tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post7770307089959596802..comments2024-03-18T08:41:35.438-04:00Comments on Lovely Bicycle!: The Handbadge Velouriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359329171411037482noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-17616183890368539272014-05-05T12:29:58.662-04:002014-05-05T12:29:58.662-04:00This is just a guess but the red hand appears on t...This is just a guess but the red hand appears on the coat of arms of Baronets so it may have been picked as an aristocratic symbol rather than a direct link with Ulster.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12826498172261997737noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-56349739049324695542014-04-28T19:04:03.676-04:002014-04-28T19:04:03.676-04:00the Hand of Glory ;-)the Hand of Glory ;-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-48529072341156501372014-04-23T08:52:09.211-04:002014-04-23T08:52:09.211-04:00Last year I did some brief research on the use of ...Last year I did some brief research on the use of the Red Hand of Ulster by Rudge-Whitworth. I spent a few hours looking into the history of the firm, contacting the Rudge (motorcycle) owners club in the process, but after a while I came to the conclusion that, frustratingly, no-one knows the answer. I couldn't find any documented evidence of a connection between the company and the Ulster region. It is possible that one of the founders had Irish roots (all the founding directors were born in the English Midlands, but I didn't trace their family trees) but it is equally possible that one of them, when looking for a logo for their new company, just saw the image somewhere and thought it looked good. It is almost certainly a copy of the red hand of Ulster but if the company founders had never travelled to that region they may not have realised its significance. <br /><br />The logo is also famously found on high-end spoked sports car wheels, as the company later diversified into that field. An earlier comment mentioned Raleigh, there is a connection there too as Rudge bicycle production was eventually bought out by Raleigh who moved the factory from Coventry to Nottingham.<br /><br />The Rudge 'hand' front chainring is a thing of beauty, although not all their bikes had it. You can find photos of it on Google images. <br /><br />Mark Simmonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17176004134539195844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-35205430955245506482014-04-19T15:35:20.985-04:002014-04-19T15:35:20.985-04:00Spindizzy the bikopath.Spindizzy the bikopath.Jon Barnardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01546272421153261764noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-55755667219814457152014-04-19T12:00:59.010-04:002014-04-19T12:00:59.010-04:00Before a reading at Black Oak those eyebrows prece...Before a reading at Black Oak those eyebrows preceded him into the room. GR Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01145811568384053426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-84699243013849933162014-04-18T23:51:16.539-04:002014-04-18T23:51:16.539-04:00My freshman year at Berkeley I took a class with P...My freshman year at Berkeley I took a class with Pinsky on American poetry (Frost, Stevens, Bishop, Bidart, Crane, Hass...). Great class. Pinsky truly had an infectious enthusiasm for poetry. I believe he was working on Milosz translations then. Though I took several other Slavic lit classes, I never took a class with Milosz. But I remember him for having the bushiest eyebrows on campus. Jon Barnardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01546272421153261764noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-58764161113797650042014-04-18T13:55:15.104-04:002014-04-18T13:55:15.104-04:00"The designer who imagines that he is somehow..."The designer who imagines that he is somehow qualitatively different from his flesh robots is delusional. Both are just cogs in a machine. Owning or using such products makes the consumer another cog in the machine."<br /><br />Good observation.<br /><br />The Shelby story was great. Unfortunately it's now a brand to be imprinted on the likes of Mustangs. GR Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01145811568384053426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-20718506827575696622014-04-18T08:42:21.256-04:002014-04-18T08:42:21.256-04:00A wonderful obsession.
One for which there is n...A wonderful obsession. <br /><br />One for which there is no cure. <br /><br />Least none I can think of anyway.Matthew Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10408057524387021992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-86948724622400177102014-04-17T23:28:37.218-04:002014-04-17T23:28:37.218-04:00OK, just so everybody knows, I don't really mu...OK, just so everybody knows, I don't really murder bikes for their badges. I can't believe how creepy I still feel after writing that...<br /><br />Bbbrrrrrr...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-88391037359744081002014-04-17T23:24:46.502-04:002014-04-17T23:24:46.502-04:00I think the headbadge is where the soul of a bike ...I think the headbadge is where the soul of a bike resides, especially if it's nice thick brass with lots of enamel or cloisonné work. I don't know how many badges I have imprisoned in a box under my bench but it's beyond dozens.<br /><br />Some of them came off dead bikes that were beyond saving and I don't feel bad about them but the ones I filed, chiseled or drilled from the headtubes of living breathing bikes make me wonder what I'm really capable of...<br /><br />My Rudge badge came off a 1960s 3spd I stumbled across clamped in the stand at the local university bike co-op, covered with beer bottle labels and sporting ape-hanger bars. I justified it by telling myself the old girl was doomed and the hooligan who was torturing her would neither notice or care... It's similar to the one in your photo but plain alloy with just black screen printing. I removed it by quickly pressing a sharp Philips screwdriver into the soft aluminum rivets and twisting till they gave up, all the while glancing over my shoulder and telling the bike not to make a sound. I calmly walked back out to my car with the badge throbbing in my pocket and my heart pounding in my chest.<br /><br />The beautiful brass Batavus "B" I got last week by taking up a friends offer to buy a nice old 10spd mixte that got abandoned at his shop for $10 as long as I passed it on to someone and didn't just part it out. It still rode just as well after I got done with the hammer and pin punch as before (if you ignore the fact that it's merely a soul-less zombie bike that doesn't know it's own name anymore). How did I become this monster? I feel like the Hairy Wildman depicted on the badge itself, striding, club on shoulder looking for the next tender morsel to wolf down.<br /><br />I sometimes get the box out and look at my trophies, the lovely cloisonné Fuji badge from the bent "Special Road Racer", the Apollo badge that looks like it's from the 1930s, it has the head of a young god wearing a laurel wreath and looking noble. It lives in the dark under my bench now too. Then there are the ones I've forgotten, where did the "Londoner" badge come from? It has an amazing bas relief of Big Ben stamped on it, you'd think I'd remember that one. Maybe I'm suppressing that memory. Don't ask me where all the Schwinn ovals and Raleigh Herons came from either. Dim recollections of bike racks outside poorly lit dormitories surface but nothing stands out.<br /><br /> I try to stop, I ask myself how I would feel if someone did that to one of my bikes but it doesn't make any difference. I am beyond help.<br /><br />My name is Spindizzy and I steal headbadges. Please stop me before I take another bikes soul...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-77788607610482670432014-04-17T17:03:16.838-04:002014-04-17T17:03:16.838-04:00Looks like the old Allsopp brewery's symbol fr...Looks like the old Allsopp brewery's symbol from Burton. Common symbol? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-15817043704287948142014-04-17T13:28:42.346-04:002014-04-17T13:28:42.346-04:00Anon 10:08 and 12:49. You misinterpreted my commen...Anon 10:08 and 12:49. You misinterpreted my comment in several ways. I meant that the person suggesting the logo meant handmade had been joking, not that the idea of this being a handmade bike is a joke. Not enough bandwidth to comment further just now.Velouriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00359329171411037482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-24779933450318593352014-04-17T12:49:51.862-04:002014-04-17T12:49:51.862-04:00I'm going to burn some more bandwidth because ...I'm going to burn some more bandwidth because the "joke" line grates.<br /><br />When I was a lad in the late 1960s I worked briefly in production control in an Industrial Revolution era dark satanic mill. My job was mostly gears for speedometers and tachometers. Those were made in series and fairly quickly but they were emphatically cut one at a time by a machinist. The machines did not run themselves. Setup, maintenance, sharpening took as much time as gearhobbing. <br /><br />The job did also include making a variety of nameplates, coverplates, badges. I have a very good idea what making a Rudge headbadge entailed. A lot of hand operations. You are looking at pieces that were made a few hundred a month or at most a few thousand a month. Each piece is getting handled inspected and cared for repeatedly. We had the capability to make product as fine as the Rudge badge shown here but only did so when the customer really cared how their name was rendered. Most customers did not care. When looking at the sort of bike you show here it is massively evident that everyone whose hands touched the bike did care.<br /><br />I still remember the day an already somewhat famous customer, Caroll Shelby, came to the plant. He showed up in greasy coveralls and dirty hands and walked straight past the suits. He wanted to talk to the machinists. He operated the lathes and mills and hobs himself because there was no other way to know how they had been maintained and what they were capable of. He showed the men where he wanted a thousandth, where he wanted a polish, how he wanted a file stroke. Shelby's work was thenceforth handled separately. No change in part number, no change in blueprint, not a word on paper. Totally different parts. Handmade. The level of motivation the machinists had when working on a Shelby order was palpable.<br /><br />This notion that the production of industrial artifacts consists of a series of inside jokes is just bizarre. At best it speaks callousness alienation and ignorance. We still care about these old bikes precisely because the people who made them cared. <br /><br />We live now in a world where product is designed at computer terminals and made by flesh robots no one ever sees. Pre-production samples fly back and forth until the designer feels the flesh robots are gettting it approximately right. The designer who imagines that he is somehow qualitatively different from his flesh robots is delusional. Both are just cogs in a machine. Owning or using such products makes the consumer another cog in the machine.<br /><br />We like the old bikes. We appreciate the old bikes. Denigrating them as jokes or DIY projects makes no sense.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-65084583416565903512014-04-17T12:46:57.140-04:002014-04-17T12:46:57.140-04:00Would that Whitworth be the same origin as the Whi...Would that Whitworth be the same origin as the Whitworth threading that is found on a lot of older British vehicles? I have an old Land Rover that has some Whitworth-threaded bolts, which is a different thread than the usual standard British threading.Lesliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02799321882670631711noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-49115732738868179222014-04-17T10:08:46.066-04:002014-04-17T10:08:46.066-04:00You are misdating the industrial revolution by a c...You are misdating the industrial revolution by a century.<br /><br />Either when Rudge was created or when the featured bike was created there were enough people employed in metalworking that the meaning of handmade would have been clear. Pretty much anyone looking at a bike frame would have a very good idea what the production processes were and how much hand labor had gone into it. <br /><br />The featured bike was made by human hands. Those hands my have used machines and large machines and it was all done in a factory setting. More was done with simple hand tools than you imagine. There were no robots that could spit out a bike frame. It's a handmade bike.<br /><br />The " poor folks" concept is so ahistorical I hardly know where to begin. Social class was extremely well articulated in early 20th century UK. No one ever forgot for a moment their place in the class system. Everything one might do, including making a bike, buying a bike, riding a bike had significance in terms of class. The notion that class does not exist except when we interrupt our day to muse about "poor folks" is specifically American and quite recent.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-80339798441196958172014-04-17T10:00:26.978-04:002014-04-17T10:00:26.978-04:00Well, that question made me do research. And havin...Well, that question made me do research. And having done so, I think I was mistaken about Raleigh. But I discover instead that it seems Rudge were making some models named "Ulster", with the characteristic chainring. So maybe there is something in this red hand theory.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-62304438675614638082014-04-17T09:40:18.950-04:002014-04-17T09:40:18.950-04:00A question which makes me question my assumptions....A question which makes me question my assumptions. The chainring I saw was on a Raleigh-headbadged roadster with "Ulster Sports" painted on the downtube. However, it did look just like the Rudge chainring (now that I've looked up what those look like), so maybe my red hand theory was wide of the mark.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-16216849158888083382014-04-17T08:54:30.370-04:002014-04-17T08:54:30.370-04:00My headbadge collection includes a version of the ...My headbadge collection includes a version of the Rudge in your pictures above.<br /><br />I have tried to find a decent version of the round Rudge badge in your link. So far no luck. Matthew Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10408057524387021992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-62326926616201151992014-04-17T07:14:53.413-04:002014-04-17T07:14:53.413-04:00Prior to speric's link, the oldest Rudge catal...Prior to speric's link, the oldest Rudge catalogue I'd seen was from 1910, when they had already merged with Whitworth. The hand appears on the cover in red on that one as well.<br /><br />Pretty sure the handmade reference was a joke to start with, for all the reason you say. Funny how perceptions of handmade can change. When viewed in a positive light, I guess it would mean "expertly crafted," whereas in a negative light it would mean more like DIY. I keep meaning to write about <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lovely_bicycle/sets/72157638310526685/" rel="nofollow">this 1930s NI-made Tyrone Flyer</a>, which is a little of both. Velouriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00359329171411037482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-46994290855829299132014-04-17T04:52:49.215-04:002014-04-17T04:52:49.215-04:00"What if the breath that kindled those grim f..."What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, <br />And plunge us in the flames; or from above <br />Should intermitted vengeance arm again <br />His red right hand to plague us?"Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16916475081711086964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-52772714982986069942014-04-17T04:47:59.725-04:002014-04-17T04:47:59.725-04:00I have never seen a Raleigh Ulster model with a ha...I have never seen a Raleigh Ulster model with a hand chainring; is it a different style from the Rudge chainring?Velouriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00359329171411037482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-65449153147997482882014-04-16T20:04:52.598-04:002014-04-16T20:04:52.598-04:00Follow this link from a 1915 Rudge- Whitworth Cata...Follow this link from a 1915 Rudge- Whitworth Catalog and you'll see the hand is red in that one. (bottom of the page)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.oldbike.eu/wordpress/?page_id=647" rel="nofollow">http://www.oldbike.eu/wordpress/?page_id=647</a><br /><br />I've heard both the Red Hand of Ulster and "Handmade" story. Of the two I'd give more credit to the Red Hand of Ulster since "handmade" wasn't really a selling point at the turn of the last century. Infact, it was quite possibly the opposite since it (bicycles in general) was the beginning/middle of the industrial revolution. And handmade possibly was considered something that "poor" folks did cause they couldn't afford anything better.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12164667491664485403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-29464424178361162172014-04-16T17:46:51.776-04:002014-04-16T17:46:51.776-04:00I remember him as the translator of one of Milosz&...I remember him as the translator of one of Milosz's works. GR Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01145811568384053426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-61672635773717097392014-04-16T17:10:49.288-04:002014-04-16T17:10:49.288-04:00The Rudge one is sometimes red. And the non-Rudge ...The Rudge one is <a href="http://www.oldbike.eu/museum/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/1924_Rudge.jpg" rel="nofollow">sometimes red</a>. And the non-Rudge ones I see around are sometimes not red. Velouriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00359329171411037482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6467858377106451384.post-40809919539488583402014-04-16T17:05:29.580-04:002014-04-16T17:05:29.580-04:00Thanks, I missed the Whitworth connection.Thanks, I missed the Whitworth connection.Velouriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00359329171411037482noreply@blogger.com