On Browsing inadvertently captures many of the themes I have in mind for the ‘Taronna’ layout. It’s the first book I’ve read that celebrates and reflects on browsing for books and music in Toronto’s brick-and-mortar stores in the pre-smartphone era. The only difference I guess is that for me browsing is also strongly linked to the physical act of being transported to those stores by bus, subway, streetcar, or my own feet.
Surprisingly, On Browsing’s author is 19 years younger than me, although his mention of his father’s birth year puts him 5 years older than my father. So, maybe an appreciation of browsing isn’t limited to the very old demographic - although it will be soon enough - but maybe there’s also some influence due to the era one’s parents grew up in as the author seems to illustrate with a number of anecdotes. I didn’t just spontaneously start a book browsing habit, it got started tagging along with my father on his excursions. Maybe there’s some clue hidden in the fact that both fathers were children during The Great Depression that inculcated something. Whatever its cause it was passed on to me.
I guess the only minor discrepancy between the author’s browsing experiences and mine have to do with him growing up in the west end and me in the east. His suburban experiences feature Sherway Gardens and Square One, and mine Scarborough Town Centre and Cedarbrae Mall, although when the scene shifts to downtown, there’s pretty much a one-to-one mapping, especially at The World’s Biggest Bookstore when it comes to book browsing.
TWBB has been gone for over a decade now, and a condo has been built on the holy site, but a few steps down Edward St., closer to Yonge, is BMV, a store that sells used and end-of-line Books, Magazines, and Videos as its acronymic name spells out. I browse there when I’m in Toronto, trying to conjure up those old good feelings I’d get at TWBB. Sometimes I get a tingling, like I did a few weeks ago.
I was eyeing some books on a rack and as I peeked over it I saw a book entitled The Architectural Model on a nearby shelf, way down near the floor, and just as importantly, it was wearing a loud red and white sticker proclaiming it cost only $14.99. Normally I don’t pay much attention to modelling books for architects and the construction industry as they have other reasons for making models, but this book looked quite interesting and I thought it might answer some questions I had about the history of using cardboard to make model buildings. As far as I can tell the first book on making cardboard and paper architectural models for architectural purposes was The Art of Architectural Modelling in Paper written by the architect T. A. Richardson and published by John Weale of London in 1859, so I thought maybe there’d be something here that might help out with some questions I had. Oh, and the price was right :-)
I had high hopes for The Architectural Model, but things got off to a bad start when I read something of slight to model railroaders right in the introduction that put me in a foul mood:
“Indeed, the selection and interpretation of modeling material are fundamental to the entire nature of the architectural model. In certain kinds of modeling, such as that for model railways, reality is miniaturized and pebbles are used to depict stones and so forth. Unlike this naïve realistic approach, architectural models use materials such as wood or cardboard to represent building materials.”
This told me the author doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and his knowledge of model railways is stuck at the level of 1950s children’s play with a setup on a rec-room ping-pong table. Yes, it’s often true that real model railroaders make use of found, natural materials like pebbles, stones, twigs, sand, lichen, and so on, but these materials often yield astonishing results because of the fractalness of the natural world. That is, what we see at a large scale is often also present at much smaller ones; that is, self-similarity is present at a variety of scales. It’s actually a rather sophisticated approach to modelling, making careful use of the self-similarity characteristics of the natural world. If you’re a regular reader here you know I often use natural materials when it seems appropriate, so the author’s comment carries a little extra sting.
Then there’s the statement that implies architects aren’t naïve like model railroaders because architects use modelling materials like wood or cardboard to represent actual building materials and aren’t stuck piddling around with only what nature has to offer. Well, model railroaders represent real building materials with modelling materials too, and have done so since the beginning of the hobby, and before that well into its folk art roots. Model railroaders aren’t naïve children.
Well, I stumbled across those sentences on page 2 (!), so I didn’t get off to a good start :-) My frame-of-mind as I proceeded was: what else has this guy got wrong and what don’t I have the background in to recognize whether it’s true or false? So, my trust in this book was low.
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| I thought I was having a flashback in BMV when I saw those monster kits sitting on the top of a shelf. That's how the Aurora monster kits were displayed in the Painted Post smoke shop. |
I jumped ahead and looked for Richardson’s book in the Bibliography as well as references to passages on using cardboard and paper as model making materials in the index. It turns out Richardson’s book isn’t mentioned anywhere, nor is the early history of using card and paper. There are a number of passages on the use of card and paper models by some famous architects, but nothing that amounts to a coherent history. My questions remain open.
You know, this is how it goes sometimes with browsing in the real world. Sometimes a winner turns up and sometimes not. I’m not getting rid of The Architectural Model. I think it’s one of those books I’ll set aside awhile and then come back to later. It has lots of interesting photos that I’d like to investigate further, and some passages I’ve dipped into at random are intriguing and need more study. Maybe in the summer when the winter has fully worn off I’ll dip in again :-)
Contrary to my Toronto experience, I did have some springtime browsing success in Kingston a few weeks ago in a store called Bookland. I found a copy of The First Spike: The early railways, tramways and roads of eastern Ontario by Steven Manders, published in 2017. It’s a beautiful, well researched book full of interesting pictures and stories. The subtitle summarizes what you’ll find inside fairly well, and I assume the title is a riff on Pierre Berton’s classic book, The Last Spike. For $17, it was a great bargain and should make for interesting summer reading out on the back porch.
Well, when it comes to browsing, I never know what will turn up that I didn’t know I needed, even if some findings chafe a bit. That’s the thrill of the thing.
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