st?van
i agree with you. but 1979 was my first trip to italy,
not the first time the light went on. even when i was
in london at witcomb lightweight cycles (71-72), the
notion of the 'one-man' shop was an anomaly. there
were few if any such examples of this enterprise. for
instance, prior to arriving there, i wanted to work for
mr. hurlow, but couldn't, because he already had younger
members of his thanet road club doing some of the work
i hoped to learn about. when i was actually in london,
i 'heard' similar tales about ron cooper, another archtypical
one-man shop. i.e. i cannot recall-i do not know of-any
one-man shops from that era. this all ties in with this a.m.'s
thread about the word 'built' when describing how 'he actually
built' the frame. my intuiton is that there was always 'someone
else' doing at least some of the work at the so called
one-man shops, regardless of how menial the task was. thus,
though i am as curious about all this as are others, i still think
that being a framebuilder in those past eras did not always
mean that you built the frame.
fwiw, i still would like to know what folks think about
this 'division of labor' topic because feel it's central to
the thread regarding the letter of authenticity.
e-RICHIE