I have been away from the blog for a while now. The initial absence was due to an attendance at a wedding in the Yorkshire Dales. On my return to London, I have become involved in a project by the artist Duncan MacAskill, who has turned his hand at being an advanced pointillist, in point of fact a punaiseist.
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| Seurat |
Pointillism, you may recall, is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure colour are applied in patterns to form an image. George Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists, and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation.
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| A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884 |
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| Van Gogh Self Portrait |
Duncan has resorted to the drawing pin, the thumbtack, la punaise, Reißzwecke, puntina, chinche, pinaise etc…
A drawing pin (British English), thumbtack (American English), or push pin is a short nail or pin with a circular, sometimes domed, head, used to fasten items such as documents to a wall or board for display. Various designs and names are used. They are inserted and removed by hand, hence the terms "thumbtack" and "push pin". The term drawing pin comes from them being used to hold drawings on drawing boards.
Pins have been used on maps at least since the time of Napoleon. But the "map pin" was not patented until the early 1900's, when Edwin Moore founded his Moore Push-Pin Company.
The thumbtack was invented either by clockmaker Johann Kirsten (between 1902 - 1903) in the city of Lychen, Germany, or by Mick Clay in 1903 in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England..
The idea was sold to Otto Lindstedt, a businessman, who received a patent for the thumbtack on 8 January 1904. The patent made Lindstedt a millionaire. Other sources ascribe the thumbtack invention to Austrian factory owner Heinrich Sachs in 1888.
For the last week I have been sticking pins. My thumb has become a tack. In due course, the oeuvres will be fully revealed.
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