Patterns and instructions for making over twenty wooden wind gadgets including whirligigs and weathervanes.

More than two dozen traditional and original models of the wind-powered toys known as whirligigs appear in this how-to manual. Easy-to-follow instructions, detailed illustrations.

American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds, published to coincide with an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, reveals the beauty, historical significance, and technical virtuosity of American vanes fashioned between the late seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. This American art form has long been an enduring part of the country's skylines. Early church steeples were graced with weathercocks, following a European tradition that dates to the MiddleAges. America's first documented vane maker, metalsmith Shem Drowne of Boston, crafted a number of surviving vanes, including the iconic golden grasshopper that has topped the city's Faneuil Hall since 1742. Farmers, blacksmiths, and other craftsmen proudly fashioned roosters, cows, horses, and other forms for country barns, and as the tradition and public demand expanded over the course of the nineteenth century, so did the diversity of forms, which grew to fill the mail order catalogs of commercial manufacturers in Boston, New York, and other cities. Today, weathervanes hold a well-established place in the canon of American folk art and American Weathervanes celebrates this artistry in the most up-to-date and authoritative work on the subject. Lavishly illustrated with masterworks from prominent private and public collections, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who collects or simply admires American vernacular art and sculpture.

This book takes you through the history of weathervanes and whirligigs from back in knighthood days when the boys who earned the banners used them as part of their heraldic tradition. The designs have also been used as totems, mascots, symbols and stemmed from both superstition and religion as well as representational origins. From the whittled wooden whirligigs of the 18th and 19th century to Walt Disney's Tower of the Four Winds, it's all here with a whole series of accompanying illustrations drawn by the author.

Fast and easy woodworking projects, from toys to furniture, folk art to garden items.