Sometimes we have so much stuff going on at Lost Art Press that I need to condense it all into one brief blog entry. Here we go.
‘American Peasant’ Released Early
My latest book, “American Peasant,” shipped from the printer 10 days early and will arrive in our Covington warehouse on Monday or Tuesday. We’ll open up ordering as soon as we can. The book will be $37. It is the prettiest book I’ve ever written, designed or published. I hope you like it.
On the Cover of Fine Woodworking
I am on the cover of the latest issue of Fine Woodworking magazine, which was a surprise and shock. I wrote an article on building Irish stick chairs for the magazine, which I worked on with Anissa Kapsales. I had no idea that I was going to end up on the cover, and Anissa kept it a secret.
The article turned out quite well (I think). And FWW has contracted me to write three more articles for future issues. I was wary about getting back into the magazine publishing world, but the good staff at the magazine has made it a pleasure. And fun.
The Stick Chair Journal No. 2
The second issue of The Stick Chair Journal has gone to press and should be released in early August. The cover article in the issue shows how to build the Hobbit-esque chair from “The Lord of the Rings” movies. There’s also an article about the first John Brown chair made in America. And a new technique I’ve worked out that makes assembling stick chairs much easier.
Other news….
We have new Lost Art Press hats that will go up for sale this week. They are navy blue and feature our dividers embroidered in white.
Whitney Miller has just finished editing her video on building a Swedish Tool Chest. We hope to have that up for sale this week, too.
And also worth noting: We have started production on our new Exeter-pattern nail hammers. Sexy, sexy, sexy.
Apropos of the prettiest book: I’m curious about the font for the title of “American Peasant.” It reminds me of this set of (self-consciously) “archaic” fonts for Romanian: https://florinf.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/gusztav-cseh-scrisul/. Any connection?
The font is from the Zamolxis family. Modern and self-conscious.
It looks great here. And the font name is connected to Romania, or at least to Dacia. Apologies for letting my day job interfere: https://histriabooks.com/product/zalmoxis-obscure-pagan/
What happened with the Principles of Design book? I thought it was supposed to up this 6/27? Did I miss it?
It has been delayed at the printer. We don’t have a new release date yet. Sorry.
No worries! Just making sure I didn’t miss out. Thankful for all you do!
Wow you all are busy bees this year!
Other than size, how does this hammer functionally contrast with the crucible warrington?
A 9-ounce hammer is middle size that some people (including me) like to have for furniture-making tasks, mostly driving nails for backboards and nailing tasks where a 16-ounce hammer is overkill. The hammers I use go like this:
Lump hammer (2 lbs.): Chairmaking. Heavy assembly/disassembly, setting holdfasts.
16 ounce hammer: Driving wedges and large (6d and bigger nails)
9 ounce hammer: Driving all nails between the 6d and pins/headless brads.
Warrington: Driving pins/headless brads, adjusting planes and other tools that require a fine tap.
I know I’m crazy, is the hole for the Exeter pattern hammer straight through? Or is it like a shallow inverted cone for wedging?
The peasant font reminds me of one for printing Old Church Slavonic.
So old-church, in a good way.
Not exactly the place, just a bit sad that this “blog” has really just become a place of announcements and excerpts from books. Legit content now going behind paywalls.
On the one hand – good on you all for building your company and your brand to the point where you don’t need to give content away for free. It’s been a journey and it’s amazing and I’m happy to have been a part of watching and purchasing and the like. That free content led me to buy books (I have a bunch) and tools (have a bunch of those too).
On the other hand – all that yummy content – your original voice, your writing, notes on tools, etc. – is mostly gone from this specific place. And it’s how you built your audience, and it’s worth noting that from the outside, for folks like myself who can’t pay to read – I find myself coming back less frequently to this blog, and so I’m more out of touch with what you’re doing. And because I come back here less I buy less now, as I find little incentive to check out the blog.
It may be effective in the short term, but the real content is how you built your grassroots audience, and maybe not the best long term? But of course, I don’t know your numbers and you seem to be doing just fine, and I’m just one middle-aged man yelling at clouds.
Of course, everyone has an – opinion – about everyone else’s company, process, whatever. Just noting that I miss the days where I could learn something fresh from the blog, enjoy the content, and now if I want to be a part of it, I have to pay $15 a month to read the three substacks.
But such is the way of all things I suppose. Change.
You can subscribe to all 3 for free and get many of the articles. Not all are pay walled. But now you have 4 blogs to track. Substack doesn’t make it easy to track the latest articles on multiple “blogs” too.
I’d suggest the free articles get posted or at least linked here. Having everything over on substack risks giving up control of access to your audience. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people illustrates it well
Hi Tom,
We are still figuring out how to communicate with people as we grow. One of the things I’ve considered is a “Week in Review” post that goes up Monday mornings and provides links and short digests of what we’ve done during the last seven days on the blog, substack and YouTube. This is the leading candidate for dealing with the flood of stuff we’re making.
I know that what we are doing now is a bit awkward, but we want to make it easy (and not overwhelming) for readers. I hope it won’t take too long for us to figure it out.
Thanks for the sugestions!
C
Can’t wait! Will you be signing the American Peasant copies as well?
Yes
That actually is a sexy hammer. Does that make me weird?
I’ve not seen anything regarding the Saturday open Q&A lately, nor here. Is it defunct? I didn’t get to read it every week… maybe 1/2 of them?… but I sure enjoyed them.
We are definitely doing open wire this weekend.
Here are the Open Wire dates for the rest of 2024:
July 20
August 10
September 14
October 19
November 16
December 14
I was able to read the FWW article without being a subscriber. I just got one of those “this is your last free article” notifications. Since I delete my cookies at the end of every session, I see that every time. Congratulations on making the cover of FWW! I didn’t expect that to happen. It’s nice that you’re still friends.
Yes, that’s a sexy hammer, but that doesn’t make me weird. Everything else in my life made me weird. Too late, now.