I’m working right now on getting the list together for classes during the second half of 2019 (which will be posted in January), but we do still have a couple of earlier opportunities remaining due to cancellations. In calendar order, they are:
Brendan Gaffney’s Feb. 4-8, 2019, “Starting with Staked Furniture” class has two spaces available. “Students will build a simple staked bench and a staked chair using a hand-tool oriented tool set. The chair is a new design, which can be made with three, four or five legs based on the student’s preference (five legs is shown in the photograph above and furnishes the most practice and learning opportunities!). This class will revolve around the classic chairmaking skills, taught in a way comfortable for woodworkers of all abilities and backgrounds.”
Update: This one is now sold out (but do sign up for the waitlist if you’re interested!). Brendan’s March 30-31, 2019, “Høj Footstool” class has one space available. “This simple footstool is an easy way to introduce two basic chairmaking skills – making a simple post-and-rung construction and weaving a danish cord seat. The class will be broken into two parts; on the first day, students will build the footstool itself using simple techniques (well suited to non-chairmakers and chairmakers alike) and on the second day students will learn the “no-nail” method of weaving a Danish paper cord seat.”
Update: This one is now sold out (but do sign up for the waitlist if you’re interested!). Brendan’s May 18-19, 2019, Build a Krenov-style Handplane class has one spot available. “The laminated handplanes designed (and made famous) by James Krenov are as practical and fun to make as they are a joy to use. In this two-day class, students will make their own standard (45°) or York (50°) pitch smoothing plane and learn to sharpen, maintain and use these wonderful tools.”
Note: Some people are having trouble signing up for the waitlist – we’ve checked everything we can think of to check (and googled the problem). We cannot replicate the issue. So, if anyone else has trouble, send an email to covingtonmechanicals@gmail.com and I’ll manually register you for the waitlist in the order I receive said emails. Sorry.
Christian Becksvoort’s new book, “Shaker Inspiration” is hot off the press (if you’ve already ordered, look for it in your mailbox soon) – and he’s making the trip from Maine to the Lost Art Press Shop in Covington, Ky., for a book release party on Jan. 12, from 7-10 p.m. (plus he’ll be in and out during the Lost Art Press open house that day).
Christian will give a presentation on his work, and a short reading from his new book (and sign copies of it and his other books if you like!), and we’ll feed and water you (snacks, beer and wine, and non-alcoholic choices).
If you plan to come to the “Shaker Inspiration” book release party, please send me an email at covingtonmechanicals.com. You are welcome to bring your family – just let us know how many people will be coming.
And, Christian is teaching a one-day class on Friday, Jan. 11: All About Dovetails. Registration for that goes live at 10 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 3. Note that if you’re one of registrants (six only!), we’ll ask that you bring a check or cash for Chris ($190) to the class – so with no pre-payment to help hold you to it, we’re trusting you’ll show up! (If you get into the class on Monday but later find you can’t make it, please send me an email (to covingtonmechanicals@gmail.com) right away, so we can offer it to the first person on the waitlist.)
We’ll be announcing classes for the second half of 2019 in January (and we still have a few slots available during the first half of the year). Plus, I’ll be posting next week about a semi-last-minute addition to our January offerings (sorry for the tease, I’m just waiting on images from the instructor).
To help you navigate to these (and the upcoming new ones) we’ve added some easy-to-find links to classes from the home page: at the top in the menu bar and on the right at the top of the right rail. Click on either, and you’ll be whisked away to the listings on Eventbrite (the service we use for booking).
And if you have any questions about them, you can always email me at covingtonmechanicals@gmail.com. (Please do send class questions to me at that address, not to the Lost Art Press help desk – why? Read on).
“Why can’t the help desk help?” These classes are not really through Lost Art Press; in effect, each instructor is an independent contractor who is merely renting the space from Christopher Schwarz for the weekend (or week, in select cases). I handle most of the scheduling and logistics for visiting instructors (Chris and Brendan do their own), so I will likely know the answer to your question – and if I don’t, I can and will immediately get it to the right person. Meghan B. handles the LAP help desk (questions about books, orders, etc.), and she is busy enough without having to forward stuff about classes to me.
“Why don’t I get an invoice right after I sign up?” Because each instructor does her or his own invoicing, and that comes directly from said instructor. I usually give it a couple of days for spaces to fill up after we launch a class, then I send the class list to the instructor. He or she will send an invoice using his or her preferred service (Paypal, Square, check…). I do not handle the payment side of things (except for my own classes, of course).
“What is the cancellation policy?” Each instructor sets her or his own, and that is typically included in the class description.
“I tried to sign up right when classes went live, and didn’t get in. You suck!” I’m sorry. Please see below.
“Should I bother signing up for the waitlist?” Yes! We do have cancellations – and when that happens, I trigger a note from Eventbrite to the first person on said list, who then has 24 hours to register. And if that person can’t make it, on to the next, and so on. I estimate that in about 70 percent of classes, at least one person from the waitlist gets in (and often two people).
“I’m coming from out of town; where should I stay?”Check out this blog post, which has suggestions not only on where to stay, but where to eat and non-woodworking-related greater Cincinnati attractions.
“Will you offer a class in X?” Possibly. Send me an email, and if we think there would be enough interest, and we can find the right person to teach it, we will consider X topic.
English oak coffer; 16th century. (Image from Wiki Commons, public domain.)
The once ubiquitous coffer (from the Greek “kophinos” – a basket; later from the French “coffre” – a chest) was also referred to as a “strong box” – because it was. (Later the term coffer would refer to an institution’s financial reserves.) This stout, often highly ornamented, chest reached its pinnacle of design and construction in the mid 1600s and was likely the first, and perhaps the only, piece of furniture that a commoner family might own. Likely used every day as a bench, its primary purpose was to keep the family’s valuables safe and private. Its thick oak walls and lid could often even keep its contents safe from a fire.
Accurate drawing of a similar 17th century English chest (by John Hurrell, published in 1903).
For George Walker and me, what is truly fascinating about these coffers is that they clearly demonstrate the traditional, artisan design process we have described in excruciating detail in “By Hand and Eye” (and decidedly less excruciatingly in “By Hound and Eye”).
For those unfamiliar with this process, here it is in a nutshell: Unlike modern builders who think primarily in terms of measurements to an external standard such as inches or centimeters, pre-industrial artisans took their cues from the builders of antiquity and thought more in terms of proportions. They would start by selecting a simple rectangle of harmonic proportions (literally from the audible harmonic musical scale) to govern the overall form. For example, the front elevation of height-to-length were commonly ratioed at 1:2 (an octave); 2:3 (a perfect fifth); 3:4 (a perfect fourth) or 3:5 (a perfect sixth). Within this rectangle they would select the span of some prominent element of the structure to act as a module (an internal index measurement often based on a element of the human body) and then tie all the other details proportionally to it.
The coffer is a perfect example of this ancient design process: a straightforward layout based on the geometry of a cuboid defined by simple whole number ratios of height, width and depth. Like the proportions embedded in the design of Grecian columns (which deeply influenced the design methodology of the joiners and cabinetmakers of the 17th and 18th centuries) the designer of this coffer clearly used the width of the chest’s leg in the front elevation as the “module” for the design. (The Greeks used the diameter of the base of a support column’s shaft, which happens to be the span of the human body, as the module for all the other elements of the temple.) We encourage you to print out the above drawing by Hurrell, take a sharp pair of dividers, set it to span the width of the leg (we label it “M”) and go exploring with us:
The first thing we’ll discover is that the height of the leg (to the underside of the lid) is exactly seven times its width (again, the module for this design). By eye, it looks like the length of the chest may be twice its height. When we step the module between the outside of the legs, however, we don’t come up with that nice whole-number ratio. On our second shot at it, we discover the lid from edge to edge is a precise 14 modules long. So there’s our 7:14 ratio – or to simplify 1:2. Which is a perfect octave harmonic, and a common choice for the coffers of this era (and later for highboys in their vertical extension).
Further exploration reveals that the mid-stiles and bottom rail are also a module wide, as is the height of the carved inscription of the date 1689. If you continue poking around, you’ll unearth all manner of modular-indexed relationships buried in the intricate geometric carvings. Be aware that the spans and radii, if not exactly a module-length, will be a whole number fraction above or below that length. For example, the module (plus a third of the module) serves as the spacing for the positioning of the lower rail from the baseline as well as the width of the top rail.
As in the ancient temples of Greece, every single element of this coffer enjoys a whole-number relationship with each other – and with the overall geometric form. As such, you can scale this piece of furniture up or down by simple changing the span of the module – no measuring to numerical dimensions is necessary – just an adherence to the ratios.
Now let’s explore the design of this coffer’s frame-and-panel lid. We were excited to discover how some anonymous 17th-century artisan made clever use of the module to add subtle, eye-pleasing asymmetry to the layout. Before you see how they did it (below), try to discover it for yourself. We find this sort of thing fun, and we bet you will too.
So here’s what we found: The module is utilized in four different ways: For the middle frames, it defines its overall width; for the hinge-side frame it defines its width, but it does not include the lid edging; for the end frame it does include the edging; and for the latch-side frame the module defines its width from the inside of the edging to the edge of the bevel next to the panel. Subtle, but just enough to make the design lively to the eye.
For your further entertainment, below are a couple more of Hurrell’s drawings of 17th-century English coffers for you to print out and explore. To see what we unpacked with our dividers, check out our blog at www.byhandandeye.com. One hint/reminder: The module for each of these designs is the width of the leg.
To learn more about the construction and carved ornamentation of these traditional coffers (also called a “joined chest” in America), you can do no better than to watch Peter Follensbee’s video “Joined Chest” available from Lie-Nielsen here or to read “The Artisan of Ipswich” by Robert Tarule, available from John Hopkins University Press here.