These "Specimens of Fancy Turning" from a 1869 book of albumen silver prints look like antique, mystical spirograph toy drawings. These geometric designs were created on the hand or foot lathe". The book is by Edward J. Woolsey (1803–1872).
From The Public Domain review:
"Fancy "turning" is an old artform, thought to originate in fifteenth-century Bavaria, with sustained discussions of the practice first appearing in Charles Plumier's L'Art de Tourneur (1701). While we may be more familiar with lathes being used to shape staircase balusters and table legs, here an eccentric cutter can create both convex and concave objects from a variety of mediums.
These patterns ornament the lids of wood and ivory boxes, bannister newels, and Fabergé eggs. The photographs in Woolsey's book, on the other hand, focus on fancy turning when it is employed as a two-dimensional technique, as in the metalworks created by Rose engine lathes."
See also: 'Happenstantial Art' captures the beauty and artistry in everyday life
