Lost Art Press

Making Book Part 1: The Egg, the Seed & the Misfire

Posted on by Lost Art Press

This is a woodworking blog, so I don’t write much about the stuff that consumes 49 percent of my waking hours, which is making books. That’s writing, photography, editing, image processing, page layout and the intricacies of book manufacturing.

Process, movement and materials have always fascinated me. And I have always loved factory tours because I am interested in how things are made, whether it’s a winding for a universal motor or a toothpick. 

So when I started working on a new book, I decided to document the process for people who are interested in how our books get made. There is some risk. It might bore you. It might convince you that what we do is so easy that you should start a competing publishing company and put us out of business. Or you might conclude you’re buying books from a remarkably furry wackjob.

I have a couple requests when it comes to this series. Please don’t be offended if I don’t reply to your comment or take your advice about the content of this book. I already don’t have enough time to reply to every message sent my way. And I receive so much unsolicited advice, criticism and “youshoulds” that it’s almost like I’m a woman on the Internet. 

So let’s rewind the tape to October 2019 when I decided to write this book. A few blog entries should catch us up to where I am today: actively building and photographing.

The Germ 

Two things to know about my book ideas. One, I usually can remember the exact moment the idea came to me. “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” came to me while on a long run in Maine; “Campaign Furniture” began in a now-defunct antiques store in Charleston, S.C. 

And two, none of my books have ended up like I first envisioned them.

This new book started out when I was browsing a book of Danish vernacular furniture in our library titled “Danske Bondemøbler” by Axel Steensberg. Suzanne Ellison had either sent the book to me or recommended it. In any case, I turned to the section on chairs and was fascinated by how the forms were so familiar and yet still foreign. 

I put the book down and searched for folk chairs on the Internet from countries other than the U.K. and Ireland. Were basic stick chairs a significant part of other cultures? Of course, the answer is yes. Driving sticks into a plank to make a seat is a fundamental construction that appears almost anywhere you have sticks and planks.

My first idea was to publish a series of books, one for each culture. The books would be the same size and approach that John Brown took in “Welsh Stick Chairs.” First explain the history of the chair as it relates to the culture. Explore the different chair forms and their defining characteristics. Then show how to build a representative example.

Perhaps, I thought, I could publish one of these books per year. All with different-colored covers. Keep going until I run out of cultures or energy.

When I was at journalism school, one of the lessons I learned is that the first paragraph you write to a story usually sucks. And the second paragraph is usually trying to obscure the flaws of the first paragraph. The third paragraph is usually the true beginning to your story. Jettison the first two grafs. Don’t try to fix them. 

The same goes with book ideas. I knew within minutes that this idea was a non-starter. A Dane should write a book on Danish chairs. A Swede should write a book on Swedish chairs. I was not the right person to do a series of books on cultures that I knew only from books and as a tourist.

But I also knew that there was something to my idea that I could use. But I didn’t know what it was just yet. 

For me, the solution to this problem is to take long walks or even longer drives in the car. 

— Christopher Schwarz

Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.

18 thoughts on “Making Book Part 1: The Egg, the Seed & the Misfire”

  1. Hearing honest accounts of other people’s processes–for doing anything, really–is one of my favorite things in the world. I’m excited about this series.

  2. Chris,

    I very much share your fascination for the general subject of how things are made; I also have a strong interest in the more specific matter how books are made, both because I’ve loved books and reading since I first learned how to do the latter at age four, and because at different times in my life, I’ve worked semi-professionally (I was always paid properly, but it was never my main source of income; hence semi-pro) on various aspects of the book-making process; this thus looks like a series of posts that is going to be right up my alley, so many thanks in advance already 🙂

    As for chairs from different cultures, last Christmas my mum gave me one of those books you talk about: one by a Swede about Swedish chairs, and more specifically about Swedish stick chairs.

    It is called “Träsmak” (which literally translates as “taste of wood”, but in the context of chairs means having a numb posterior from sitting on a hard seat for too long) and is written by a journalist and graphic designer (and Swedish stick chair nerd) called Mats Palmquist. It is primarily about the industrial and design history of these truly ubiquitous (in Sweden) chairs from c. 1850 until today. There is basically nothing in it on the technical aspects of construction, but it is richly illustrated in full colour, and to boot has sewn signatures and a cloth-blound back. ISBN is 9789175457833; see also https://historiskamedia.se/bok/trasmak/.

    Mattias

    PS. My LAP Chore Coat arrived an hour ago. I like it already! Although, given the current heat wave, I wont properly wear it for a while yet …

  3. “Or you might conclude you’re buying books from a remarkably furry wackjob.”

    Yeah, we knew that. What’s your point?

  6. I’m interested in how all sorts of things are made, and I suspect you might like writing about your writing process for a change, instead of how to level a benchtop for the thousandth time.

  7. It seems the only option is The Anarchist Chair Book. Chapter 1: Alexander Berkman. Chapter 2: Emma Goldman.

      1. If you’re going back that far, you need to do it by century. Each century gets a different color cover.

  8. I may be buying books from a remarkably furry wackjob, but he’s one of my favorite furry wackjobs. Keep up the good work.

  10. I love making books… and making things from wood (or stone, or glass, or clay, or metal, or …) Today I made something from wood for making books — a punching press. It’s in the shop waiting for me to take the clamps off and add the pins and to decide if I can wait long enough to put a finish on it or if I’m going to punch the sewing holes for the ten books I have waiting to be sewn immediately…

    All your books look very interesting. I’m trying to decide which one I’ll start with.

  11. I get the idea that a Dane should write a book on Danish chairs etc. When I hear a review on German radio where somebody is trying to be teutonically intellectual about a jazz or a blues album, I think, “Why don’t you just stick to Wagner albums because that’s what you understand?”

    That said, while the native involved in anything can write with unconscious intuition about his subject, an outsider can sometimes make original observations simply because he/she sees things with unintuitive eyes.

    In my opinion, chairs probably firmly belong in the non-intellectual i.e. intuitive native camp: there’s a lot of intuition involved in appraising something which is designed for you to park your a**e on. Intellectual it ain’t. This probably adds up to a book on Danish chairs written by a Dane but with an American foreword from LAP.

  13. Thank you for sharing your possible book ideas and nice start. I’m looking forward to it’s development.

  14. Hairless wackjobs always remind me of Freddie Kruger. Give me Brent Spiner’s Arlo Guthrie character in Independence Day any time,

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