Thanks/no thanks to the turmoil in the world of woodworking publishing, we have acquired another editor to work on our books, blogs, videos and other projects.
This announcement should be no surprise.
All of you know Megan Fitzpatrick, the former editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine. During the last 11 years, she’s always been happy to help Lost Art Press with editing, which she did on the side whenever she could spare the time.
Today, Megan joins Lost Art Press as a managing editor. Like Kara Gebhart Uhl, Megan will work on all of our titles on a daily basis. This addition to our staff will have profound implications for you, the reader.
Here’s why. Kara and Megan can already read my mind, and they were both an important part of creating the ethos that guides Lost Art Press: 1) Treat everyone with the same respect. 2) Give away as much content as possible.
With both of them on board, I can step away from doing every single task involved with publishing our books. Kara and Megan will manage the day-to-day tasks of book publishing. This frees me to research and write more books for Lost Art Press. This has always been my greatest (and perhaps only) strength.
Please don’t think that this means that I am stepping away from Lost Art Press. I work seven days a week (by choice and by joy), and Lost Art Press is my baby. Bringing Megan on as a regular ensures that I can continue to explore the unknown, while she and Kara ensure our books are of the highest editorial quality.
We are in the final stages of editing two books and getting them ready for press by the end of February.
“Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding” is being indexed right now by Suzanne Ellison. Megan Fitzpatrick and Kara Gebhart Uhl are giving it a final edit for typographical problems.
This will be my first book with a dust jacket (see above). I hope this book justifies it. The gorgeous photos from Narayan Nayar and the paintings from the last 2,000 of human history make this book visually interesting – as well as educational (I hope). The book will be 172 pages, hardbound, on heavy and coated 8-1/2” x 11” paper. Full color throughout.
I don’t have any information on pricing, yet. My guess is it will be about $45 retail. This book was crazy expensive to write thanks to all the expense of acquiring permissions to reprint images from all over the world, trips to Italy and Germany to inspect artifacts and the professional illustrations. Heck, the wood to make the workbenches was the cheapest part of the endeavor.
The second book at the ready is “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones. I finished my edit of the book this week. Megan, Kara and Suzanne are now making a final sweep through the book for errors and consistency.
We spent a long time coming up with the title for this book and are quite pleased with it. While Richard’s text covers every aspect of how the world of trees and woodworkers intersect, just about every detail that is important to woodworkers is how the wood was cut and how it was dried. This influences its appearance, its stability, the defects and even whether it will be susceptible to attack by pests or mold.
I am working on the cover for this book right now, and it involves a little woodworking, a little fire and some hand-printing. I’ll be covering the process here on the blog in the coming week.
“Cut & Dried” will be a sizable hardbound book at 320 pages on heavy 9” x 12” paper. I suspect the price will be about $50 to $60. We are waiting on quotes from the printer.
We will open the ordering process later this month and both books should ship from the printer in early April. More details on pricing and who will be carrying these books will come soon.
Waiting in the Womb Soon after the above books go to press, we’ll have two more almost immediately. It’s going to be a busy year. Joshua Klein’s book “With Hands Employed Aright” will be back from the designer shortly. And Jögge Sundqvist’s “Slöjd in Wood” is almost ready to go to press.
And shortly behind those two books are new titles from Christian Becksvoort and Marc Adams. Oh, and Peter Follansbee.
If you are in the market for live-edge slabs that are dry and ready to go, read on.
The tree service I use outside Cincinnati has seven beautiful walnut slabs available that they have cut, dried in a vacuum kiln and are stacked and ready to go. I got to inspect the slabs last week during a visit and they are sweet. I didn’t have my moisture meter with me, but they felt dry and ready to use.
Here are some details:
They have two slabs that measure 3” thick and 12’2” long. These are 45” wide (!!) at the crotch end and 27” to 34” wide on the bole.
They have four slabs that measure 3” thick and 12’2” long. These are 47” wide at the crotch end and 34” wide on the bole.
They have one slab with bark on one face that is 136” long at the crotch end and 20” at the bole end. The thickness varies because of the bark surface, but the middle bit is almost 6” thick.
I’m listing these here as a favor to the seller and you. I don’t get a commission and have no interest in the deal.
This was one impressive walnut tree, and I’m happy these guys were able to save it from the chipper so it can live on.
For information on pricing and availability, contact Jay Butcher at 513-616-8873 (voice or text) or via email.
The Lost Art Press storefront in Covington, Ky., will be open this Saturday with lots of interesting stuff to try and to see. Here’s what you’ll find if you pay us a visit.
An authentic Douro chair. I’m studying this chair and its transit case for an upcoming commission. This chair is great fun. It fits inside its case. The case turns into a side table.
Lots of blemished books for 50 percent off retail. (Cash only, on these, please.) I’m picking up a sizable load of returned orders and books with dinged corners from our warehouse for the Saturday event.
Megan Fitzpatrick is finishing up a Dutch tool chest.
Brendan Gaffney is building a beguiling bookcase using persimmon panels that use “recording.”
The Electric Horse Garage is complete. We have HVAC, electricity, machines and no leaks. Our machine room is simple, but if you saw what we started with in September you might be impressed.
If you are looking for other fun stuff to do in the area this weekend.
Go on a tour of the New Riff Distillery (in Newport next door to Covington). It’s a gorgeous facility. Plus you should stop at Braxton Labs, next door to the distillery, and try some of the unusual beers they are cooking up.
Get a cinnamon roll or brioche tart at Brown Bear Bakery in Over the Rhine, my new obsession.
Lil’s Bagels (the best bagels I’ve had outside New York) have opened a window on Greenup Street in Covington. Get there early because they sell out almost every day.
For many years, I have been an undying fan of the work of Chester Cornett (1913-1981), a traditional Eastern Kentucky chairmaker who crossed over to become an artist who lived out his last years in Cincinnati, just a few miles from where I am right now.
Cornett’s story is long, tragic and documented in the book “Craftsman of the Cumberlands” (University Press of Kentucky) by Michael Owen Jones. My personal copy of the book is dog-eared and always within grasp.
For years I’ve known that the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Ky., had some of Cornett’s work, which it acquired for an exhibition and its permanent collection. But despite my long love of folk art and woodworking, I’d never made it down to the Folk Art Center until Wednesday.
It was a bittersweet journey.
Kentucky’s state budget is in turmoil. And though I try to steer clear of politics, I am deeply saddened and angered at our governor’s proposed budget cuts, which would shutter both the Kentucky Folk Art Center and the University Press of Kentucky, which published the book on Cornett. (And has a 75-year history of publishing fantastic books about the Commonwealth.)
If you dislike funding for cultural institutions, don’t bother leaving a comment. I don’t want to hear it. We’re talking about pennies.
Anyway, we arrived at the Kentucky Folk Art Center on Wednesday and spent a couple hours with the director, Matt Collingsworth. We arrived unannounced and unheralded. But Collingsworth enthusiastically gave us full access to all the pieces and all the paperwork the museum owns on Cornett – including the only known drawings and descriptions Cornett made of his pieces.
Side note: Some of you know that I have been collecting folk art/outsider art for as long as I have been a woodworker. My home is full of it. The Kentucky Folk Art Center is – hands down – the best folk art museum I’ve ever visited. (Yes, I spent a day at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. I went to the Garden of Earthly Delights in Georgia while Howard Finster was still alive. I’ve been to every folk art museum in every town I’ve ever visited.)
In fact, when I arrived home on Wednesday night I spent the next hour showing my family all the photos from my trip, and I cannot wait to take them there as soon as possible.
OK, back to the woodworking.
The Kentucky Folk Art Center has three of Cornett’s pieces on display: an early side chair that resembles a heavier version of Jennie Alexander’s chair from “Make a Chair from a Tree” (Taunton). There’s a standard rocking chair that looked to be a “sample” chair because the slats were scrawled with Cornett’s sales pitch on the slats.
And there was one of Cornett’s “chair-and-a-half” rockers in walnut, ash and hickory bark. This chair, which Cornett also called his “fat man’s rocker,” was stunning. Octagonal seat. Four rockers. An astounding amount of drawknife work. Pictures do not do the piece justice.
Brendan Gaffney and I were stunned by it. Brendan took lots of measurements and vowed to produce a version of it. I tried to capture its essence in photos (and failed).
We also got to see one of Cornett’s tables, which is eight-sided and has octagonal legs with a most unusual taper. And the table broke down into two pieces.
As I made the drive back home up the AA highway, my head spun with the joy of seeing Cornett’s pieces (and getting to sit in one of his rockers) and the foreboding feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to make many more of these visits in the future.
If you have a free weekend, please make the trip to the Kentucky Folk Art Center, which is deep in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, before the axe falls. And know that we’ll do our best to keep writing about Chester Cornett and his unusual and incredibly well-made chairs.
