Students in Will Myers’ October 2018 Shaker Candlestand class.
I know it looks as if we’re running a woodworking school, but when classes aren’t going on (which truly is the majority of the time), the Lost Art Press storefront is Christopher Schwarz’s working woodshop and publishing office where he develops furniture ideas for new books, and works on editorial and design for upcoming titles. (And he generously allows Brendan Gaffney and me to hang out there and produce shavings, too.)
But the classes are a lot of fun…so we’ve added a few more for 2019, including several from Chris, who’s easing back into teaching after a couple of years of taking it easy (on that front, anyway), along with some guest instructors (including Roy Underhill, and the return of Chris Williams from Wales!). Plus, we’ve added a handful of one-day, three-day and week-long classes. Almost all the classes have room for no more than six students, so you get a lot of personal attention from the instructor (whether or not you want it!) and his or her assistant (which is often Chris, Brendan or me). Plus, you can try out our tools (well, I volunteer mine, anyway) and seven different bench forms, and relax (as time allows) in the Mechanical Library or in the biergarten. And there is usually a group dinner and visit to a local watering hole. In short, it’s a great time.
This Friday (Oct. 12) at 10 a.m. Eastern, registration goes live for the January through June 2019 classes listed below (we’ll announce July-December classes in early 2019). Click through to each to read the full descriptions. If you’re interested – and I hope you are – I recommend being poised at your keyboard at 9:59 a.m. Eastern; these tend to sell out quickly. But do sign up for the waitlist if you don’t get in right away; life happens and things change. And if you can’t make it for a class, the storefront (837 Willard Street, Covington, Ky., 41011) is open on the second Saturday of every month from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. for all your Lost Art Press book needs, woodworking questions, tool instruction and more.
James Krenov breaking down a large slab outside his home in Bromma, Sweden. Krenov possessed an incredible talent for predicting what kind of wood he might find inside a board – and I find myself looking across the details of his life with the same hope of gleaning what insights lie ahead as I break down his story and legacy.
I returned this morning from a week of researching, scanning and interviewing on the Mendocino Coast of Northern California, where James Krenov spent the last 25 years of his life. While there, I had the privilege of looking through and archiving a huge number of photos, drawings, writings, lectures and correspondences that span Krenov’s lifetime, a bounty of raw materials to work through in the coming months.
In going through the photos and organizing my notes from interviews and conversations with his family, friends, shopmates and coworkers, a complex and mutable portrait of Krenov and his many facets has begun to emerge. There is the poetic writer and gifted orator who inspired so many through his books and lectures; the mentor and teacher who provided the backbone for a craft school that continues to churn out inspiration and talent; a deliberate cabinetmaker, encouraging sensitivity and improvisation, while also practicing a deliberate process of design and iteration; the irascible old master who had little patience for uncaring work or needless invention; a loving husband, ever-thankful for the support of his partner; and a very human father, one whose children tip-toed around the house with caution while he glued up his next cabinet, but who took them fishing and adventuring in the northern wilderness of Sweden.
Krenov and his daughter, Tina, on her first fishing trip in the rural Härjedalen province of Sweden in 1964.
While I am still early in my development of his biography, these raw materials themselves provide a beautiful series of vignettes into Krenov’s vastly complex persona that I hope shed light on just why this cabinetmaker’s story is so worthy of sharing. I’m in the midst of organizing these materials, which will themselves be archived and housed by The Krenov Foundation, so that future researchers and interested parties might find and include Krenov in their work.
In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting these various sides of Krenov (or Jim, or “the Old Man,” or JK) as I dig through the archives. My aspiration in writing this biography is not simply to retell the “who, what, when” of his story, but to shed light on the lives he impacted and those ideas, moments and memories that shaped him as a mentor, writer and craftsperson.
I’ll leave you with the simple triptych below, a very narrow window into one side of Krenov that few outside of the municipal tennis courts of Fort Bragg ever saw. Yet it seems to sum up the competitive, mercurial, sensitive and generous personalities (and free-wheeling band saw usage) that made Krenov who he was. Krenov was an avid tennis player; stories abound in the community about his constant search for a good (but not too good) court mate and the perfect racket.
So I present to you one side among so many: James Krenov, the amateur tennis player.
Krenov at the school’s behemoth Oliver band saw, during school hours, shaping the handle of that month’s racket, in 1992. Photo by David Welter.Two years later, in 1994, and another racket is under the knife (or file, in this case) having its handle smoothed and reshaped. Photo by David Welter.Krenov in action at the Harold O. Bainbridge public tennis courts, just a few blocks away from the school in Fort Bragg, Calif.
P.S. I owe a great many thanks to those who hosted me and sat down for conversations during my stay: Tina Krenov; David and Laura Welter; Ron Hock and Linda Rosengarten; Laura and Thea Mays; Michael Burns; Ejler Hjorth-Westh and Karen Mathes; Jim Budlong; Greg Smith; Todd Sorenson; Crispin Hollinshead; and the current students at The Krenov School (who gracefully put up with my hovering, photographing and rusty volleyball skills). I’m lucky to have such a warm and welcoming community of people to work with over the course of writing this book – it makes all the difference.
Every so often you hear from a reader who really gets where you’re coming from. This is not to say they’re the only ones who get it, just that they take the time to let you know. (An outstanding example is Dan Clausen’sscholarly essay about Lost Art Press.)
A most welcome addition to my bookshelves, @nrhiller’s English Arts and Crafts is simply stunning. If you’ve read any of Nancy’s other work, you already know that she puts as much craftsmanship into her writing as she does into her furniture. And yet this book still pleasantly surprised me in a few ways:
1) The book has the most elegant endpaper of any on my woodworking shelves. An excellent departure from the monotony of the crowd.
2) While there are plans for a few designs inside, the book is not your typical project-by-project guide. Instead, it is an accessible and engaging conversation about the history, aesthetics, and philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement, all beautifully interwoven with projects and techniques from some of Nancy’s most recent works.
3) Throughout, the pictures are beautifully human. Archival photos and museum pictures blend seamlessly with portraits of Nancy’s craftsmanship. But the in-process photos from her shop are my favorites. Nancy’s workspace looks humble, mortal. Her lighting is not always perfect. These “flaws” combine to bring the images back into dialogue with the text, to create a harmonious tone of real-world art and craft…. [emphasis added]
What spoke to me most was not the part about the endpapers (credit for those goes to Megan Fitzpatrick; the pattern, based on an original design by C.F.A. Voysey, is by David Berman of Trustworth Studios) or the bit about my interweaving of history with projects and techniques (that struck me as the best way to structure this book and underscore the relevance of particular ideals and individuals related to each of the projects—in other words, a no-brainer). It was the bit about the dialogue between the text and the process shots in my shop.
I have some hang-ups about my shop in this age of studiously curated imagery. Anyone who has visited will be aware that I issue a knee-jerk apology at the door. “It’s really a glorified garage,” I say, “but it’s by far the nicest shop I’ve had in my life.” Both statements are true.
It’s not the building that troubles me. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to work in a converted church, timber-framed barn, or urban horse garage instead of my prosaic pole-barn covered in T 1-11 siding, but none of those is presently an option. My compulsive apology is more a response to the state of affairs inside. Partially finished pieces from magazine shoots (so close to being usable! I can’t bear to cut them up for kindling) preclude anything approaching a Zen vista. Routers and other small machines are stored on open shelves, as are tool bags and boxes, shims, levels, and other equipment for onsite installation work. On the wall above the chop saw are drywall and painting supplies; I’m no drywaller or painter, but some of my built-in jobs require minor drywall repair and painting, and it’s simpler for my clients, as well as more affordable, if I just take care of the whole shebang and save them the bother of choreographing multiple tradespersons. On another wall, more open shelves house boxes of screws, nails, washers, and other fasteners.
Someday I will finish the magazine projects and make doors for all those open shelves, streamlining the visuals and enhancing dust control. (Maybe.)
I am aware of what’s behind my compulsion to apologize: I have internalized prevailing norms regarding how a furniture maker’s shop should look. I personally have no problem with the state of my shop. I work well in a somewhat cluttered environment, maybe because the overwhelming majority of the shops where I have worked, starting in 1980, had a similar, um, “aesthetic.” But when I show the place to new people, I assume they’re judging it against the orderly, dust-free standard published widely in magazines, TV, and social media.
Bench view, 1985, “Farmstead Furniture.” Across the narrow floor from my bench was the bench of one of my bosses. Note the stylish sewing cabinet, which was being repaired for a relative; the plastic draft excluder at the window; the stove set firmly in the midst of flammable materials (not something I have in my shop); and the evident lack of concern with appearances. This original workshop (which would later be subsumed within a larger modern structure) was a converted farm building. Some of the loveliest furniture I have ever seen was built in this milieu.
“But it’s irresponsible to have your shop in that condition when taking process shots for a book!” some may protest.
Really?
Call me cantankerous. In this, as in most subjects on which I write, I want to resist the suffocating pressure to conform. As a woodworker, I come from a background populated by those who made things because (a) they chose this way of making a living, (b) they had limited resources, and (c) they did not give a fig what visitors thought, because it was their shop and they were the ones who knew about the work involved. In each case, they had arranged their working space for the kinds of work they did. These people were judicious about how they spent their time, energy, and money. What mattered was how their shop functioned for them. The workplace was for work.
Things are different today. We live in an age when gorgeous imagery of work and the doing of it can boost sales in real ways (especially when those doing the work are attractive human specimens; this applies all the more to females). And still I want to resist.
*
The whole situation puts me in mind of articles that would be the 21st-century woodworkers’ equivalent of the Woman’s Own magazines we used to read at boarding school in the early 1970s, while sitting on the old steam radiators because it was so cold. Rumor had it that sitting on warm radiators caused piles, a.k.a. hemorrhoids, but we were just too frozen to care. “Is there a right way to hang the loo roll?” headlines earnestly inquired, or “Which type of fringe [Brit-speak for what Yanks call bangs] best suits your facial shape?” There’s an increasingly insidious preoccupation today with how we are seen.
Granted, when your livelihood depends on others, it would be foolish not to take your potential clients’ preferences into account. But at the same time, let’s think carefully about just how much we’re willing to let ourselves be swayed—if not downright defined—by others’ expectations. We live in a moment when we can be followed, visually and in other ways, by people all over the world. Maybe there’s something salutary in standing up for what matters to us instead of allowing ourselves to be overly shaped by our desire to be “liked.”
That Brian Clites (a.k.a. @thewoodprof) got this from those process shots tells me he’s a careful reader.
Last week I wrote a blog post about my visit to the Wharton Esherick House, my last stop on a two-week work trip to the East coast. It was a job to find the place (I have it on good authority that they’re working on better direction signs); I was so over everything by that point in the trip that I nearly gave up and turned around to head home. Fortunately a kind driver stopped to set me straight at the final intersection, as my GPS had already told me I’d arrived. (I clearly hadn’t.)
My grumpiness dissolved as soon as I entered the office to buy a ticket for the house tour. I’ve long been a fan of Esherick’s woodblock prints and furniture. Now I was surrounded by stunning prints for sale, informative posters about the artist’s life and books about the man and his work. The Esherick House, essentially a work of sculpture in which the artist lived, has been on my top 10 pilgrimage sites since I first saw pictures of the place.
The office and book store are located in this fantastical 1928 garage, one of the most potent antidotes to grumpiness I’ve ever encountered.
We should all know by now that it’s essential to get permission before photographing anything in a museum – and this includes house museums. Different places have different rules. The Cheltenham Museum (now known as The Wilson) told me it was fine to take pictures but not to publish them on a blog without express permission and payment of a fee. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House Museum in Hartford, Conn., permits picture taking for Instagram posts, while the neighboring Mark Twain House does not. (Major downer.) So I dutifully asked whether it was permissible to take interior and exterior photos at the Esherick House. The staff person said yes, and yes to posting on Instagram, but not for publication.
“Publication” is a tricky word in our time, not least considering that Instagram is a publishing platform in its own right. I knew I wanted to write a blog post about the place. Blog sites, contrary to what many imagine in our laissez faire “sharing” age, are no less subject to copyright restrictions than traditional forms of publishing on paper. So before writing my post, I contacted Julie Siglin, the executive director of the museum, to request permission, which she granted.
Bottom line: Ask before taking.
Yesterday evening I came in from the shop to find a message from Julie who was puzzled that my post had appeared on another site – with no credit to the original publisher or author – AND under another “author’s” name. I looked up the site, wrote to the purported author, told him to remove the post from his site and told him I was going to report him. While there, I noticed other posts he had taken from Popular Woodworking, so I notified the editors there. Then I read his disclaimer, excerpted below. I’m guessing that the owner of the site is not a native English speaker and that “Brandon Hamilton” is not his real name.
This immediately had me picturing a guy sitting at a kitchen table trying to come up with the most plausible name for a woodworker. What name says flannel checks and three-day stubble?
For the record, Popular Woodworking blog posts do not fall into the legal category “public domain” any more than do those published here at Lost Art Press or on other blog sites that post explicit copyright notices. Even when something does fall into this category, it is illegal to put your name on it as the author when you did not create the content. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling the content or using it to generate any kind of gain (other than traffic to your site). You are breaking the law.
All content images within our website are images that we take from various sources that we believe as “public domain”. Therefore all content images we display pure just to complement information from the picture we uploaded without any intent to we sell-buy, in violation of copyright or intellectual property rights, and a valid artistic. For those of you who feel as the legitimate owners of one of the images we display and didn’t want us displaying images valid belongs to you, please contact us through the Contact page and send us an email to follow up, be it delete images belong to you, or maybe you’ll give us maturity date where we can display content images. All content images that we display we only use properly without any intention of us to gain financially from one image or as a whole.
Registration is now open for the following first-half 2019 Lost Art Press classes (do sign up for the waitlists if you don’t immediately make it in):
