The Cobbler’s Children

 

I’m sure you all know the story of the cobbler’s children having no shoes.  We do have cloth-covered wire in our house, but often things go years before they are rewired.  Case in point is a little fan that I have planned to mount on the wall in the bathroom to try to alleviate that just-out-of-the-shower way-way-too-hot feeling.  Since the temperatures have been going up into the 90s recently, and working from home has been keeping the things I’ve been meaning to do in my face all day, every day, the little Perfex fan is finally getting a fix-up.

You Can’t Take Me Anywhere…

…seemingly, without me finding some cloth-covered wire.  My latest encounter with finding it unexpectedly started in a way not associated with wire at all.  It started out with ocean liners.

What’s in a Socket?

One of the things we realized early on was the fact that when people were replacing the electrical wire on their lamps they often needed a good socket as well. Since all sockets are not created equal we thought we’d give a short primer of the different types of sockets and their various components.

Happy Anniversary to Phil & Ester

Sometimes our customers astonish us by turning something basic into the extraordinary. At Sundial Wire™ we sell quite a bit of black twisted pair wire, in fact it’s our number one seller. So when someone buys a spool of it we don’t always ask ourselves what they plan to do with it because hey – it’s the little black dress of electrical wire.

Which made us all the more tickled when we read about Ester and Phil’s wedding a few years back and their use of black twisted pair wire to illuminate dozens of Edison style bulbs for a beautiful maker style wedding.

Twisted Wire in the Woods

Well, I’ve already established that I see wire everywhere (see this blog post), but I surprised even myself when I managed to find twisted wire in the woods.  OK, it’s not twisted electrical wire, but I had to investigate it anyway.

Lisa Raphael – Raphael Creations

We’d like to introduce Lisa Raphael of Raphael Creations. Lisa has been a Sundial Wire™ customer since 2012 and we chatted with her to find out more about her work and the process she brings to creating her pieces.

Sundial Wire™: Could you describe your work and how you got started making lighting?

Lisa Raphael: Growing up, I collected many different artifacts – from cameras to typewriters and instruments. I create functional artwork out of vintage non-working materials. Raphael Creations started with an old Underwood typewriter that was collecting dust. Next thing you know, I turned it into a lamp. I literally started creating lighting out of anything I could get my hands on as long as it was early 1800s and 1900s.

A Transcendental Road Trip

What do cloth-covered wire manufacturers see when they are sightseeing?  Let me tell you….

On a whim, Jim and I went to Concord, Massachusetts, this weekend, about ninety miles from our home in Northampton. While Concord is best known for being, along with Lexington, MA, the location of “the shot heard around the world“, the beginning of the fighting in the American Revolutionary War, it was also home to several of America’s shining literary lights of the nineteenth century, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined that famous phrase, as well as being the founder of the Transcendentalist Movement.   Just west of Boston, the road between Boston and Concord is the location of Paul Revere’s famous ride.

Jim and I visited the Minute Man National Park, a large national park covering much of the road along which that first battle of the Revolution took place.  Also part of the park is a house called Wayside: Home of Authors.  This is a house where several famous American authors lived, the Alcotts, including Louisa May, author of Little Women and its sequels, Nathaniel Hawthorne, author, most famously, of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and Margaret Sydney (real name Harriett Lothrop), author of the children’s book series, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.

Brimfield

Last week we dusted off our trusty Radio Flyer cargo wagon, and set out for the great Brimfield Antique Show in Brimfield, Massachusetts.

We’d dropped the first wagon load at the car. Back for a second round.

For one week three times a year  — in May, July, and September —  this rural hamlet in central Massachusetts becomes overrun with thousands of antique dealers, specializing in everything from from 18^th century primitives to Mid-Century Modern, with about every variety and sub-specialty you can imagine. So there are vendors who might just sell paper ephemera, or old maps, or framed original artwork, or clocks, or walking sticks and jewelry. There are dealers who sell imported antiques from Europe and, increasingly, plenty of dealers selling mass-produced, vintage knock-offs.

Movies, Gangsters, and Cloth-Covered Wire (You Have to Start Somewhere)

Just who is Arthur Flegenheimer, and what does he have to do with Sundial Wire™, anyway?

The answer would probably surprise you more than him.  Jim founded this company, in 1992, because virtually every single major electrical wire and cable company in the United States, had long since ceased to make cloth-covered twisted lamp cord. It was an obsolete product, no longer in demand. As a set decorator for feature films and television shows Jim had worked on many period movies and TV shows, such as The Kennedys of Massachusetts, the comedy Mermaids, and the Civil Rights era drama Love Field. Part of his job included first researching the period, then recreating authentic, period-correct sets, right down to the smallest details: stringing knob-and-tube wiring in an attic, or re-wiring an antique electric lamp or electric fan with the correct wire for the period.

Jim Kent (left) and Jim Erickson (right) on the set of Love Field.

Which brings us back to Arthur. Sort of.