Lost Art Press now has new mugs that need a home in your cabinet. Made by Grey Fox Pottery, each mug is hand thrown, and the logos and handles are attached by hand as well. Price: $36. On the bottom of the mug you’ll find a maker’s mark from the particular artist who made it. Somehow the mug that fell into my hands has a butthole – I mean, asterisk – for the stamp. Just my taste. Grey Fox Pottery, located in Minneapolis, provides a working space for local artists and the chance to work on mugs and steins for small businesses like ours in their free time – hence the difference in stamps on the bottom of the mugs.
The mugs have a new rich brick red for the glaze color, a bold logo and a swanky handle. Holding a whopping 14 ounces of your liquid of choice, the new Lost Art Press mugs are the perfect addition to your collection of vessels. They are dishwasher- and microwave-safe stoneware and perfect for gift giving to yourself or others.
We are now offering Christopher Schwarz’s Anarchist’s Trilogy – three books you want when getting started in the craft – no BS included.
The bundle includes :
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” This book is a careful list of what you really need to get started. And how to buy good tools – regardless of brand name or whether the tool is new or vintage. Plus, of course, how to build the tool chest.
“The Anarchist’s Design Book” This is an introduction to how to build vernacular, peasant or regular people’s furniture – not the high-style stuff in museums. Stuff made with iron nails and mortise-and-tenon joints – six-board chests, staked stools, stick chairs and boarded benches.
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” Here, Chris answers the question every new woodworker asks: What kind of workbench do I need? The book distills 500 years of history into a simple plan that anyone can build with home center wood.
In this trilogy, you’ll find 1,369 pages of plans and advice – everything you need to get started on your woodworking journey.
The great people at Alexander Brothers have put together a new kit of materials that help you make a Roman workbench, the earliest design of bench that we know of.
The Roman bench isn’t just an historical footnote. It’s a dang-good bench that we use all the time in our shop. The bench is portable, easy to build and has a small footprint. It’s a favorite among apartment woodworkers because it can serve as a coffee table when not being used to make furniture.
Also, woodworkers with physical disabilities love the bench because you sit down to work on it.
How does the bench work? Glad you asked. I wrote a book about this bench and how to use it called “Ingenious Mechanicks.” It’s a free pdf download from our store. (Or you can buy a copy of the book – we don’t mind.) We also have a long-form video for sale on building this bench and its workholding here.
The kits are reasonably priced and come in both ash ($311) and maple ($331). The wood we purchase from Alexander Brothers is always top shelf. Buy with confidence.
Also, while you are there, get one of their coffee mugs. These are handmade and beautiful, with nice thin walls (a mark of skill in ceramics and turning). I bought one before Christmas and love it.
Happy New Year! The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years” – a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). Please excuse the male-centric language. We are all products of our time, and this essay, written in 1955, was no exception.
—now that we are in the early days of another year here is something to which we can set our hand that is infinitely worth doing
Since the days when the first hunter devised the first hunting knife, people have always shown themselves eager to possess anything that had a rarity value, something a man had made or, having discovered, had wrought upon with such skill that it became infinitely desirable. The puzzle of it is that today so many men accept passively the idea that they should have nothing in their own homes of rarity value, forgetting that in their own two hands they have the power of making, and that which they make will be of necessity unique. It may only be a chair or a table which, at a glance, may look very much like any other chair or table. The fact remains that on every small detail in the making the craftsman is able to consult his own choice: he will put in a small bit of carving on this knob just for fun, or he will give a steeper rake than usual to the legs to suit his fancy, or change the thicknesses of the original design to something that pleases him better. He will have an eye for the room, even the position in it that the pieces is to occupy, and he will judge the size accordingly. At every point he is able to consult his own wishes so that, in the finish, this is no mere chattel turned out by a machine like hundreds of others, but something unique and personal to himself. The points of difference may be very small, but they are there, and through every tin variation they proclaim the impress of his personality. That is why it is always the immediate contact with the maker that men value, the statuette or piece of pottery that is an original and not turned out from a mould, an original painting, the first impressions of an etching, giving new minted the true value of each line nearest to the artist’s hand, and not least the original work of the craftsman with the tale of his infinite patience and skill written in each sensitive line for the discerning eye to find, if it but seek.
***
How many of us in times past have started the New Year with new resolutions of the most ambitious kind, especially when we were very young and there seemed no reason to our ardent imaginations why the highest honours should not be within our eager reach. It takes the passage of the years to convince most of us of our limitations, and a maturer wisdom to learn how to work within those limitations and produce our own particular type of achievement. We are not all cast in the mould of elder statesmen and great leaders of men, but we each have our own particular innate gift of creativeness which, if developed, can give us both the outlet and sense of achievement we all need. That power to introduce something that is unique into our surroundings; that power to give an added grace and charm to the things we use, distinguishing them from the impersonality of manufactured articles, is the power of the free man. It will grow stronger with use for, once we begin to make things to suit ourselves, our outlook undergoes a subtle change. We begin to look at our surroundings with new eyes in a way that is both critical and discriminating. Critical, because once we are able to mould them more or less to our wishes, we begin to see that there are quite a number of things we would like to change, and that there is no reason why we should not change them. Discriminating, because once we begin making in good earnest we learn from first-hand experience the essential qualities of a first-class article, and in the attempt to achieve these qualities in our work to distinguish them in other things. The man with the trained eye and hand is as sensitive to the lines and shapes of pottery, for instances, as he is to those of a fine piece of furniture, and that quality of uniqueness, once started, can spread itself to the rest of his surroundings. That does not mean that he will be living in a little paradise of eccentricity, fantastically different from his neighbours. It does mean that his surroundings will be stamped with an essentially personal quality, which will have just that touch of distinction and interest which makes for pleasant living.
***
It is as well to remind ourselves, now that we are in the early days of another year, that here is something to which we can set our hand that is infinitely worth doing. To build up a home that makes a gracious and pleasant abiding place for our family and for the welcome of our friends, one in which we can feel free in spirit and in purpose, is to have achieved no mean ambition. The very fact that our personality has found expression through our own creativeness is to grow both in personality and freedom and with the actual doing the power of achievement grows. This is the kind of power that neither corrupts nor brings unhappiness in its train. Rather it brings with it the satisfaction of one of our deepest instincts and an interest and awareness in life and living that is something altogether different from the eager greed of a man pursuing the glittering prize which the world calls power. For indeed, it is power over himself which the craftsman knows and which has adorned the face of the earth with the lovely monuments of his skill.
