Many credit Bartitsu's resurgence to Tony Wolf, a New Zealand-born martial-arts instructor who brought together its early supporters by posting archival materials on his website, the Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences, as far back as 2001.

WSJ: Bartitsu: The Sherlock Holmes Way of Self-Defense

For example, I emailed the company several weeks ago asking why it was still doing business with Light Impressions, a supplier of archival framing and storage materials which has a consumer warning from the Better Business Bureau and is the subject of multiple complaints on various photography Web sites.

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