Japanese Craftsman Masterfully Restores Old Book into Like-New Condition

If you have ever bemoaned that a treasured a book was falling apart, then you will relish seeing how this Japanese craftsman masterfully restored a tattered 1,000-page dictionary near perfect condition. Well, this is an episode of the Japanese show called Shuri, “Bakaseru” means “The Fascinating Craftsman” featured Nobuo Okano, an artisan who specializes in old books. Thus during the ten minutes long segment, the craftsman demonstrates how the well-loved English-Japanese dictionary was brought back to new life. It has had fairly a history and served the owner from his junior high years through his adult life. Now that his daughter is entering college, he wants to pass the book along to her.

Okano starts the restoration by cleaning all of the old glue from the book’s spine and repairing pages of maps included in it. Though they cannot be returned to a untouched condition, they are glued to paper and now have a solid base. Then, he comes the most tedious part of the whole process. Okano unfolds hundreds of bent page corners with a tweezers, separately ironing each of them flat shape. Once that’s he done this part, the book is looking much in a better shape, but there’s still much work to do. The tips of the pages are stained with purple ink, and so he uses a guillotine book cutter to trim those unsightly edges. Moreover constructing a fresh cover is the last step, and he embellished it with the salvaged title piece of the original book. The process ends of episode expressions the happy and thankful customer giving the dictionary to his daughter. If you want see the video below to see just how Okano completed this incredible restore, please click on the below link.

 Source: My Modernmet

Flowing Glass Sculptures Inspired by the Ocean and Undersea Creatures

The talented artist K. William LeQuier makes spectacular, free flowing glass sculptures by using an exclusive style he's developed more than a decade and a half. Well, in the mid-1970s he learned about glass blowing and for years he created glass vessels. Then, in the early 1990s, he started to experiment with sandblasted surface designs, where he create he could carve glass into a myriad of textures using a sandblaster and a diamond saw. Nevertheless labor-intensive, this work resulted in unanticipated and thrilling results that gave him a new direction to explore. Though observing stacks of salvaged glass shelving, he recognized he could make multi-layered constructions that looked like free flowing strands of carved glass. These pieces would be inspired by momentary events in nature like a wave crashing or a jellyfish swimming through the ocean.

Thus, every sculpture starts with a rough sketch. From that, he creates a template to scale.  He says; thin strips of adhesive rubber are arranged one at a time on each plate of glass. When the plate is sandblasted, the rubber acts as a resist. The rest of the plate is cut away leaving only what was protected by the rubber. Further, after each plate is sandblasted the plates are then well glued together with a distinct UV curing epoxy." Sanding is done with a belt sander and details are carved with a diamond tip. The artist makes the base and armature on which the sculpture rests all by hand. My work is actually inspired by the drama of everyday events in the natural world where weather and time are catalysts for change.

Source: My Modernmet 

World’s Most Beautiful Stones and Minerals

A mineral is a "naturally occurring substance that is solid and inorganic representable by a chemical formula, and has an ordered atomic structure." Rocks, unlike minerals, don't have a precise chemical composition, and can be finished of both minerals and non-minerals. 

Though there’re more than 4,900 recognized types of minerals, the ones here are just the most gorgeous ones that we and our readers could find. Well, “Pretty" is not the right word, they are just “super” and “fantastic”. All these nuances, shapes, they look like they have enclosed within them all the most brilliant and incredibly beautiful spaces we have ever well-known - sky, cosmos, ocean. The first one is really impressed the most, the name "Empress" is befitting - it looks regal, and it reminds of a complete galaxy that has descended to earth to remind us that the stars might not be so far away as we think...Mineral” is not the first thing to come to mind when you hear the word “beauty,” and that‘s a pity because they look so, so attractive. Source: Charismatic Planet

This selection of some of the most beautiful minerals and stones in the world will be a feast for your eyes. Here is some of most beautiful picture of a mineral? Add it below!