Lost Art Press

Author: Lost Art Press

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

It Must Have a Name (It Does)

Posted on by Lost Art Press
A travisher cleans up a cup.

I don’t like making up names for furniture components. Not because I want to be pedantic. But because I want to avoid confusion. If something has a name (fiddleback maple) I would rather use that name than make one up (maple on a lot of acid).

One name that has escaped me for years is on a chair. The swoops next to the seat’s pommel – what are those areas called? I’ve consulted all my furniture books and haven’t found anything that made sense. So I grudgingly called them “leg swoops” in “The Stick Chair Book Revised Edition.”

Last week Aspen Golann was helping teach a class here and I asked her if she knew what they were called.

After a minute of thinking, Aspen remembered that the conservators at Winterthur called them “cups.”

Brilliant and perfect – cups! That’s what I’m calling them from here on out. I updated the anatomy section of my book to reflect this. I also added a few more terms that I stumbled on while digging through a bunch of books on chairs. The three anatomy drawings are included below. If you download them and print them out, they will be high resolution (about 300 dpi).

Better hang them up in your shop and memorize them, because there will be a quiz.

— Christopher Schwarz

Anthe Update No. 7

Posted on by Lost Art Press

As Nancy Hiller famously said, “It’s all problems.”

We will move the remainder of our inventory into the Anthe building during the first week in October. The three semis have been scheduled. We have a plan.

But until that moment the first truck arrives on Oct. 2, we have to move a few mountains.

It began when our walk-behind forklift was delivered. It was about 8” too tall to fit through our new $6,000 roll-up door. Yes, everyone measured the opening, including the salesman for Crown. Someone somewhere made a mistake.

So to fix that problem, we had to remove the new door, rip out the $400 plastic flaps that kept the AC in the building and hire a mason to remove three courses of bricks ($500) and rebuild the opening. Then order additional parts for the roll-up door ($1,900). 

So last week, we rolled our brand-new fork truck through the new opening and we heard a quiet but terrible noise. Some of the old floorboards crumbed under the wheels of the truck. 

Yes, a structural engineer inspected the building and green-lighted our plan. 

But some of the floorboards were unexpectedly worn (some were 1/4” thick ) and fragile from 130 years of heavy use. (The joists were holding more-than-fine.) So we added felt and a thick tongue-and-groove OSB floor. The floor is designed to be removed by future generations if they want to return to the old floor.

We also added the OSB to the second floor to allow us to move pallets around more easily (there will not be a fork truck on the second floor – just a manual pallet jack).

Despite all this, we are making it, one unexpected problem at a time.

Note: Please do me a favor and don’t take potshots at our efforts here. These decisions were arrived at by professionals (not us) with decades of experience with old buildings. This blog entry cannot possibly give you all the information you need to have an opinion of what is happening on-site. If you’re gonna be a jerk, I’m not going to respond; I’m just going to delete your comment.

— Christopher Schwarz

LAP Open Wire, Sept. 23, 2023, from Covington

Posted on by Lost Art Press
A big pile of chairs in progress this week. Mine is in there somewhere….

We just finished up the chair class with students selected by Chairmakers Toolbox, and we are both inspired and exhausted. Building eight stick chairs in five days with limited tools is no joke. But working with a group of chair-crazy enthusiastic young woodworkers gives me hope for the future of our craft.

So today I am happy to sit on my tukus and answer Open Wire questions. Type your question about woodworking into the comment field below. Megan and I will try our best to answer it. Apologies if our answers are brief and not surrounded by the usual pleasantries. Saturdays are a lot of typing.

So here we go.

Comments will close about 5 p.m.

— Christopher Schwarz

Yours for the Asking (Plus $1)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Earlier this week, I put up a chair for sale that I was proud of. Not my thing, pride. But the chair represents a small milestone in my work.

I didn’t expect many people to bid on the green Irish chair I’d built. It’s a painted chair. It’s not a comb-back chair. And it’s painted. But here’s the humiliating thing. No one has bid on it.

So here’s the thing. The rules of the sale are the same. Bid on this chair (or not) by 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21. If the highest bid is $1, I will honor it. Here are the instructions for bidding.

Or maybe I shouldn’t build any more Irish armchairs in the future (no matter how comfortable they are).

— Christopher Schwarz

For Sale: My Favorite Chair (So Far)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Recently I finished up this green Irish armchair, and I’ve concluded it’s my best work yet. More than any other chair I’ve made, this chair gets closest to the intuitive style of chairmaking that I admire in Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

How did this happen? It was 20 years of practice plus two frantic days of building. I had to build this chair during a photo shoot over two short days. That meant I had to absolutely fly and build it with intuition and the wood on my bench.

As a result, the sticks are heavily faceted, the legs are thinner, the hands have proud tenons, the back sticks are a little longer than usual and the backrest is a different shape. All these decisions were made under duress and with almost no thought. Here is a short moviefilm I made to explain it.

Oh, it sits great, too.

Here are the details. The chair is made of red oak. All the joints are glued with hide glue so they can be easily repaired. The chair is painted with General Finishes Milk Paint in Basil with a thin coat of washed raw linseed oil (this gives it a little glow).

The seat is 16-1/4” off the floor. The overall chair is 33” high and 27” wide. 

I am selling this chair via a silent auction.

Purchasing the Chair

If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 5 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, Sept. 21. Please use the subject line: “Irish Chair.” In the email please include your:

  • Bid
  • U.S. shipping address
  • Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)

The highest bid wins. If you are the “winner,” the chair can be picked up at our storefront for free. Or we can crate it and ship it to your door for a flat $250 in the lower 48. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)

Whew. Now I am a bit paralyzed with my next chair. So do I need to invent a fake crisis to get the same effect? Or will it be easy now that I have seen it come from my own hands?

— Christopher Schwarz