Old-time material culture: the best blocks ever

Anchor Stone building sets are synthetic stone blocks made from quartz sand, linseed oil, and chalk. The soft colors are a sort of slate blue, a creamy sandstone-like tone, and a rosy red that somewhat resembles our local pink granite before it's polished. The first ones I knew were from the nineteenth century and had survived as a large and intact set, just like new and complete with the booklet containing diagrams of structures for copying. I think that there have been periods when these were not available, but they are again, all the way from east Germany. I recently treated myself to a small set from Padilly. There's a great on-line history and frequent update site for Richter's Anchor Stone building sets (also known as Richters Anker-Steinbaukasten). They still are packed in a wooden box with a sliding cover. I wrote about these once before ("Best building blocks")