We will have three new sticker designs for sale next week. All three will be available through my daughter Madeline’s etsy store. The 100-percent vinyl stickers are $7 per set, and she ships overseas.
The three designs are, as usual, based on random stuff that has been floating through my head while working at the bench.
The first sticker, “Rest for the Weary,” features a silhouette of a Welsh stick chair from St Fagans that I built last year. It’s surrounded in a wreath made from (of course) oak branches. The wreath design is from an 1825 labor celebration held when the Erie Canal opened the connection between the Hudson River with the Great Lakes. (Thanks to Suzo for digging this up.)
The second sticker, “Wey Make Iney Thin Are Heit Cant B Made,” is the triumphant claim on chairmaker Chester Cornett’s handmade sign at his shop. We made a copy of this sign, which we love, for our shop. This sticker was designed by Brendan Gaffney as a button we give to students and fellow chairmakers.
The third sticker, “#NeverSponsored,” was inspired by the Jars family in Yakima, Wash. We use the hashtag #neversponsored on our posts that involve discussions of tools. The Jars family took the brilliant step of writing that hashtag on some masking tape and covering the brand names of the tools in their shop.
So we made a sticker to make that easier. We’ll be applying this sticker to some of our tools from companies with annoying social media presences.
My daughter sells these stickers to help make ends meet while working her first job on the Connecticut coast. She has recently discovered the folly of electrical baseboard heaters during a New England winter.
As soon as the stickers are available for purchase, we’ll post a note here on the blog.
— Christopher Schwarz
I am stumped. I have been working to render Chester Cornett’s quote into standard English–not to be a snob, but to comprehend–since I first heard it months ago. Maybe the mystery is part of the charm. However, if anyone would like to fill me in, I would be grateful.
When I read Chester’s writing, I find it’s helpful to read it aloud. It’s phonetic. And most people are stumped by the “heit” – pronounced “hit” in the mountains and meaning “it.”
“We Make Anything or it Can’t Be Made.”
I’m totally down the rabbit hole of Appalachian dialect phonology now… Thanks for that.
Interesting, ‘Hit’, but contrast, is pronounced with two syllables. I can hear it in my head but always interesting to break it down like a dialect coach would teach an actor
I imagine the word heit pronounced with a y in the middle.
When my family moved to rural north Georgia we asked our neighbors if there was any trash collection available.
They told us that Wyatt’s was the name of the trash company. Wyatt’s, like the color.
Groovy, thanks a bunch.
Speaking of stickers, how’d the voting turn out for the reprints?
Each piece is a combination of experience and memories, its part of the artist’s identity.
Nice work. Are we allowed to send the #NeverSponsored sticker to some of the YouTube “makers”? If so can I order a gross to go to Texas?
Better to not waste your time and energy on that sort of thing.
I know LAP is “never sponsered” but that shouldn’t stop you from sponsering others should it? It would be so cool to be your first influencer marketer. Talk it over with John and let me know.
Thanks,
Barry
We are looking for “brand ambassadors” who are living the “LAP Lifestyle” – living in a van down by the river, showering at the YMCA and eating beans out of a can.
It’s not “A van down by the river.” It’s “A waterfront tiny house.”
You should work on making vagrancy sound more artisinal.
“Working hard making vagrancy sound artisanal” is a great T-shirt
Even better… the next sticker…. “Artisanal Vagrancy”
My beans are eaten in a taco, with cheese. Is that too aristocratic for LAP?
No. Is good.
Showering? Damn – that’s high-class.
How would you know what showering is?
Exactly.
I was once, in the middle of the night, woken from my sleep in my white panel van parked in a Pennsylvania Walmart Parking lot and searched at gun point by the local Sheriff in my underwear. Is that the kind of ambassador you are looking for?
If you were drinking wine out of a Pringles can at the time, then yes.
Yes, your Excellency.
Why was the Sheriff in your underwear?
..to serve and protect?
Hi Chris,
Just want to share this thought with you, and this seems the only way to reach you.
I am a huge fan.
I was pondering figure 3.19 in Ingenious Mechanics, and two images came to mind. The foot operated string “vise” shown used on Estonian low bench, and the twisted string held in place by a stick, used to tighten a bow saw.
Perhaps the figure shows a rope attached to the chop of the vise, and routed through the bench top, when you twist the rope, that shortens it, pulling the chop and clamping the work, and then the legs are used to prevent the “stick on rope” rotating back.
I realize this would be nothing like modern vise pressure, but it is just an idea I wanted to share.
Hi Chris,
Just want to share this thought with you, and this seems the only way to reach you.
I am a huge fan.
I was pondering figure 3.19 in Ingenious Mechanics, and two images came to mind. The foot operated string “vise” shown used on Estonian low bench, and the twisted string held in place by a stick, used to tighten a bow saw.
Perhaps the figure shows a rope attached to the chop of the vise, and routed through the bench top, when you twist the rope, that shortens it, pulling the chop and clamping the work, and then the legs are used to prevent the “stick on rope” rotating back.
I realize this would be nothing like modern vise pressure, but it is just an idea I wanted to share.