The catalog

Wood, metal, mechanism.

Welcome to Alabama. Where creativity and natural materials combine. The following figures are not goods for sale. They are the three concerns of the place, drawn in the manner of a shop-floor catalog.

Plate IFig. 1 · Metal

Blueprint of a blacksmith’s anvil, No. 1 pattern, drawn by J. H. Wilson, 17 April 1892.

Iron and brass

The anvil is named first because it is the struck thing: a plane that stays true after heat. Face for the blow, horn for the bend, hardy for the tool that stands in the hole. Brass appears as a screw in the waist — not ornament, a fastener you could turn with a driver.

See the plate

Plate IIFig. 2 · Wood

Northern red oak, Quercus rubra, field plate: tree, leaf, acorns, winter twig, and bark.

Grain and limb

The bough is named second because it was growing before it was useful. End grain tells the year. A thin conductor in the ring is a reminder that this shop does not pretend the twentieth century never arrived: wood can carry a trace the way it carries a check.

See the plate