Our Moleskin Work Vests are in store and ready to ship. These vests are made from U.K. moleskin and stitched here in Cincinnati. The price is $165 plus domestic shipping.
Before you order, be sure to check out the sizing chart. Please take a moment to measure yourself so you get the correct size. These fit a little slimmer than what you’ll find in department stores. But I promise they are not cut for human twigs.
These vests are outstanding – soft, warm and hard-wearing. Thanks to Tom Bonamici who designed them and Sew Valley that stitched them.
During the last month (plus a few days), I’ve traveled more than 10,900 miles. And, truth be told, I’m feeling every one of them this evening.
The travel is great. The food, people and work – also great. I honestly enjoy it. Travel does, however, make me anxious because it puts me behind on publishing books and completing furniture commissions. So here is an anxiety-fueled update on the book projects we are working on.
I’m covering only the book projects we are actively working on. If your favorite book isn’t listed, it’s because I don’t have any news on it. Likely the book’s text is in the hands of the author – not us. So if you ask about a project that isn’t listed here, you will be referred to Paragraph 3 of this blog entry.
‘The Anarchist’s Design Book, Expanded Edition’
This book will go to the printer on Dec. 2. We’re just tying up some loose ends. Kara is doing a final copy edit. Briony is finishing up some drawings. If it goes to the printer on schedule, it will arrive in the warehouse in January. After we go to press, we’ll make the new pdf available to everyone who has purchased the book before, whether they bought it from us or from one of our distributors.
‘Kitchen Think’ (Working Title) by Nancy Hiller
Nancy’s book has been edited and is being prepared for design. We still have too many loose ends with the project to project exactly when it will be published. We are hoping for the first half of 2020.
‘Country Woodcraft’ (Updated and Expanded) by Drew Langsner
I’ve been editing this book during my travels and am about one-third of the way through the text. Drew has done a magnificent job of updating his 1978 classic. This book launched the idea of “green woodworking” into the American woodworking scene. And Drew has updated the book with what he has learned in the last 40 years…. We should have this out by June.
‘The Life & Work of John Brown’ (Working Title Only) by Christopher Williams
This book is almost completely written and in our hands. We’re just waiting on a couple critical bits to finish the job. Then I’ll begin editing the book. We hope to have this book out by August – if the writing wraps up in a timely manner.
‘Honest Labour’ by Charles Hayward
Kara plans to have her work on this book complete by the end of 2019. The book – a collection of the best “Chips From the Chisel” essays by Charles Hayward – should come together in 2020.
‘The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke’ by Monroe Robinson
Kara is currently editing this book and getting things ready for the next big hurdle with the book: finding an illustrator. We hope this will be a 2020 book – fingers crossed. It really depends on how quickly the illustrator works.
‘Make a Chair From a Tree’ (Third Edition) by Jennie Alexander
I have hired Peter Follansbee to finish up the editing of this text. No one else that I know has the long history with Alexander that is necessary to get the text complete. Peter knows the chair and the author inside and out. So we are making progress here, but it is a very complex project.
I think that covers everything we have in the pipeline. For Christmas, I’m going to ask Santa for a bigger pipe.
You can now order the Lost Art Press version of “Welsh Stick Chairs” in the U.K. and Europe through Classic Hand Tools in Suffolk. Classic Hand Tools is currently taking pre-orders and will ship those out when the books arrive there (we hope in December).
We are also offering this book to our distributors world-wide, though I don’t have any information on if they have agreed to carry it.
We are especially happy that the book can now be purchased in Wales, which is where John Brown was from and where he wrote this important little book.
Tracing the provenance of individual country chairs is a complicated business, probably with few exceptions, impossible. There is no scholarly standard work to refer to. Chairs with similar characteristics are found in different parts of the country (Plate 14). They cannot, with any certainty, be regionalised. Carmarthenshire, with large areas of good farming land and a high proportion of better houses, is known for the quality and elegance of its locally-built furniture. Chairs found in the county, whilst unmistakably Welsh, have a greater sophistication than those made in the more remote parts further north (Plate 20). Dating Welsh stick chairs is very difficult. Whether these Carmarthenshire chairs were made concurrently with their more ‘folk art’ cousins from further north is difficult to say, but it looks as though they might have been. There is the possibility of another regional style. Some Welsh chairs have a wide lozenge- shaped seat, with only three or four untapered, heavier long sticks at the back. This type appears to come from the north (Plate 8, a & c).
As the standard of living improved, throughout Wales primitive furniture and chairs were made. By whom and for whom it is difficult to say. For certain, these items did not find their way into the squire’s house and they were almost entirely rural. The one thing about the chairs is that they all fulfilled the strict definition of ‘Windsor’, in that they grew from a solid wooden seat, having legs and sticks socketed into that seat. The termination of the long back sticks was normally a comb, that is a piece of wood, sometimes curved, sometimes straight, into which the tops of the sticks were mortised. Rarely, a few later chairs have a steamed bow or hoop (Plates 16 & 20). Many of the chairs terminated at the arm, that is the rear sticks did not come up to the level of shoulders or head. These arm-chairs, quite common, are the forerunner of the smoker’s bow or captain’s chair (Plate 14).
What is it that makes these chairs so attractive that now they have become highly sought after collectors’ items? Could it be some extension of the old Celtic art which makes them so appealing? – a naive folk art uncluttered by association with the contemporary urban styles. Many characteristics of the design are extremely good, and represent what we look for today in a well proportioned chair. The most obvious feature is that the legs are set well into the seat with a good rake. The English chair has the legs at the corners, and they are more upright. This is not so elegant. Stretchers to strengthen the legs were sometimes used; there seem to be no rules. When English goods and ideas reached the country village, the rural craftsman was influenced to use some design, and some of the chairs began to lose their spontaneity (Plate 16).
Rural poverty and religious bigotry have triggered much migration of Welsh people, mainly to the New World. In the 1670s, Quakers from Montgomeryshire and Meirionethshire were central to the formation of Pennsylvania. William Penn’s deputy was a Welshman called Thomas Lloyd. Later came the ‘Welsh Tract’ and, in 1786, it was claimed that there were over 900 Welsh Baptist chapels in Pennsylvania and the adjoining states. Welsh shipowners ran a continual service between Pennsylvania and Wales. From north Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire large scale migrations took place to the Welsh Liberty settlement. Printing in the Welsh language went on in Pennsylvania into this century.
Throughout the United States, Windsor chairs are much more widely seen than in Britain. Furthermore, they are to be found in the best parlours. The class distinction does not exist there. In court-houses and banqueting rooms, hotels and country clubs, American Windsors are in all the best places. There are many unique American-designed Windsors, and the industry or craft started in Pennsylvania. This in itself would not be important were it not for the fact that in two respects American Windsor chairs are similar to Welsh stick chairs. Firstly, there are no splats in the back of either sort. The splat is peculiar to English regional chairs and Wycombe chairs. Secondly, a common feature is the rake, or splay, of the legs. A collector of American chairs, the Reverend Wallace Nutting, wrote a book on the subject in 1917. He illustrates a bow-back English Windsor chair with a pierced splat (Plate 15). Under ‘merit’ he says, “The English Windsors lack grace. Observe how stubby and shapeless the arms are. The bow is very heavy without being stronger for its purpose than a lighter one. The splat is peculiar to the English type. The legs are a very poor feature. They are too nearly vertical, and start too near the corner of the seat for strength or beauty, and their turnings are very clumsy …” The oft repeated statement that American Windsors derive from the English chair could be in error. For historical reasons, and because of similarities in design, there seems to be a more direct link between the Welsh chair and the American Windsor. Perhaps the English version is the cousin, and the Welsh chair is the father!