Adventures in skating historiography
A caricature of Jones? Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Today marks the 250th anniversary of Robert Jones's conviction. On this blog, Jones is best known for his Treatise on Skating—the oldest known book about ice skating—and his skates, which I tried to reproduce. Jones is also known for child molestation. Today day in 1772, he was… Continue reading 250 years of Robert Jones
Today's book report is on Schaatsen en schaatsenmakers in de 19e en 20e eeuw [Skates and skatemakers in the 19th and 20th centuries] by A. C. Broere. I have the 1988 edition (dark blue cover); there's also a version with a white cover. I don't know what the difference is. It's only 80 pages long… Continue reading Skates and skatemakers in the 19th and 20th centuries
Zwerven op de schaats door Holland This post continues the backlog of skating books books I have to write about. This one is in Dutch, and the title means "roaming on skates through Holland." It's a small book—only 96 pages and about 5"x7"—published by Van Gorgum in 1942. The book includes short chapters on the… Continue reading Zwerven op de schaats door Holland
This book was published in 1966 by the US Figure Skating Association, but exists outside of the Rulebook and test structure. It, according to the foreward [sic], exists to help further interest, proficiency and enjoyment to the skaters who like this phase of our sport.Ice Dances, p. 3 The book can be divided into three… Continue reading Ice Dances, Figures and Exercises
The idea of designing your own figure is something that goes way back in figure skating. Late nineteenth-century competitions in the International style invited skaters to create their own patterns on the ice, called special figures. Many of these were published in books like Holletscheck's Kunstfertigkeit im Eislaufen. Some were actually what we'd call freestyle… Continue reading Creative figures and the USFS Adult Gold Figure test
Traité du patinage (Treatise on Skating) by Georges Deney, was published twice: in 1891 or 1892 and again in 1914. WorldCat gives the date of the first edition as 1891, but Fowler includes it in his list of books published in 1892. Everyone has the year in square brackets, which means nobody's really sure. Fowler's… Continue reading Georges Deny, Traité du patinage
This short video illustrates the major advantage of metal-bladed skates over bone skates. Even if the earliest metal-bladed skates were used with poles (I'm not sure when people started pushing with their feet), it was much easier to turn on them. Here I'm trying to keep the hockey circle between my feet on my archetype… Continue reading Bone skates vs. archetype skates
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Around-Ice-Eighty-Years-irreverent/dp/0992851432/ Courtney Jones's autobiography on Amazon UK. Courtney Jones is being the third Jones discussed on this blog, after Robert Jones and Ernest Jones. I have no idea whether they are related. This Jones's achievement is the publication of a memoir, Around the Ice in Eighty Years: An Irreverent Memoir by an Accidental Champion, currently… Continue reading Courtney Jones, Around the Ice in 80 Years
Lincoln Castle Revealed from Oxbow Oxbow's new book about Lincoln Castle, Lincoln Castle Revealed: The Story of a Norman Powerhouse and its Anglo-Saxon Precursor describes two bone skate fragments found during the excavation. The authors date them to before the Norman Conquest and include them in the catalog of artifacts under "Recreation"—where they are the… Continue reading The bone skates from Lincoln Castle
My Robert Jones skates. In A Treatise on Skating—the first book on skating, published exactly 250 years ago—Robert Jones describes, in great detail, his ideal skates. I made a pair and tried them out. Jones's skates are the type used in England at his time, in contrast to the Dutch type. They have short, curved… Continue reading Robert Jones’s skates again