markmarchesi.com

This world map came out of an 1885 edition of Cram’s Atlas. I love the layout and decorative border, and the illustrations used to fill the top and bottom are pure genius. And, it blows my mind to see that dotted line around the North Pole labeled “Highest Point Reached by Man. […]

My friends are in the process of starting up a biodiesel manufacturing plant in Portland. For months they have been raising funds, setting up equipment, and making contracts with area restaurants to ensure a steady supply of used vegetable oil. Their recent progress amazes me. This shot only shows about a quarter […]

Usually I only use pallet wood for frame backs (see below). But, I made the above frame entirely out of a dismantled pallet or “skid” as they are sometimes called. The artwork is out of a collection of posters I peeled off walls all around Athens, Greece in 2001.

I grew up in a recreational boating community and spent many days and nights on the water as a child. As a young adult I worked as a laborer on the Portland waterfront for one summer, as a sternman on a lobster boat for six months, and took one trip on an offshore trawler. […]

I’ve finally managed to arrange a decent studio for shooting frames in my basement using techniques I learned the day my friend Michael Heiko did the shots for The Woodpile homepage.
This is a map of the North Pole from Richard Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas published in 1881. It looks great on the wall in my […]

Cliff; Portland Harbor, Maine
Slowly but surely, my new project about commercial fishing in the North Atlantic is gaining steam.

These are off a my favorite antique print blog, BibliOdyssey. Check it out when you have a large block of time to kill. A recent post has several of these Civil War era envelopes. Notice the return address on the bottom one.  Wm Ridenburgh, 140 Nassau St. New-York. - No zip code […]

This is a picture of the shop with some in progress frames laid out. The saw room is to the left and these tables are where assembly and finishing take place. Final assembly takes place elsewhere on another set of cleaner tables. The large frame on the top left was one of […]

This beauty is from an 1892 George F. Cram Atlas. Figure 1 is titled “Circles & Diurnal Movements of the Celestial Sphere” and Figure 8 is “The Various Appearances of Saturn’s Rings”. Each diagram is amazing in it’s own right. Figures 2 and 3 are very detailed and technical. I don’t understand […]

My friend Jamie works as a librarian for the Maine Historical Society Library. They recently moved the entire collection to a temporary location and began a large scale renovation of the original space which was built in 1907. They granted me access during the week of the move, and I’m working on getting […]