D.R. Dimes was one of those famous furniture making companies that was so ubiquitous that you couldn’t imagine it ever going out of business. But it did.
What I didn’t know is that it has recently been reborn as a one-person shop run by Douglas P. Dimes, the son of the founder.
The story of the Dimes workshop is a fascinating read, from its rise after the 1976 bicentennial to its closing in 2017 as the market for so-called “brown furniture” bottomed out.
Like many owners of a small business, I worry about growing too fast, or the market disappearing (probably because of something I did or failed to do). It’s also a reminder that if you were born to build furniture, it’s always a sound path. Even if you are the one and only employee.
Our new fulfillment warehouse in neighboring Newport.
This week we will move our order-fulfillment operation and warehouse to a nearby structure with more than 8,000 square feet of space, plus a loading dock and dedicated space for tool assembly and production of glue and our soft wax finish.
So if you place an order this week, it might be delayed several days as we move everything into the new space. Apologies for this short interruption in service.
We are not abandoning our Anthe headquarters and storefront on Madison Avenue in Covington. In fact, moving our fulfillment operations will allow a lot of good things to happen at our circa-1890 factory building.
Most important, we will have space for a huge number of books at the new warehouse, which is only a couple miles from Anthe in neighboring Newport, Kentucky. This will allow us to deepen our stock of our existing titles and to stop playing the endless game of Tetris at Anthe whenever a new shipment of books arrives.
Why did we run out of space at Anthe so quickly? I don’t like to speak ill of people who cannot count, but an inventory audit at out last fulfillment center was sub-optimal in the “addition” department. We needed more space than we thought.
So much space for books, tools and growth.
The new warehouse, which I now dub “Beacon,”1 will fix all those problems. And there is lots of room for growth at Beacon because we will be able to stack books higher than one pallet.
So what will happen at Anthe? Lots.
The storefront will continue to operate on the first floor. And we hope to have it open six days each week by the end of the year.
We plan to rearrange the storefront and re-open the passageway between the storefront and the picking floor at the rear of the first floor. Why? Because that is where a new woodworking school will go. Details to follow on the school.
The second floor of Anthe will become our print production offices. As I have mentioned earlier, we plan to use Risograph machines to print some of our titles. We need room for these machines, the paper to feed them and (eventually) the machines to bind and finish books. Our current editorial offices there will remain. The only big change is that we will move tool production to Beacon. Right now, we are assembling hammers and finishing Crucible tools in the same space we are editing books and printing full-size plans and scanning images and signing books and rooting out typos. It’s cramped up there.
What about the third floor of Anthe and the basement? For me, that is the huge news. We have no plans for those spaces. We are going to sit on them and use them to grow LAP. We could put in a bunkroom for students. Or an apartment for visiting instructors. Or a machine room for ourselves.
Or a petting zoo.
I’m just happy to have some space to think and dream with. For the entire 19-year history of LAP, we have been pressed for space. For now, we have some room.
— Christopher Schwarz
1 The warehouse facility was built for Beacon Printing about 37 years ago. That is one of the reasons it perfectly serves our needs.
The Chairmaker’s Toolbox is accepting applications for a scholarship class this August at Lost Art Press. All six students will receive free tuition and materials (plus some meals) during the week-long chairmaking class, Aug. 3-7.
Apply for this scholarship class here. Applications close on May 15.
The class will be taught by Grace Ambrose and me (Chris). During the five days, we will all build comb-back chairs using basic tools and simple techniques practiced by peasants and farmers during the last 300 years. No previous chairmaking experience is required. You don’t need to own a chest full of tools. You just have to really want to build chairs.
The Chairmaker’s Toolbox helps people who have historically been excluded or under-represented from the craft. We have supported this organization from its inception and welcome anyone and everyone into the craft. In addition to The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, we support many other scholarship programs for veterans, woodworkers with financial needs and those who struggle with mental health.
This class will take place in our workshop in Covington, Kentucky, which is a converted German barroom in the inner city. Each day begins with pastries, tea and coffee. Our bench room is filled with natural light and traditional workbenches. After a morning of chairmaking, students eat lunch in our converted biergarten (weather permitting), followed by a long afternoon of work at the bench.
Evenings are up to the students. Some go out to dinner in one of the many dive bars and restaurants in the 100-percent walkable neighborhood. Others cook for themselves.
By the end, all of the students will walk away from the class with a finished chair and the knowledge to make chairs in their own workshop.
This is one of our favorite weeks every year. These classes are filled with sharp and interesting people who are ready to change the craft for the better.
If this sounds like fun (it is), apply here and join us this August.
I’m showing two stick chairs in black cherry that are based on the 18th-century Bebb chair from Wales (one of the key chairs in my design language). The chairs will be for sale, and I am selling them at a friendly Cincinnati price. (If they don’t sell, I’ll put them up for sale here on the blog.)
The show features furniture from students at University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), plus independent designers (that’s me!) and regional brands.
The show opens this Friday, April 17, from 6 to 10 p.m. with beverages from Northern Row Brewery. I’ll be there on Friday – hopefully with a few other Lost Art Press employees. I always love furniture shows. There is no better way to see where you stack up in terms of technical skills and your eye.
While I was teaching a chairmaking class at the Woodworking School at Pinecroft last week, school manager Katie Bister offered to plait the handle of my Exeter hammer with the woody stalks of broom corn.
Katie is a multi-talented craftsperson in fiber arts and woodworking, so I immediately said yes. I offered her a Crucible brass center square in trade. Plaiting is similar to braiding. Many times it is decorative, though it can be used to strengthen the area of a broom where the handle intersects the head, Bister says.
In this case, the plaiting adds some grip to the hammer handle, which is nice. You can see Bister’s plaiting work all over the shop at Pine Croft, including the handles on one of the tool cabinets.
The plaiting process took 23 minutes, according to the time codes on my photos. Here’s what it looks like.
