We now have Lost Art Press logo T-shirts for sale in our store in five colors and sizes ranging from XS to 3XL. These 100-percent cotton short-sleeve shirts are made and printed in the United States and ship worldwide.
The price includes domestic shipping; worldwide shipping has a small upcharge depending on where you live.
Please note that we don’t make much money from these shirts – about three dollars if I remember correctly. They are printed on demand and fulfilled by a third party. Also, please take a look at the sizing chart before you order. These shirts are made by American Apparel, and they run a bit slim.
Note: Disco Ty will not be attending the open day. Your spouse is safe.
As per our regular schedule, the Lost Art Press storefront will be open on Saturday, Nov. 12, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We will have our complete line of books, plus T-shirts (lots of them), free posters, free stickers and blemished books for 50 percent off.
Our storefront is at 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky. If you are coming in from out of town, I recommend you check out the newly opened Hotel Covington. It’s a 5-minute walk from our storefront and has a fantastic hotel restaurant, Coppin’s. (Try the corn fritters.)
Also, recently I got to eat at Inspirado, a restaurant across the street from Hotel Covington. I love the food – a global melange that totally works. Also new to our neighborhood (all located on Main Strasse around the corner from us):
Hail Dark Aesthetics: This is a vinyl record and skull store. OK, it’s more than that, but it’s filled with records and skulls. And bisected cats. My daughters love this place and it features the best one-eyed goat T-shirt I’ve ever seen.
Commonwealth Bistro: A restaurant that has been a couple years in the works. I’m dying to get in there and try the fried rabbit. Word on the street is the restaurant is very good.
Crafts and Vines: A new wine bar, tap room and charcuterie place. Very friendly place.
What will I be doing at the storefront next Saturday? Good question. I’m finishing up two chairs for a client and then I have a long list of things to build: a Danish modern drop-leaf table, a Campaign-style bookcase, a ladder (yes, a ladder, it’s my new obsession), and a dustpan to replace the crappy metal one from the home center.
I was 13 when I applied for the journalism program at my middle school. I was accepted (thank Jebus), and I remained a full-time student of the craft until I was 24 and released on the world to collect a generous four- and (eventually) five-figure salary in this trade.
I’m often asked by kids and grownups how to become a writer. What books should they read? What classes should they take? After a lifetime of study, here’s my answer:
Writing classes suck. During my 11 years of full-time training I never got much of value from a writing class. (Sorry Roger Boye and Dave Nelson.)
So how do you become a better writer? Easy. Take classes in editing. The three most important classes I took during my training were:
Copy editing. During this class I learned the rules of the road. These rules became tattooed on my brain through ritual abuse (that’s copy editing!). Once I knew the rules, I learned the consequences of bending or breaking them. The beautiful thing about becoming a copy editor is that you can churn out copy that a copy editor will love.
Magazine editing. During this class I learned to flush away my “self.” A good editor can become a stupid person who is reading a piece of writing for the first time. This “cloak of stupidity” allows you to see the giant holes in a story, the poor organization and the odd word choices. While I can use this skill on other people’s work, I also use it on my own writing. Though it’s difficult to edit your own work, once you don the “cloak of stupidity,” you can turn out writing that is easily understood by anyone.
Law and ethics. If you don’t have a moral groundwork for your writing, you will write things you don’t believe in (I’m talking here about the profession of public relations). A class such as this will teach you the limits of writing (what’s legal and not). It will give you the confidence to exercise your First Amendment rights (truth is a defense). And it will show you how the “appearance of impropriety” should color every decision you make as a writer.
So what the heck does this have to do with woodworking? Lots. If you want to become good at building casework, I think you should take a class in chairmaking.
I’ve taken a lot of classes on both casework and chairmaking. The casework classes have been forgettable. The chairmaking classes have made me a better woodworker. Why? It’s complicated. Chairmaking shows you several things you won’t get from a “build a box” class.
Assemblies are living systems. When you make a chair you try to use the least amount of wood to create the greatest strength. So you have to understand wood, how it moves and how it reacts to the tools. After taking chairmaking classes, I knew how to put assemblies in tension so they would resist certain forces. I knew how to better design for moisture exchange. I saw the benefit of green wood, dry wood and everything between.
Angles are meaningless. After you take a class in chairmaking you see that every angle is as valid as 90°. While machines like 90°, you don’t have to stick with that angle (or its cousin, 45°) to make good furniture.
Form is everything. While chairs can have intricate details, they are mostly a silhouette. And once you can see that silhouette, your casework will ricochet into new directions.
I don’t teach chairmaking classes (or any other classes these days), so I’m not trying to sell you anything. I can say that most woodworkers who do casework have deep trepidation about chairs. That should tell you something.
Forget the box for a minute. Try compound-angle joinery for a week and you’ll laugh at boxes afterward.
My Covington neighbors don’t know what to make of me. Every day, someone from the neighborhood stops by my storefront shop and asks: “What is this place?”
My best and shortest answer: I build furniture and write books about it.
That is, of course, no help to them. During the last 12 months of working in downtown Covington, I’ve been amazed at how many people – working-class for the most part – would love to have the services of a neighborhood furniture maker.
They have furniture that needs fixing. They need shelves cut to size. They need a new top for a metal table. They need a simple kitchen table to fit a small space. They need moulding that matches the stuff in their house. They need corbels for their box gutters. They need a new gate to replace a rotted one.
All the above job offers came in the last 14 days. I honestly could stay busy just servicing the neighborhood residents and its businesses.
And I’ve also become a depository for all things woodworking.
Need clamps? A Work-mate? Old doors? Piles of lumber from a basement? The neighbors are happy to give me these things when they find them.
So I feel weird when they ask me how much my furniture costs. They come in, sit in one of my chairs and ask how much for a chair and a table. The chair is $700. The table is $2,000. Both are fair prices (a bit on the low side – neighborhood discount). They look at me like I’m crazy.
I try to explain why the furniture costs that (It will last forever), but in their minds it should cost the same as what the see at Furniture Fair or one of the other big retailers of rickety pre-refuse.
And then I say: “You know the other option is to make it yourself. I got started making furniture because I couldn’t afford to buy what I wanted.”
One of the reasons John and I started Lost Art Press was because we were crazily enamored with the work of people such as Christian Becksvoort, Peter Follansbee, John Brown and a whole host of other people who built things by the sweat of their brows.
One night about 11 years ago over a few beers, John and I both proclaimed that we wished we could send these people large sums of money to thank them simply for doing what they do – no strings attached. Something like Medici-style patronage.
One problem: John and I were neither rich nor royal.
So we started Lost Art Press as a way for us to support people we genuinely adore. We offer generous terms to our authors (more generous than any other publisher I know of). And we keep their books in print for as long as the authors allow (which we hope is forever).
So this is why we don’t publish books from just any woodworker. Every living author in our stable is someone we know personally. I have seen their work. I have eaten with them and have a sense of who they are. And I’ve developed a strong respect for the way they treat others and the way they approach their work.
I won’t work with someone I don’t want to sit down and eat a meal with.
It’s a hilariously stupid way to run a corporation. We should instead be chasing authors who will make us the most money.
Today Matt Bickford (author of “Mouldings in Practice”) stopped by the Lost Art Press storefront with his entire family (shown above), and their boys roamed free around my shop playing with my vises, lathe and whatever else wasn’t tied down, barbed or electrified.
To see this thriving family that lives off of Matt’s salary as a planemaker was a gas. It’s rare to see a family unencumbered by corporate jobs, mindset and schedules. After a raucous visit, they headed off to see the Cincinnati Art Museum and maybe the Fire Museum. A park? The aquarium? It all makes me tired just to think of it.
