Don Williams will be selling first edition plates from “l’Art du Menuisier” at his booth at Handworks next month. Don purchased these unbound original plates recently and has decided to sell them to the public.
Real-deal copperplates are stunning things of beauty, suitable for framing. And originals from Roubo are quite rare.
Don has been posting the plates he’s selling on his blog. Here are some links so you can read more:
— Christopher Schwarz
Editor’s note: One of the ridiculous and wonderful things we did for Joshua Klein’s book “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Production of Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847)” is to commission a painting of Fisher in his workshop. Klein came up with the idea as a way to show Fisher in his habitat, surrounded by many of the tools and objects connected to his life. After reading the first draft of the book, the painting is a delight to explore. In this blog entry, artist Jessica Roux explains how she created the illustration for the book.
As an illustrator, I love tackling exciting projects that combine lots of texture and old world beauty, while offering an opportunity to learn something new. When Joshua Klein contacted me about recreating a workshop scene for his upcoming book on Jonathan Fisher, I knew this project would be just that.
My work is not just drawing a picture; it involves researching, learning and translating articles and stories into compelling visual messages. I’ve worked for a variety of clients, from distilling complex economic concepts for the Sunday Business section of The New York Times to working for Smithsonian magazine on a piece about Abraham Lincoln’s funeral. I love learning new things, so when I’m presented with an opportunity to explore something I’m unfamiliar with, I take on the challenge.
The initial inspiration board Joshua put together for me was compelling. Many of the images had beautiful, rich atmospheres of golden light and warm brown colors (see above). He also provided a rough sketch and lots of reference imagery, including a lot of Fisher’s own tools.
From there, I created a sketch digitally in Photoshop, taking the technical imagery and translating it into my own drawing style. I had some help from my husband, who was kind enough to let me use him for reference in his own shop. He also showed me some of his planes and old tool collections so that I had a better understanding of size, proportion and detail.
After nailing down some more technical aspects of the sketch, we were ready to go to final. I create my finished illustrations by first creating a graphite pencil drawing, then adding color by digitally painting in Photoshop. The graphite drawing allows for a lot of texture to be added, fleshing out the contour sketch into a more realistic, dimensional space. I also really love drawing wood grain, so it was especially fun to work on a piece that incorporated so much of it.
Once the graphite pencil drawing is complete, I scan it in at a high resolution so that it can be reproduced at a larger scale than the drawing itself without loss of quality or detail. Next, I digitally paint the image in Photoshop. I first do a simple color sketch underneath the graphite drawing in order to get a sense of light and to establish the color palette.
Then I block in the colors underneath the drawing and add additional highlights, shadows, details and contrast. I like to move around the illustration going from object to object, getting the details just right, then moving onto the next item. I add adjustment layers when the piece is finished to brighten it up and give a more cohesive feel to the illustration.
I’m pleased with how the final illustration looks – it has a similar feel to the inspirational images, and it ultimately captures a sense of who Jonathan Fisher was and how he worked.
— Jessica Roux, http://jessica-roux.com
Good news, everyone. “Roman Workbenches” has arrived in our Indianapolis warehouse and looks stunning. When I got word that it arrived at 2:39 p.m. on Monday I dropped everything and drove to the warehouse to grab some copies.
If you ordered a copy (or hope to), please read the following crap carefully so you don’t give poor Meghan at help@lostartpress.com an aneurysm.
We will ship these out as soon as we can, but it will take some time. Our warehouse has to schedule an assembly-line process when fulfilling big batches of new titles. That takes time. I hope they will finish up in the next six days.
You might receive an email from our store indicating that your book has shipped. Depending on how the assembly line is going, it might take a couple days for your book to hit the mailstream after you get that email.
If you are an international customer, please be patient. It takes three weeks on average for a book to travel from the United States to anywhere else. And then it can be delayed in customs. Or toads.
To sum up, I’m asking for a little patience with this shipping process. Since we switched to SmartPost we have lost only one or two books (out of 60,000). So you will get your book, I promise.
The Good News
We will have some more copies of this book to sell soon. Thanks to some great work on the press and at the bindery, we had almost no waste. So we expect to have as many as 120 more copies to sell. However, we first need to fulfill everyone’s order and replace any copies that are damaged in shipment.
So later in May we will make an announcement as to how many books we have to sell and when they will go on sale.
And if the price for the letterpress version is too steep, know that we will have an inexpensive version printed on modern offset presses later this year.
— Christopher Schwarz
— Christopher Schwarz