large folio · buckram · the bottom shelf, not often pulled
a folio cataloguing the kinds of dust that settle in domestic
interiors: the wood-dust under a worked desk, the lint at the
foot of a long bed, the talc trapped in the joints of an old
kitchen drawer, the fine grit
brought home by shoes. plates, in halftone, show specimens at
varying magnification. tables catalogue them by colour, by
origin, by likely age.
volume one was given to municipal and industrial dust. volume
two, this volume, is given over to the domestic. a third
volume — atmospheric, the dust that does not settle — was
drafted but, the editors say in a polite preface, will not be
printed. the work was not commercially intended. it survives
in the few libraries that asked for a copy.
the atlas pairs well with the
household manual and is sometimes shelved beside the
catalogue. readers are advised
not to dust the book itself.
marginalia · pencil, p. 142 plate xliv is wrong. the grey one is from the attic, not the cellar. they have it the other way round.