Lost Art Press

Author: Lost Art Press

Publisher of woodworking books and videos specializing in hand tool techniques.

The Lost Art Press Food Tour

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I dream of St. Francis.

Note: If you’re planning on coming to town next month for our Chair Show and Open Day, here are some restaurants to try. There’s a reason Cincinnati is one of the fattest cities in the USA.

Megan and I often joke that next year we’re going to flip the script on our classes at the storefront. We’ll hold a week of great restaurant meals, and we’ll also build a little stool (just to say we did some woodworking).

We are obsessed with good food – if you’ve taken a class here you probably already know this. So *if* we ever did a food tour, here is what the itinerary might look like.

Monday

Breakfast: Sugar ‘n’ Spice in Over the Rhine. This is an old-school diner. Stick to the basics, and you’ll be thrilled: pancakes, biscuits, French toast, home fries and bacon.

Lunch: City Bird (any location). A local chicken chain, and the best. Get the chicken however you like it (ask for it spicy if you like spicy). Be sure to get fries. And the salad is outstanding.

Dinner: St. Francis Apizza in Hyde Park. On Mondays, St. Francis does Chicago tavern-style pizza. It’s a six-day process to make the thin and flavorful dough. Standouts: pepperoni and sausage, and the bacon pizza (with whole slices of bacon). Pick up your pizza and eat it at a table in the parking lot. Get some drinks at Dutch’s a few doors down.

Tuesday

Breakfast: Maplewood downtown. Everything here is tasty and fresh. I love the chilaquiles and the lemon ricotta pancakes. The juice is worth it. Hang out by the restaurant’s front windows and watch the world go to work.

Lunch: Eli’s Barbecue, Findlay Market. The pulled pork sandwich and the smoked turkey sandwich are mainstays. Get the jalapeno cheddar grits on the side, or the mashed potatoes (which get seared on the griddle). After lunch, tour the market and get a waffle at the Taste of Belgium stand. You can spend the whole day at the market and its surroundings.

Lunch (per Fitz): Eckerlin’s Meats, Findlay Market. The hot pastrami sandwich is the best I’ve had in Cincinnati in years.

Dinner: Northside Yacht Club. This is in Megan’s neighborhood, and damn is it good. Great burgers, wings, fries. And always check out the monthly special. It’s a dive bar with A+ food and drinks. It’s not fancy. The “yacht club” is a joke – the building is on an industrial creek. For dessert, go to Shake It records (also in Northside). One of the two best record stores in the city.

Wednesday

Breakfast: Brown Bear Bakery. Cincinnati is awash in amazing bakeries. Brown Bear is a family favorite. Everything I’ve ever had there (except one thing) was mind-blowing good. Great coffee. Great place to sit and watch the city.

Lunch: Olla. Just a couple blocks from our office, Olla is serious Mexican food. The birria (in all its forms) is mouthwatering. The best guacamole in the city. Fantastic tacos. And a great place to hang out with a margarita.

Dinner: Colette. A small French restaurant that continuously blows my mind. I have had everything on the menu. And I will have everything again. If I had to pick a few favorites… the brioche, the cod, the ravioli and the cote de boeuf. My favorite cup of coffee in the city, too.

Thursday

Breakfast: Young Buck Deli. Only two things on the menu. Both are great. 

Lunch: Heyday. We talk about this place a lot. On any given day, I will say that Heyday has the best burger and the best fries. Friendly staff. Everything is fresh and perfect.

Dinner: Cafe Mochiko. My favorite Japanese place in town. Fantastic ramen, karaage and katsu sandwiches on milk bread (it’s a Japanese bakery by day). Even the damn burger will blow you away. And if you like Japanese pastries, this is the place.

Friday

Breakfast: Coppins. The restaurant in the Hotel Covington. This is where we take guests when they visit. Lots of good stuff to please everyone in the family. And a beautiful place to eat, too. If the weather is nice, sit outside in the courtyard.

Lunch: Sotto. Usually I recommend Sotto for dinner, but it’s difficult to get a reservation for dinner. So go for lunch. Everything – and I mean everything – on the menu is fantastic. Sotto is where we go to celebrate our victories or lick our wounds. The short rib cappellacci can change your life.

Dinner: Purple Poulet. A family-run restaurant with the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Shrimp and grits. All the Southern specialties. And if you don’t get the bread pudding at the end, then you will have committed a crime against puddings.

The above itinerary wasn’t easy to put together. On any given day I’d instead insist that you go to the Eagle, Allez, Otto’s, the Baker’s Table, Nada, Boca, Taft Brewhouse, Decibel, Libby’s, Mita’s, Losanti, Senate, Nine Giant, Crown Republic or Taglio’s.

And Fitz would add El Camino, Teak, Kiki, the Pony, Gulow Street and Sacred Beast.

Maybe save those for next year.

— Christopher Schwarz

New Kits for the Hobbit-y Chair

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You can now order the carefully chosen wooden parts needed for the Hobbit-y Chair from The Stick Chair Journal No. 2. The kits are $295 and are in red elm, my favorite chairmaking wood.

You can order a kit here from Alexander Brothers in Virginia. Shea Alexander and his employees have been supplying me with chair wood for almost a year now, and I am really happy with the stock they pick, both for straightness of the grain and overall beauty.

We do not receive any royalty or kickback on the sales of these kits. Shea was willing to do them, and we consider it a service for people who live in areas where wood is difficult to purchase, or where the woodworker isn’t confident in choosing their wood.

Alexander Bros. also offers a kit for the six- or seven-stick comb-back chairs I build. These are available in red elm, or in red elm with oak legs and sticks.

We highly recommend these kits, and hope they help you get started in chairmaking.

— Christopher Schwarz

Come See the Chair Show on Nov. 23

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Two new stick chairs. The one on the left was built by a student. The one on the right is mine.

I’ve never shown my work in a gallery. I’ve been asked a few times, but my problem is this: I don’t want to give up 50 percent of the sales price to the gallery. I’d rather skip the glory of cheese and boxed wine in plastic cups and sell my work direct.

But gallery shows are fun. And you get to see a lot of interesting work. So we are going to put on our own show on Saturday, Nov. 23, at our Willard Street storefront. And it’s going to be a little different.

The Chair Show will show my chairmaking arc (and my influences) over a 21-year span. There will be an original John Brown Cardigan chair, a Chris Williams four-stick Welsh stick chair, plus an original Welsh antique I bought from chairmaker John Porritt.

I’ll be showing my first chair, plus some other waypoints on the journey – my first lowback, the chair from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” and some prototypes.

Plus, I’ll have some new chairs to sell. These will be priced at the low end of my typical range.

Here’s the fun part: You’ll be able to touch, study and measure all of them. And you’ll be able to sit in all of them (with one exception – the Welsh antique needs a repair).

Like all our Open Days, we’ll have our complete line of books and tools here, plus blemished books for sale and some tools, too. Megan will be on hand to sign her new book “Dutch Tool Chests.” And Wally will accept your petting. The show will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Nov. 23 at 837 Willard St. in Covington, Kentucky 41011.

Another Dang Drilling Trick

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Steve lines up the stick (taped to the drill) with the mortise location on the side stretcher.

I cut dovetails pretty much the exact same way I did 20 years ago. Same layout, same sawing, same chiseling, same fitting. But when it comes to my chairmaking, things seem to change every day.

I’ve been building stick chairs since 2003 (and frame chairs since 1997). So it’s not like I am new to the chairmaking craft. But for some reason, I am constantly finding new and usually small ways to make things easier.

When I wrote “The Stick Chair Book,” I thought I was pretty much settled in how I make my chairs. But by the time we had to reorder the second printing, I decided to revise the book. Not in major ways, but in many little minor ways. And I added a lot of little shortcuts I had discovered.

Now, about a year after releasing the revised edition of “The Stick Chair Book,” I’d like to revise it again for the next printing. Again, nothing major, just small things here and there that make it easier to drill and assemble things.

Even today, I came up with a stupid little trick that really helped. Here it is. When drilling the mortises for the stretchers, tape a stick or skewer or chopstick to the centerline seam of your drill. It helps immeasurably in lining up the drill between the mortises in the legs and between the mortises in the side stretchers.

I’ve seen lots of tricks that use rubber bands or lasers. But none is as simple as taping a scrap to the drill.

When the scrap is aligned with both mortises, Steve drills the mortise in the side stretcher.

As a chairmaker and author, I know I’m not alone in the way I feel about my past writings. Many other chairmakers are constantly finding new ways to make the process a little easier.

Why have we not created the “Unified Method of All Chairmaking?” Because there are at least 100 ways to make a chair. And 1,000 tricks that go with each method.

This is one of the things I love about woodworking – the constant discovery. But it can be frustrating both as an author and a reader.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now Shipping: ‘Principles of Design’

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‘Principles of Design‘ is one of my favorite titles on design.

A friend recently took a furniture design course taught by a guy I’ll call Mr. Famous Furniture Maker. During the class there were lectures, field trips to find inspiration, drawing lessons, scale model-making and critiques.

“Well,” I asked my friend, “how was the class?”

“Great,” he replied. “Now I know how to design furniture that looks exactly like Mr. Famous Furniture Maker’s pieces.”

This is, of course, one way to learn design. But not everyone wants to become a Junior Sam Maloof or James Krenov the VIII. Some woodworkers just want to make a side table, dry sink or tater bin that is well-proportioned and pleasing to look at.

One excellent path to learn design has been blazed by Jim Tolpin and George Walker, who have written a series of books that teach design using artisan geometry and whole-number ratios. During the last 11 years, we’ve edited all of Tolpin and Walker’s books for Lost Art Press and deeply appreciate that their approach is style-agnostic and crystal-clear.

This book, “Principles of Design,” is an excellent and complementary approach to Tolpin and Walker. It was first published in 1916 under the title “Industrial Arts Design” and written by William H. Varnum (1878-1946). We renamed it “Principles of Design,” which is a far more apt title.

Varnum, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, was the author of two important design books, plus some other works on setting up a curriculum for shop teachers.

I own copies of all his works, but this one is my favorite. The book was written to teach shop teachers how to teach furniture design. And the book reads like the syllabus for an excellent college-level course in the fundamentals of furniture design.

Varnum lays out a series of step-by-step rules to guide the reader through the process of designing furniture, pottery and metalwork. It begins with function and form, of course. But it then delves into common-sense rules for dividing up a form both horizontally and vertically. These rules work. And once you read them and see the accompanying illustrations, I think you’ll say: “Of course.”

Varnum explains how to “enrich” the shape or contours of a design. Then how to enrich the surfaces. And there is an excellent section on using color.

Many of these rules have been embedded in buildings and furniture for centuries. Many of us know the rules innately. But Varnum puts them to paper in ways that allow us to use them to create new works.

“Principles of Design” was written during the waning years of the American Arts & Crafts movement, so the examples used in the book are gorgeous Craftsman designs and earlier traditional forms. Varnum’s rules apply to all furniture forms, but the austerity of the Arts & Crafts pieces in the book help make the use of his rules easy to comprehend and digest.

Bright paper plus stochastic printing make this book a pleasure to read.

Mechanical Specifications

The original printing of this book was gorgeous, so we sought to equal or exceed its specifications. The book is 7″ x 9-5/8″ and printed on #80 matte coated paper, which is a close match to the original. Because some of the details in the photos are dark, we chose a press that could do stochastic printing, which gives sharper detail. The book’s signatures are sewn together, backed with fiber tape and wrapped with heavy boards. The covers are wrapped in cotton cloth and printed in gold foil.

Like all our books, “Principles of Design” is printed in the United States. It is $41 plus shipping. We will offer this book to all our retailers worldwide, but it is up to them to carry it or not.

Note: We have printed only 3,000 copies of this historical text. Because space at our warehouse is at a premium, we do not plan on any future press runs of “Principles of Design.”

— Christopher Schwarz