My oldest daughter, Madeline, has been hard at work in graduate school in Pittsburgh and hasn’t had much time for selling stickers and the like. But recently she really wanted a hooded sweatshirt with the Lost Art Press beehive logo to wear while winter ends.
She made some using American Apparel hoodies and they looked good. So she (with my permission) is now selling them in two colors (black and dark grey) through her etsy store. They’re $55 plus shipping. Printed in America.
Note these are American Apparel, so they run a little slim. Here’s a sizing chart.
If you’ve ever visited our storefront, you might have noticed that we wallpaper the men’s room with all manner of woodworking paraphernalia, from posters to old advertisements to poems.
I haven’t put anything up in the women’s room except a portrait of Juliette Caron. Every time I think to hang something in there, I ask Megan: “Is this too creepy for the women’s room?” And the look on her face says: Yes.
Case in point this vintage German newspaper I just purchased after a tip from Suzo “the Saucy Indexer” Ellison. Do I want this guy smiling at me when I do my business? Probably not, but it’s going in the men’s room anyway.
I hope (government mandates permitting) that you can come see the bathrooms for your own self. We still hope to open the doors to the public on June 13, 2020, for a special open day.
What’s going to be special? Blemished books. We are trucking 14 boxes of damaged and returned books to the storefront for the occasion. They will be 50 percent off of retail – cash only. (No, we cannot put them online. Sorry.) I don’t yet know what titles we’ll have. When I get them here I’ll post a list. But I do know we have a significant number of the now-discontinued “Book of Plates.”
We’ll also have our full line of new books and all the Crucible tools. We can take any form of payment for new books and tools – cash, check or credit.
So get healthy and hope for the best. If June doesn’t work, we’ll reschedule the open day for as soon as it is safe for everyone.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. What’s the image above about? Not sure. The blocks of text below it are from an unrelated article. The caption on the image is, according to a translation from Rudy Everts, basically, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Even so, I’m not hanging this one above the Lost Art Press urinal.
If you want a vest, don’t delay. These are time-consuming to make, so this is likely the last batch until fall 2020. They are worth the wait. I wear mine almost every day and have thoroughly broken the thing in. It’s soft, pliable and impregnated with sawdust. I love it. Be sure to measure yourself before ordering to avoid disappointment.
We have had more luck scaling up production of pinch rods. But there is a tremendous amount of hand-finishing with these (like our lump hammers), so we’re still struggling a bit to keep up with demand.
If you seek to improve your mind during these trying times, Ed Sutton at FirstLightWorks has an excellent diversion for you: a free downloadable sector and instruction sheet.
To get started, click here to visit the page at FirstLightWorks where you can download the plan for the sector and the instructions. Then you just have to print it out, cut it out, assemble it and take it for a spin.
Editor’s note: For the next several weeks, we will feature some of our favorite columns from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward” years, along with a few sentences about why these particular columns hit the mark.
This column from 1937 is one of my personal favorites because of the poem:
“Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour bears a lovely face;”
Try saying it out loud as you work (be sure no one is watching) and you can feel the rhythm of mortising or sawing flow through the syllables. Aside from that, I am deeply aligned with Hayward’s admonition that we should commit ourselves completely to something. That is what was missing from my life when I was a young journalist. For me, writing has always been important, but it doesn’t have the dizzying depth of woodworking, which involves all the senses. Hand skill. Memory. Geometry. Once I committed to woodworking, my path became clear. Or, as Hayward put it: “For we have to take in all we can and give out all we can, if we are to make a success of anything.”
Top that, Master Yoda.
— Christopher Schwarz
Honest Labour
Honest labour bears a lovely face
From time to time we come across men in their middle or old age whose faces show the stamp of an experience which has bred in them much wisdom and kindliness, setting them apart somehow from the ordinary run of men. We enjoy talking to them; their company is stimulating even when they are not very ready of speech. There is something so real and sincere about them, and their opinions are so well founded. We find them among farm workers, fishermen, cabinetmakers, cobblers, among workers of all trades just as much as among professional men, and always they have the one thing in common—hardworking lives. One of the sweetest singers among the Elizabethan poets wrote:
“Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labour bears a lovely face;”
Which perhaps puts its finger on their secret. And it is good, just now when holidays are over, to reflect a little on this matter of work.
***
Most of us have to work in order to live and, like sensible men, make the best of it. But it is only when we come across the man whom work has, as it were, seasoned like a piece of fine old wood that we begin to suspect that work may have more purpose in our lives than we give it credit for. Just as a man brings his own powers of hand and mind to bear upon the work he is doing, so does that work in turn influence him. It sets its mark upon him, in some cases even producing distinct, recognisable types—shepherd, stable boy, lawyer, doctor, we know how each can carry in face and bearing some reflection of his daily activities—but, whatever the work, it helps to mould the man. The more it demands of him, mentally or physically, the more it can do for him, toughening his fibre, strengthening his will, bringing out qualities which otherwise might have lain dormant all his life, fine qualities some of them, even rare qualities. Work can also twist and warp a man: it all depends, I think, upon our attitude towards it.
***
There are business men who optimistically placard their offices with such texts as: “There’s no fun like work,” but I would like to know how many of us believe them. Work is not fun. To call it fun is just one of those silly, superficial sayings which glance at a truth and then sheer away again. Work has its glorious moments, moments when we are working at the top of our form and thoroughly enjoying ourselves, but it also has its inevitable drudgery; the steady doing from day to day of a certain job, whether we like it or not, sometimes in the teeth of difficulty, sometimes in spite of our own inclination of the moment, simply doing it because it has to be done, as one of the necessities of existence. Herein lies its value, bracing us up in mind and body, bringing out qualities of patience and steadfastness which otherwise might be lacking. But we have tacitly to accept it and make an honest job of work if we are to reap the real good, the essential good, which is greater really than the weekly pay envelope.
***
Thomas Dekker, he wrote that “Honest labour bears a lovely face” knew what he was talking about, for he worked hard in order to live and was famous among his fellow poets and playwrights for his “right happy and copious industry.” The fact of the matter is that we are mainly unknown quantities, even to ourselves. We can only guess at our own powers. The full range and extent of them we simply do not know till ambition or necessity, through hard work, force us to develop them. Our minds and our wills are the very queerest things and need all the urge and all the stiffening they can get from the hard, unsentimental facts of existence before they will begin to show of what they are capable. Work brings a man to maturity, jostling him up against his fellow men in competition, sharpening his wits, developing his skill, whether in the handling of men or affairs or the handling of a tool, at the very least into the regular habit of industry. Work is not really the enemy which, when we are in holiday mood or suffering from illness or fatigue, it may sometimes appear. It is another of the instruments of our education to life, and often the sterner it is the more it brings out the worth of a man.
***
That is why men, who cannot from the nature of their work employ their energies as actively as they wish, are wise when they use part of their leisure in the work of their choice. We call it a hobby then, but many a man who has drifted casually into a hobby has found in it a lifework. In this, at least, he is his own master, and he may become a master in the highest sense, of a craft, of a science, or an art, if he gives himself wholeheartedly to it. That is the difficulty with most of us: we don’t give ourselves out enough. We are always holding back, making excuses when we come to the difficult bits for not being quite as thorough as we should. There is always a technique to be learnt, and pains and patience are needed to master it. Every step of the way cannot be equally interesting. When mankind tried to eliminate drudgery it invented machines, and brought boredom into the lives of the millions of men who have to do the little routine jobs in attendance on them while the machines do the real work. And boredom is worse by a long way, for it simply stifles us. Drudgery as a means to an end, and that the perfecting of a job, has to have its place, but if we really set our hearts on success we shall not grudge one moment of it.
***
So to all those of our readers who, as amateurs, are planning to carry on with their woodwork this winter, we would say: see that every job is as good and as thorough as you can make it from start to finish. Don’t stint your pains and don’t miss any opportunity, through careful study of our pages and by any other means within your power, of learning all you can about the elements of woodwork as well as about advanced processes. Any miscellaneous knowledge about timber, tools, furniture, whatever it is, that you gather by the way, will never come amiss. For we have to take in all we can and give out all we can, if we are to make a success of anything. And that applies to things far greater than woodwork; even to life itself, I think.
