I’ve been visiting the Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies for a few months now—it’s grown nicely as people have sent in photos of dusty art artifacts that were indispensable in the days before PhotoShop. That’s not to say that many of these items are no longer in use: I don’t know how they’re doing things nowadays, but when I left the New York Observer in 2004, they were still leaning pretty heavily on photostats and wax adhesives and other production room practices that had gone out of style in the early nineties.  (They also paid people a minimum wage that had gone out of style then, too…)

Both my parents are artists, and so I find these objects extremely comforting. Half my childhood was spent sculpting kneaded erasers and making fake-buggers out of dried rubber cement. Nothing says “home” to me like the smell of Spray Mount.