Because of the Backwoods Chairmakers event in Berea, Ky., on June 2, we have decided to open our storefront doors here in Covington, Ky., on June 1 and June 3. This will allow travelers who are coming from out of town to stop by on their way to or from the event.
These days we keep sometimes-scattershot hours because we might be at the lumberyard, packing books at our warehouse or teaching out of town.
But on June 1 and June 3, we will be at our storefront (837 Willard Street, Covington, Ky., 41011) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to welcome you. We’ll have all our books, apparel and tools. Plus some blemished and returned books at half price (cash only on blemished books).
On June 2, Kale and I will be at the Backwoods Chairmakers event, documenting this once-in-a-lifetime gathering. We’ll also have a small table of chairmaking books for sale there. We will not have our full line of books at the event.
This chair is based off a couple chairs I built a few years ago, which were based off the chairs I built for my two kids, which were based off a chair that Bilbo Baggins briefly sits in during “The Fellowship of the Ring.”
I haven’t watched the movie in ages, but I remember the arms of Bilbo’s chair were different, the short sticks were turned spindles, and the legs were different – maybe a decorative groove. And I can’t recall what the undercarriage looked like.
But other than those tiny details, this is an exact replica.
This chair is made of mahogany that is at least 70 years old. I bought it from Midwest Woodworking in Norwood when it was going out of business. The wood is gorgeous stuff, light and strong.
The chair is set up for dining. The seat tilts about 3°, the back tilts another 12°. The seat is 16” off the floor, which makes it comfortable for a wide range of sitters. The seat is a single wide plank of mahogany (that I had to rip down to make the seat – amazing!). All the housed joints are assembled with hide glue and ash wedges so that the chair can be repaired long in the future.
The finish is super blonde shellac with a thin coat of black wax, which tones down the red and accentuates the wood’s pores.
As mentioned above, the mahogany is straight and strong. But because there are no stretchers, I recommend this chair for sitters less than 220 lbs. I’m being over-cautious. (Also, if a leg ever snaps on any of my chairs, I’ll repair it free of charge.)
Purchasing the Chair
We’re selling this chair via a silent auction. If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Tuesday, May 28. Please use the subject line: “Hobbity Chair.” In the email please include your:
Bid
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
The highest bid wins. If you are the “winner,” the chair can be picked up at our storefront. Or we will happily crate it and ship it to your door. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.) The reserve price is $500. Shipping and crating is included in your winning bid (with no additional charges whatsoever).
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Plans for this chair will be in the second issue of The Stick Chair Journal. Also, Kale and I are working together on a second Hobbit-y chair in the same gorgeous mahogany. It will be up for sale in a week or so.
Editor’s note: The “bulk reply” plugin on Chrome has stopped working, and I cannot find a replacement on any of my browsers. So if you don’t hear from me (Fitz) by the end of the day on the deadline day, I’m afraid you are not the winner (this applies also to the recent Irish chair, and Ash and Elm chair). I’m sorry I haven’t time to send individual responses to the many entrants who did not win. If I did, it would read: “Thank you for your interest, and stay tuned – Chris is making more chairs, and there will be other opportunities.” Which is true in perpetuity!
A mock-up of the two-color die stamp of “American Peasant.” The swirls are some of the engravings/spells shown in the book.
We just sent the “American Peasant” book to press, but it’s a lot like landing in a foreign country (yay!) and having to wait behind 1,000 people at the immigration window (ugh).
Normally, our books come out about five or six weeks after we send them to press. But these are not normal times. Thanks to the latest brood of cicadas venture capital ridiculousness, all our books are in a long queue at the printer. Right now, the best they can say is: Maybe it will be done in August or September. Maybe later. Maybe sooner. Can’t say.
I have no desire to change printing plants. We’ve worked with this one for 17 years, and I know exactly what their sheet-fed presses are capable of, and how to get the best results out of the different papers they stock. This hard-won knowledge keeps the cost of printing and thus the retail price down.
So we will just have to wait. It took two years to write “American Peasant,” so waiting a couple months shouldn’t be a big deal. Right?
In the meantime, above is a preview of the cover (no, I have not been taking street drugs), and some of the images and spreads from the book; the gorgeous opening images of each project are by Narayan Nayar.
I’m excited to see “American Peasant” released into the wild, but until then, I’m working hard on issue 2 of The Stick Chair Journal.
The last year has been chaotic here at Lost Art Press as we doubled in size, bought a warehouse, fixed it up and launched new ways of teaching people the craft. This blog entry is a brief update on… everything. But especially the “teaching people the craft” part.
First let me say that printing good books will always be my No. 1 priority. Right now we have so many books backed up on our printing schedule that we are a bit frustrated. Printing schedules that are out of our control have stalled three books that should – by all rights – be out right now.
We have poured that frustration into other worthwhile projects. Most of that effort has been with our three “Substacks.” Substacks are just fancy blogs. They allow you to charge a subscription fee, and Lost Art Press gets the lion’s share of the money. What we like about Substack is that we can offer a good balance of free and paid content. We want everything to be free, of course, but we also have six stomachs that now rely on this business.
If you have missed our Substack stuff, here is a rundown.
This is my unfiltered self. It’s PG-13. And yes, it’s all about woodworking, but it also delves into other issues – mostly deconstructing the BS that permeates our craft. I also post entire chapters of my forthcoming works. Plans, drawings, everything. Readers there have already read my next book “American Peasant” (and have helped to make it better). Right now we’re building a Hobbit Chair together.
You can subscribe for free or pay $5/month. About half my Substack posts are free. And about half of each paid post is available to free subscribers to read. There’s a lot of stuff to read – more than 260 posts. And it’s some of my writing that I dislike the least.
Megan Fitzpatrick and I have collected a lifetime of knowledge about tools. We reviewed them for magazines. We see hundreds of student tools. And we – weirdly – still keep up with the industry out of habit. Our knowledge is mostly useless for publishing books. Spitting out model numbers and details of how certain motors work isn’t useful in a book. It becomes quickly outdated.
But what we know is great for a Substack. So Megan and I are opening our veins and offering our opinions on tools and other products without the threat of any flack from manufacturers. We don’t take free or discounted tools. We don’t do affiliate programs. The tools we own we paid full price for. And I’ve been at this since 1996.
Like “The American Peasant,” about half the posts are free. Paid subscriptions are $5/month.
Our third Substack is the most unusual writing exercise I’ve ever been involved in. This year we hired Kale Vogt, an aspiring chairmaker, to work here. And I’m about to take Kale on as an official “apprentice.” This Substack is journal entries written by me and Kale (and sometimes Megan) about the process.
It’s messy. Sometimes difficult. But also a chance for everyone to grow.
The Substack covers a lot of ground, from how to teach the basics to the economics of running a furniture shop to …. Who knows?
“The Anarchist’s Apprentice” is the start of something that I suspect will be important. Or it will crash and burn. Either way, you can be ringside. Half the posts are free. The rest are $5/month.
So Why?
A few people have asked us why we don’t just post all this stuff here on the Lost Art Press blog?
Well, it would be too much – multiple posts a day. And the tone of the blog would flop all over the place. We would chase away readers with my foul mouth, and we would enrage manufacturers with our tool reviews (which I’m actually OK with).
This blog is about straight-ahead woodworking. I’ve moved my personal stuff to “The American Peasant” (much to the relief of some of our readers). The three Substacks are a way for you to pick and choose what you like. Subscribe to all three for free, and you will get a huge amount of information. Pay if you want more.
News About This Blog
This year has been a technical pit of quicksand for this blog. To remedy the problems, we have moved the blog to a self-hosted site (long overdue) and switched our email notification system to Mailchimp (also long overdue).
I promise we are not trying to make things worse for you, or add layers of advertisements and marketing. We just need to be able to send an email to you and know that it went out. That’s what this is about.
So email notifications about new blog entries will come from Mailchimp instead of WordPress.That’s really the only change.
OK, time to sign off on this administrivia update. And get back to the bench.
Things are better – but still way too tight – in the warehouse.
We’re having one last sale to get our inventory under control. We have put seven books on sale from now until June 14 – some of them deeply discounted. You can see all the titles on sale here.
We don’t like to put things on sale, so why do this? Last year we bought a historic warehouse in downtown Covington and have fixed it up so we have full control over our fulfillment operations. This is why we can now offer books that have been signed by authors, and it allows us to throw a wooden bookmark or sticker into your order as well.
It’s also why we now ship books faster than ever.
The downside to owning a warehouse is it holds a finite number of books. We had far more books and tools than our inventory numbers suggested. So it’s been a challenge to get everything into the circa 1896 building.
Gabe and Mark move the last of our inventory out of a truck and into the warehouse.
Two weeks ago, however, we reached a milestone. Every single product we sell is now under one roof. I can finally see how much floor space some titles gobble up (it was surprising). This sale will make room for new books, plus books that we are sold out of. I estimate that if we can free up space for a dozen pallets or so, we should be in good shape for a long time.
The seven books now on sale are not stinkers. They are just taking up more than their fair share of space. If you aren’t familiar with Lost Art Press, know that every one of our books requires years of editorial work to produce. Our books return more than twice the royalties to our authors compared to the publishing industry as a whole. And all of our books are printed in the United States using high-quality materials. These are permanent books.
The books on sale.
“The Stick Chair Book” by Christopher Schwarz. Regular price: $47. Sale price: $29. This book represents my life’s work from 1996 to present. It felt weird to put it on sale, but the book takes up tons of space in our warehouse.
“Vol. III of The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Joinery.” Regular price: $42. Sale price $21. These Hayward books are huge in size. That’s one of the reasons they are great – there is a ton of information in them. But they also gobble up floor space.
“Mechanic’s Companion” by Peter Nicholson. Regular price: $27. Sale price: $17. This is one of our historical reprints. This book is one of the foundations of Western hand-tool woodworking. When I reordered it in 2021, I ordered way too many.
“Leave Fingerprints” by Brendan Gaffney. Regular price: $49. Sale price: $25. One of my favorite titles. Brendan did a fantastic job of demythologizing James Krenov and painting a true portrait of Krenov’s incredible life. Gaffney distilled more than 150 interviews into a biography of one of the 20th century’s most important woodworkers.
“Make a Joint Stool From a Tree” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee. Regular price: $31. Sale price: $17. One of our earliest titles, and one of the most difficult to get to press. The book took 20 years for the authors to finish. And thanks only to the absolute doggedness of Follansbee, the book was completed. It’s a great book about green woodworking, joinery and carving from two of the modern architects of green woodworking’s renaissance.
“Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” by Roy Underhill. Regular price: $41. Sale price: $19. This is the world’s first-ever woodworking novel with measured drawings. Another labor of love that took years of work and tons of money to complete. The book is great fun to read. And the book’s manufacturing details, such as the diestamp, ridiculously expensive dust jacket and endsheets, create a book you don’t see much in modern times.
Thank you for enduring this awkward time with Lost Art Press. I hope this sale helps you complete your collection of the Charles Hayward books or garners you some good gifts for the woodworkers in your life.
Barring that, shredded book paper can give you an R-value of 3.6 when insulating your home – or warehouse.
