The last few months here at Lost Art Press we’ve all been running near the redline, working on upcoming books, getting ready to file our tax returns (an enormous task for a small company) and improving some functions of the website under the hood.
Most of our labor you’ll never see (no one likes to read tax returns), but I am pleased to share some of our progress on our books.
The following is a list of books we are actively working on. That means the text is in our hands and we are working to get it published. If a book isn’t listed here, that means I don’t have anything to report – it’s still in the hands of the author.
This book is at the printer and is scheduled to ship to us sometime in the next two weeks. If you order a copy before the book ships, you’ll receive a free pdf download at checkout. After the book ships, the pdf will cost extra.
‘Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years: 1936-1966’
This book of columns by Charles Hayward during a 30-year period is essentially complete. Megan Fitzpatrick is doing a final copy edit (while working in Alaska, no less). We’ll go to press within two weeks and will open pre-publication ordering then. It’s a huge book – 480 pages. I love it, but I don’t know how it will be received by customers.
‘Make a Chair from a Tree’ by Jennie Alexander (with Larry Barrett and Peter Follansbee)
Peter Follansbee is getting this book prepared so we can begin layout. His long history with Alexander and the chair made him the perfect candidate to get the text ready. I don’t know when this book will be ready for the printer. People are working on it every day. It’s a complex and difficult project, but it will be worth the wait. (If you want to just build the chair, you can stream the video.)
‘Kitchens in Context’ or ‘Kitchen Think’ or ‘Some Other Title to Come’ by Nancy Hiller
With our layout work complete on “Honest Labour” I’ll turn my efforts to Hiller’s book this month. We hope to have it out this summer, just in time for kitchen season (by the way, it’s always kitchen season).
‘The Life of Dick Proenneke’ by Monroe Robinson
The big task with this book is the hand illustrations. Kara Gebhart and Robinson are working with paper artist Elin Price to generate the illustrations for the book (a sample is shown at the top of this blog entry). There is a lot of work ahead on this book, but it is going to be gorgeous.
‘Country Woodcraft: Then & Now’ by Drew Langsner
This fantastic update to Langsner’s classic book is in my hands. I’m making my way through the first edit. My progress has been slowed by all our other book projects, plus furniture commissions and some teaching. It’s a joy to edit and see the evolution of Langsner’s thoughts between 1978 and now. The original “Country Woodcraft” set the stage for much of the interest in green woodworking today, and this new book should stoke that fire some more.
What about Crucible tools? Well we’ve been working hard there as well. Everything is in stock, including this little gem, which I’ll talk more about this week. (There had to be some reward for reading this far.)
I just finished up teaching seven days of classes at the Florida School of Woodwork in Tampa, Fla., an urban school in a rapidly gentrifying area of the city that has an excellent facility and an enthusiastic, knowledgeable and hard-working owner, Kate Swann.
The Florida School of Woodwork is officially about two years old, though Kate ran her professional furniture-making business there for many years along with Carl Johnson.
I’ve always thought that Florida – with 21 million residents – didn’t have its fair share of woodworking schools. Lost Art Press has thousands of customers in the state, and the blog receives significant traffic from the Sunshine State. We also get a lot of questions from beginning woodworkers in Florida who ask: Where should I go for instruction and community?
Now they have an answer.
The school is located in a renovated motor-winding plant just north of downtown Tampa and near the new and bustling Armature Works and blocks and blocks of renovated Craftsman bungalows.
The front bench room and machine room is illuminated by enormous storefront windows. Each student works at a Benchcrafted workbench and with a wall-mounted kit of hand tools. The machines are well-maintained and safe (SawStops). There’s a nice break room, an overflow machine room at the back and a covered area to eat your lunch back by the local meadery. Oh and the floor of the shop is a sprung wooden floor – it’s great for your back and knees.
And there’s Kate. Affable and hand-working, Kate spent the seven days making sure the students had everything they needed, built jigs for my class, greeted the curious who stopped by and kept each day running smoothly.
Also impressive is the programming. The classes run the gamut, from a one-day class where you turn your first cup to multi-week advanced seminars with Michael Fortune. Project classes span a wide variety of styles, from period pieces to Arts & Crafts, Mid-century Modern to pieces with a serious artistic bent.
About half of my 10 students were from Florida, with the rest from states as far as Iowa and Texas. Many out-of-staters brought their families – February in Florida is about as nice as it gets. Also interesting – many of the students were repeat customers, which is remarkable for a young school.
I’ll be returning to the Florida School of Woodwork to teach in 2022 (my 2021 is already overbooked). But don’t wait for me. Check out the complete list of upcoming classes here. Florida finally has the woodworking school it has long deserved.
The following is excerpted from “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown” by Christopher Williams – the first biography of one of the most influential chairmakers and writers of the 20th century: Welshman John Brown.
Author Chris Williams spent about a decade with John Brown in Wales, building Welsh chairs and pushing this vernacular form further and further. This book recounts their work together, from the first day that Chris nervously called John Brown until the day his mentor died in 2008.
Alongside that fascinating story of loyalty, hard work and eventually grief, “Good Work” offers essays from the people directly involved in John Brown’s life as a chairmaker. Nick Gibbs, his editor from Good Woodworking magazine; Anne Sears, John Brown’s second wife; David Sears, his nephew; and Matty Sears, one of his sons who is now a toolmaker, all offer their views of John Brown and his work. Then, Chris shows you how he and JB built chairs during the later years together (differently than what John Brown showed in his book “Welsh Stick Chairs”). And Chris goes into detail that hasn’t been published before.
Also included are 19 of John Brown’s best columns from Good Woodworking. Below is one of our favorites.
When I had completed the chair (above) I sat down and looked at it. I always have a notepad nearby, and I felt I had to try to capture my feelings of the moment. Here, for what it’s worth is what I wrote. “This chair was completed on December 9th, a Friday. It is as good as I can do. Perhaps if I live a while longer and work, I will develop greater skills. My mystic self tells me that everything is just right, the angles and lengths of the parts seem to be in harmony. This chair marks the recovery of my powers. I have no pain of discomfort, my mind is active. My lighted candle and the flooded fields around me seem to balance my mind and spirit. I know I can work and make a good chair, nothing else matters and I am stress free.” For those with their feet more firmly planted on the ground here are the details: Chair No. 17/2000. Seat elm 2″ thick, 22-1/4″ width by 17-3/4″ deep. It is made from three pieces edge glued and dowelled. The legs and stretchers are from straight-grained oak. The seat pommel is 19″ from the floor. There are eight long sticks, again oak 30″ long, 5/8″ at base, and where they pass through the arm, to 1/2″ at comb. The short sticks, four each side, allow the top of the arm at the hand hold to be 10″ above the seat. The comb is oak, 2-1/2″ deep by 7/8″ at the base. The arm is steamed ash with swelling hand holds glued and dowelled, and subsequently shaped. The stain is Mylands Jacobean oak applied sparingly. There is one coat of Lacacote sanding sealer, a fine sand, then three thin coats of garnet polish finish with dark oak wax.
Stress seems to be a fashionable cause for much of the ills of modern society. Stress – it used to be called worry, or anxiety – seems to be constantly blamed for a myriad of conditions. We all aspire to a good standard of living, and the advertising industry has not been slow to tell us of the wonders of the modern market. So we reach out for new motor cars, household appliances, and an awful lot of expensive goods we don’t need. People talk of houses without central heating as though the occupants were living in abject squalor. The many billions of pounds owed to credit card companies reads to me like more stress. Evidently Father Christmas delivered 5 million mobile telephones this year, to add to the 35 million already in circulation.
My old pa in law, farmer Parker, used to say “A sheep’s worst enemy is another sheep,” the explanation being that if you put too many sheep in a field they will sour their own patch, and cause disease and parasitic infestation. Our population has not increased that much, but all this stuff we are encouraged to buy takes up a lot of room. The prime example is the motor car. Every house needs a garage, or roadspace for it to stand when not in use, then more roads to allow it to travel unhindered. More space is taken with single people living in large houses, a widow with three bedrooms. Many aspire to second homes in which to spend the odd week when on holiday. It’s wonderful to own all these things, but paying for them can be a hazard.
Jobs for life are a thing of the past. There is always the worry of not being offered a new contract when the present one expires. Companies “downsize” at the drop of a hat, it’s the easiest way of saving money. The rest of the staff have to carry the load, thereby causing more stress.
There is no one thing responsible for all ills, nor yet is one thing a cure. However, a large contributing factor in our own wild dissatisfaction is a feeling of powerlessness; we cannot do anything about it.
Everyone must now go to university. Why? Education, education, education! Is this so we can occupy our minds while waiting for the next Giro? Many of the degrees issued by village universities are not going to drop us straight into a well-paid job. Some have academic minds that can make good use of a course at a proper university. Now every one is encouraged to apply, and three years later, equipped with a Mickey Mouse degree, take an unskilled job and feel very resentful. More stress and hence the huge growth in head therapists and social workers.
A Return to Making
As I said, there is not one cure for all these problems, but I know one that will help. People should start making things again. We should open more technical schools, teaching in a practical manner all those skills, the crafts which we will always need, builders, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, toolmakers, electricians, all the myriad jobs that will never be replaced by computers.
We live in an age when the best machine is the one that leaves the operator less to do. Yet everybody seems to be in a rush. It is a mystery I haven’t solved. We were promised electricity that would be “too cheap to meter,” and that our biggest future problem would be to find things to do in our leisure time. Our industries have been destroyed, our railways first decimated, and then ruined by greedy tycoons. I no longer believe anyone, and more and more rely on my own experience.
This year, for the first time in over 30 years, I had a few days in the hospital. It was not a major problem, but it took me a while to recover. Once I was back at work I made one or two fairly ordinary chairs that did not excite me. I was a bit down, and always tired. Then I made a rather bigger chair, did one or two things differently, and built what I think is a fine chair. I was intoxicated with the joy of this job and overnight I felt so good. I am always chasing the perfect chair, and every now and then I nearly get there, and this big chair was better than any medicine, I was my own therapist. At the time something gloomy was in the news, but I was unaffected, and I thought if only, if only, I could impart some of my joy to others. This chair, like all my chairs, was made entirely with my two hands and some good tools. It is handmade. I have been a long time acquiring the skills to do this. No set of plans – just the picture in my head. Doctor Brown really recommends this treatment. The only side effects are a buzz each time you see it, and when I can bear to take it to the gallery I will have a cheque, and the knowledge that someone has a fine chair. I cannot think of any drug that would improve on this treatment. I think it is now proved that the head is important in combatting illness or depression. Like a little boy tying his shoelace for the first time, “I’ve done it!!!” That is the best medicine.
The Mendlesham Chair
It is pure coincidence that we have a reader’s enquiry from Mr George Smitton of Southport, Merseyside. He writes “As a retired DIY hobbyist the joint between armrest and back supports on a Mendlesham chair are causing a problem. I believe they were dovetailed to be authentic. Can you advise?”
Well Mr Smitton, I can answer that question easily – I don’t know. But, I know where you can find out. There are examples in the V&A, there are 15 in the Christchurch Museum at Ipswich (including a rare set of four side chairs without arms) and some in the Norwich Castle Museum. I have pictures and text on Mendlesham chairs in several books, but none of them mention construction details.
The Mendlesham chair, or “Dan Day” chairs as they are often called, comes from a small area of Suffolk. Dr Bernard Cotton in his book, “The English Regional Chair,” has done exhaustive research, including parish records, to find the members of the Day family who could have been the original builders of this style. Basically the chair is a hybrid, the seat and undercarriage being pure English Windsor, while the back arms and curved arm rest are in Sheraton, or cabinetmaker’s style. Such a mix could be unsatisfactory, but this is far from the case. The legs and leg angles are more delicate than the average Windsor of the time, and the joined back, with squared posts and distinctive pairs of cross rails, joined with three small turned balls at the top and two at the bottom, finished with six sticks and a splat, makes this a most inviting and elegant chair.
In the book there are 58 black and white portraits of these fine chairs, some looking identical and others with slight variations. Dr Cotton is asking whether all these chairs were made in the same workshop, and by different hands in that workshop, or by different hands in different workshops? There is a complicated “cluster analysis dendrogram” which probably has the answer!
Ivan Sparkes, one time curator of the Wycombe Chair Museum, is easier for me to understand. He mentions that one of the Day family worked in London, where he may have picked up the idea for the Sheraton part of the chair.
If you agree with me that the definition of a Windsor chair is that of a seat, into which are socketed the leg, the sticks, laths or pillars of the upperworks, then the Mendlesham chair is a true Windsor. But, in construction much more care must be taken. Firstly there are only four mortices into the top of the seat for the upperworks, that is the back and arms. In a normal stick Windsor there can be 20 or more. This means that the joints must be well made. The bottom of the curved arm pillar is usually cut into the side of the seat, and either screwed into the elm seat with a dowel to cover the screw head, or dowelled in. It can be dovetailed vertically into the seat edge. The arms, where they meet the squared upright pillars, are “birdsmouthed,” as they are shaped to protrude out wider than the seat. If I were making one of these chairs, I would house the birdsmouth into the pillar about 1/8″, making sure to have a snug fit. Then I would insert a dowel through the pillar and into the end grain of the arm, using good modern glue. The latter is something Dan Day didn’t have! One has to be careful not to weaken the upright post by cutting too much away.
When making a replica of an old chair I am not sure whether I would use the word authentic. If the chair looks authentic, and the joinery is a good fit, and the whole is strong enough, does it matter if it isn’t the same as the original? Remember, the craftsman of old had probably made hundreds of similar chairs, that is his advantage. Mr Smitten has the advantage of modern materials, I am thinking of glue. All these joints, including the horizontal cross pieces must be as perfect as you can make them. These are very handsome chairs, and I am sure you will get great pleasure from making them, and then having them in your home. Good luck.
– Johh Brown, The Woodworker, Issue 106, March 2001
“Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown,” by Christopher Williams, is currently at the printer and will ship in March 2020. If you order before then, you will receive a free pdf download of the book at checkout.
People – both woodworkers and the less handy – often ask me what kind of chairs I build. Lately I’ve been calling them “commonplace chairs” instead of diving into an eye-glazing lecture on the British Isles, vernacular furniture and John Brown.
The word “commonplace” suits them in both the literal definition – not unusual; ordinary – and when you happen to pull the two root words apart – common and place. These chairs are both common and come from a place. What about this one?
This one came from my scrap bin. When I design a new chair, I rummage through my 5-gallon buckets filled with leftover ash and oak legs, stretchers, sticks and such, some of them years old. This seat was a backup seat left over from a class. The arms and crest were some straight, bendable sassafras.
I set out to give this chair a formal silhouette, like a Scottish Darvel chair. I got to examine one in person this fall and loved its presence. I wanted a low-slung undercarriage to belie the age of my design. But most of all, I pictured this chair in my mind as belonging to the head of a household. So it should have some height, arms and a just a whiff of throne.
But still be a stick chair. And not too damn fancy.
It’s comfortable and cozy (thanks to some negative springback after the steambending). The back sticks taper gently from 5/8” to 1/2” and bend ever-so-slightly out to cradle the shoulders of the sitter. The oak seat is lightly saddled, as per my usual way. And it’s painted with General Finishes (Not) Milk Paint in Coastal Blue that has been brushed on.
If you want to see this chair in person it will be in the gallery at Fine Woodworking Live in April (the event is almost sold out). I wish I could offer this chair for sale. Nothing would make me happier. But the head of the household (Lucy) wants it for the dining table. It will be the nicest chair of mine that we own – everything else around the table is dogmeat and prototypes.
Sweet jiminy I don’t need any more mail, tasks or obligations. If you have a woodworking question, you can usually find answers by using the search box on the right-hand sidebar. If you have a question about your order or a product, you can always send a note to help@lostartpress.com.
But occasionally I do get a question or two through the mail or friends that bears answering. Here are two good questions – and one that I cannot answer.
Benchtop Thickness
Robert in Vista, Calif., asks about an apparent contradiction in my writing. At one point I wrote that 4” is the maximum thickness for a benchtop that works with holdfasts. Later, I recommend 4” to 6”. What gives?
When I wrote my first articles on workbenches about 20 years ago (which led to my first book), the world of holdfasts looked like this: tons of crappy cast ones and a few custom blacksmith holdfasts. So I bought every holdfast I could. I helped Don Weber make me one. And when I tested them, I couldn’t get any of them to work in a benchtop that was thicker than 4”.
And so I reported my findings.
As interest in holdfasts grew, better ones became available. We started making one with a 1” shaft. These better holdfasts worked in thick benchtops. I can get ours to seat in a block that is 10” thick. But 10” is silly for a benchtop. I think 6” is the maximum I’d use.
Trestle Table Flex
James in Twentynine Palms, Calif., asks about the trestle table I built for Woodworking Magazine exactly one coon’s age ago. When his kids sit on the table, he sees the supports below the top flexing under their weight. Is this a known problem?
The trestle table is flexible; that’s one of the nice things about it. As long as nothing is groaning under the weight of the kids, you’re probably fine. The table is like an I-beam with a wooden skin on top. It’s quite strong and remains one of my favorite designs.
However, I cannot vouch for your joinery or the mass of your children. I can report that my table has survived many strange evenings.
James also writes to ask if I have any tips for sourcing wood on the West Coast (he’s new there). Species, places to buy etc.
As a Kentuckian, I have zero experience with West Coast lumberyards, except for buying alder and fir. Perhaps the readers could offer some ideas about good local woods for furniture.
