Plastic Alphabet Stencil. Chipped.
This is the third humble stencil featured in #projectObso. Interestingly, neither of them are the same font.
What I love about them is the traces left behind.
This one has clear fingerprints.
A brief history of the modern lettering stencil, tells me that in the 1930’s, a schoolteacher in Baltimore named Ruth Hormats noticed “that the brass stencils she gave to her students to use in creative projects were giving them problems.” The crayons they used were too fat for the brass stencils, so she came up with two (cardboard) prototypes which had fatter registration. She had them made for ten dollars each. The F.W. Woolworth Company® placed the initial order, Macy’s featured the stencil, sales grew, and in 1942 she was awarded a patent for the design.
Cribbing all this from their website, but I wanted to tell you the story myself. I am quite cheered to find out a woman schoolteacher came up with this invention.
Filed September 17th, 1940 by Ruth Hormats
[ http://www.google.com/patents?id=WSFzAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false ]
Status: Does the chip justify the discard, or is there something to be stencilled out with a partial A and B?
Kill-ratio: 16: 3/ ~5:1
[This time I am including the captioned image, because of my alteration of the source image – I can break the rules I make]
Alt-title: Untitled Object No. 257 For Stenciling Out An Ode to Handwriting
Another shout out to Russel Howze , who wrote a book about stencils.
Alt-title / Kill-ratio nonsense explained here.
Ruth Hormats (nee Libauer) passed away on Sunday, October 3rd, 2004. She was 95 years old. RIP.
Obsolescence Project 
I once had an idea for a writing class (creative nonfiction) in which each student would be given an object at the beginning. They’d begin with pure description, move to memory (what does object evoke?), then research — where did it come from? who made it? how was it made? is there a story behind it? A controversy even? Or an interesting individual (like Ruth)? The idea being that the smallest, most trivial of items can be a portal to a rich, unexplored world.
You do this so brilliantly — and movingly — daily!
Wow Ann! Thank you so much. That is a treasured compliment. I do try to unearth little nuggets of information – but sometimes I don’t have the time, or like today I have a cold, so the inclination won’t be there so much:)
…a perfect segueway from your “Smell-Me Stationery” post, complete with the inventor’s signature and more archaic fonts. Makes you wonder about the rest of Ruth’s life story.
Thanks John. Yes, more archaic fonts. The collection grows:) Does make you wonder.