prints. The LA bondage photos were produced as contact prints from negatives. Willie then cut these down to 4×10 (two-up) or 4×5 prints to be put into sets to mail to customers.

I have several four-up prints of photos from model sets of Pat and Judy taken in 1960. A four-up print of photos of June was included in mailings of John Willie’s comic The Race for the Gold Cup as a promotion for his bondage photos.

One four-up of Pat that I have includes two outtakes for the set of photos that included those of Pat bound to a bench. These are the two on the right.

The two on the left are from another set produced at the same time. J. B. Rund reproduces the full set of 12 photos of Pat bound to a bench on pages 348 and 349 of Possibilities: The Photographs of John Willie (2016).

It’s possible that Willie used these outtakes in later mailings, removing two of the photos that appeared in the published set.

Possibilities: The Photographs of John Willie is one of the essential books for the work of John Willie. It is available from the publisher.

Writing on the Back

John Willie | Photography
April 29, 2020

The original Feral_Rabbit blog was associated with my website devoted to my collection of John Willie LA bondage photographs. Both that blog and the website no longer exist. The website has been superseded by J. B. Rund’s Possibilities: The Photographs of John Willie. The blog was replaced by the Badrabbit blog on LiveJournal and now here.

One of the posts in the old blog was about inscriptions found on the backs of some of the John Willie photographs in my collection. Some of the inscriptions were made by Willie. Others were made by people who worked for Willie and handled mailing of ordered photos and/or those who ordered the photographs.

The first groups of bondage photographs offered in Willie’s flyers (J. B. Rund has kindly shared his collection of these rare flyers) were sets of June photographed in 1958 and Doree photographed in late 1958 or early 1959. These were lingerie bondage sets, there was no nudity. Many of the photographs I own from these sets have inscriptions. Here’s one on the back of a photograph of Doree in ink. The photographs of June and Doree that are inscribed in ink are in this hand.

Other photographs in these sets have penciled inscriptions showing first initial of the model and set number. This is another photographs from Doree set number 1.

Around June or July 1959 Willie offered sets of photographs which included models bound on a St. Andrew’s cross. Some of the photographs I have from these sets have the model’s name and a set number according to the order of sets in Willie’s flyer. These inscriptions are in pencil. Generally there is just a set number on the back, just one photo in the set has the model’s name and set number.

There is one photograph in my collection that has an inscription that is obviously in Willie’s hand. The set of Lorie photographs was shot in 1960 and consisted of 8 lingerie bondage photos.

Willie called Doree’s photos shot in mid-1959 and later Doree (B). These sets were released in groups of 12 photos, unlike the lingerie bondage sets of 8. There was nudity in Doree (B) sets. Amongst the last photographs Willie shot were the 4 sets of Doree (B) in late 1960 or, most likely, 1961.

I have one photograph with a rubber stamped inscription on the back, along with a initials in pen, probably by Willie.

There is another photograph in the collection with a pen inscription showing the set number.

As an aside, I created a personal html catalog that I host on my computers for reference. I’ve organized the collection of photographs according to different criteria and include information about inscriptions found on the back of photos. This catalog is not available online.

Old Favorites

Badrabbit | Vintage
March 28, 2020

Like a comet I have a long tail, elements of my past, following me. Mostly these elements are my memories, sometimes there are artifacts. The most common artifacts are books and recently I’ve been digging out of storage books I started reading when I was in high school. Started reading because periodically I reread them. I’m a comet who turns around and loops through their tail more often than pursue a straight course.

My extracurricular reading interests in high school were science fiction, archaeology, and old and middle English. I’ve branched out since then but those are still pretty much a large part of my core. There weren’t many back then with the same interests, hard to believe considering how popular science fiction is now.

I have 18 gallon bins full of science fiction paperbacks. Simak was a favorite author as was Panshin.

I read a lot Heinlein back then. The books I end up returning to are The Door Into Summer and Double Star. Ace Science Fiction Specials with their distinctive covers by Leo and Diane Dillon were sought after.

With the libraries closed in our area I’ve increased the numbers of stacks of books in our home with piles of science fiction favorites alongside other new piles of books of other genres. There’s a lot of comfort in having a good reread.

Woodpiles

Badrabbit
March 7, 2020

It’s March and I have been cutting and stacking firewood for the next heating season.

All the trees I’ve cut this year are windfalls from the past two years. This is wood from a large red oak snag that had been dead for years next to a road on our property. Last spring it blew down over the road and I finished cutting and stacking it this year. Since the tree had been dead for so long the wood has dried out quickly and shows a number of cracks on the ends of the split pieces.