Mark Firley of The Furniture Record sent me the above photo he took at Destrehan Plantation, which is 30 minutes west of New Orleans. It’s a nicely proportioned staked bench that is supporting a crackling press, which is used to press lard from cracklings or juice from fruit.
I quite like how the cross-grain battens are oriented at the ends of the top. All in all, it’s a nice piece, despite its primitive appearance.
Despite my natural hermit tendencies, we’ve decided to again open the Lost Art Press storefront on the second Saturday of each month. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In addition to carrying our complete line of books and tools from Crucible, we also sell blemished books for 50 percent off (cash only on those) and special T-shirts and posters that are available only at the storefront.
The storefront is located at 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky.
Jan. 14
Feb. 11
March 11 (in conjunction with a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event)
April 8
May 13
June 10
July 8
Aug. 12
Sept. 9
Oct. 14
Nov. 11
Dec. 9
Since we bought the building in 2015, Covington has blossomed with new restaurants and developments that we are pleased to be part of. You can now stay in the beautiful Hotel Covington (a seven-minute walk from our storefront), get a drink at Braxton Brewing or one of the dozen other new watering holes. And there are new restaurants too numerous to mention.
Oh, and you can walk across the Roebling Suspension Bridge and there’s this other place, Cincinnati, to visit.
Work on the storefront has been proceeding at a good clip. By January we should have the basement all concreted and climate-controlled for wood storage (my first ever place to store wood!). I’ve been working at the back of the ground floor all month, eliminating the last of the purple glitter from the Blaze bar.
And, most exciting, we’ve upgraded the urinal with new plumbing.
This morning I had a 15-minute video chat with Joshua Klein of Mortise & Tenon Magazine about the article I wrote for him on the low Roman workbench.
The discussion ranged from how I became interested in this form of bench to how this workbench might be ideal for woodworkers in apartments or who have disabilities.
You can watch the video in its entirety for free here. And be sure to order a copy of issue two of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, which will begin shipping in about a week. It’s only $24 but contains a huge amount of coverage of traditional work that you won’t find anywhere else. And the physical object itself is gorgeous and worth keeping.
Update on the Book ‘Roman Workbenches’
This book project has taken on a life of its own and has inflated like a pool toy as Suzanne Ellison, Görge Jonuschat and I have dug up new material that hasn’t been published outside academic circles. We have flushed a lot of money down the potty for this project. But it’s a tale worth telling.
So here’s what we’re going to do.
We are going to publish a short letterpress book – about 64 pages – about our research, bench building and conclusions up to this point. That book is already written and we’re going to illustrate it with old-school line drawings from artist Nicholas Mogley. We will do one press run of this book on the vintage letterpress machinery owned by Steamwhistle Press in Newport in February.
Everyone who wants a copy will get one, but once that press run is done, that version is kaput forever.
The letterpress book will be a bit of an odd duck. It’s a book about research, dead ends, bench building, wet wood and cow sex. And it’s written in a loose style that makes academics sneer.
Then, in March, photographer Narayan Nayar and I will fly to Naples (Italy, not Florida) to visit Pompeii, Herculaneum and climb Vesuvius. If there’s enough interest, we will publish a regular offset Lost Art Press book that greatly expands the research from the letterpress book with tons of photos, illustrations and the fire hose of research from Suzanne Ellison and Görge Jonuschat.
I think Roman workbenches have a lot to teach us. And it begins with these two words: Be seated.
I hope you will join us for this odd journey. Even if you don’t, I’ll get some great meals in Italy and climb a volcano.
He runs the largest woodworking school in the world, has seen work from the best living woodworkers and is an astonishing craftsman in his own right. And yet, last year I sat next to Marc and he was transfixed, spellbound and speechless because of the work of Jögge Sundqvist.
Jögge and his work are difficult to describe without slipping into the fantastical. He makes all manner of objects that we would classify as “green” woodworking – chairs, knives, bowls and other hand-carved objects. Yet their execution and their bright colors defy that simple categorization.
For me, the best word is that Jögge’s work is magical.
While I’ve known of Jögge for many years (he is woodworking royalty), I first met him at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. He was teaching his first class there. I was teaching my last.
During one evening at the school, he gave an extended presentation of his work, and I was hooked.
During the last 12 months, John and I have worked our butts off to secure the rights to his book “Sloyd in Wood” and get it translated into English. I am happy to announce that all the contracts have been signed, the people have been paid and the translation is underway. Our hope it to have the book published by the end of 2017.
“Sloyd in Wood” is an introduction to the way Jögge sees the work, the way he works and the details that permeate the things he creates. Yes, it’s a book on carving spoons, but it is more a book that looks at the tree and sees the spoons inside.
The book is 100-percent gorgeous with beautiful photos and illustrations. Of course, we will meet or exceed the production quality of the original with our translation.
If you’d like a peek at more of Jögge’s work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram.
Some of the pieces I worked on were well over 100 years old, still strong and easily repaired, while much newer, mass-produced pieces were already broken and not worth fixing.
This experience reacquainted me with the ethic of craftsmanship. In retrospect, this was something I think my parents and grandparents had tried to teach me. But I grew up in the postwar consumer culture of cheap manufactured goods and planned obsolescence. We were making disposable goods for a disposable planet. Craftsmanship seemed like an antidote to that kind of thinking, and I think that is why those old pieces of furniture resonated with me. It seems terrible naive to see it in print, but I thought that maybe the first step in making a nondisposable planet was to make things as if they would be passed down to future generations.
— Craig Nutt on his transformation from a period furniture maker and restorer to a maker of art furniture. In “The Penland Book of Woodworking” (Lark Books).