During our open day on Saturday, carver David Bignell delivered this carving of a skep, our dividers and some bees. This will perch upon our company’s sign in the window of our Covington storefront (the sign was also carved by David).
We have several of these emblems that we can swap out depending on our mood.
One reader pointed out that the skep or beehive is a symbol of capitalism and accumulated wealth. And that maybe it’s a poor choice of symbol for our company. I have two thoughts on that.
Early mechanical societies used the skep and bees as a symbol of their membership. Busy bees. Worker bees.
If it is a symbol of accumulated wealth, then the symbol is broken – it’s not working for us. Please open a ticket with the Capitalism Help Desk.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Thanks to David for the gorgeous dingbat. We love it. If you have carving needs for your business, please consider contacting him. He has done some fantastic trade signs.
During the last two decades I’ve entered the orbit of many chairmakers who make Jennie Chairs (from “Make a Chair From a Tree”) and Windsor/Forest chairs. Years ago, I was in a gaggle of them, and they started talking about how little their chairs weighed.
I learned that Jennie Chairs that have been stripped down to their essence can weigh about 5 lbs. A few people have broken that barrier and gotten them below 5 lbs., but it’s apparently tricky to do it without splitting the posts during assembly.
Some Windsor/Forest chairmakers have similar obsessions with making chairs that weigh as little as possible. Because of the massive and solid seat, however, the makers I have talked with usually aspire for about 8 lbs. of material.
How much do my stick chairs weigh? I had no idea until people started asking me. Sure, I’ve shipped a bunch of them, so I know how much the crate, chair and packing material weighs (about 60 lbs.). But the chair itself? It weighs about yea much. As much as a chair made of oak, walnut or cherry should. A child, adult or aged person can move it around without too much trouble. You can pick it up. You can stand on it. It’s not made out of collapsed star material.
I didn’t know there was a contest to make the waif-iest chair possible. (Of course, I’m oblivious to sports. So it might be a personal defect – I’m missing the “competition” gene.)
Recently some Jennie Chair makers were again chatting with me about how incredibly lightweight their chairs were. One of them asked me how much my chairs weighed.
“Weight?” I replied. “Bah. What’s more important is the pH of your chair. If you don’t understand the ‘potential of hydrogen’ of your chairs, then I don’t even know what to say.”
This is why I don’t get many invitations to parties.
My chairs weigh about 15 lbs. Unless you have had surgery recently, you should be able to pick them up OK.
Registration opens tomorrow at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking (MASW) where I am teaching a weekend class in 2023 in making a staked stool.
This is a rare instance of me leaving the nest to teach. But I’m doing it for three reasons.
Marc readily agreed that all proceeds from the class, including students’ tuition and my instructor fee, will go to the Roger Cliffe Memorial Foundation, which funds scholarships for woodworking education.
Marc (and Kelly Mehler) were the first two schools that took a chance on me as an instructor. I was a terrible teacher at first. In fact, if you were in my first class at MASW I owe you a personal apology and probably a T-shirt. Yet Marc kept me on there for 10 more years.
This is Marc’s 30th year in business, and he asked many of his past instructors to come back to teach a class. How could I say no?
The class is Oct. 14-15, 2023. All the details are on the MASW website. Hope you will consider joining us.
This is New Street today. Boyd’s house would have been on the right.
Editor’s note: “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” by Whitney LB Miller is the true story of an incredible 19th-century furniture maker who fought for his freedom, invented a renowned (and patented) bed and helped many enslaved people escape to freedom. For the last 25 years I have walked the same streets as Boyd and thought a lot about his neighborhood and his life.
Almost every morning I take a long walk – usually four or five miles – into a different district of Covington, Newport or Cincinnati. I especially love to go down the brick alleys that have been unchanged for 200 years (and are in better shape than the asphalt main roads).
But the most interesting days are when I visit Henry Boyd’s neighborhood, which is almost unrecognizable from when he lived there in the early 19th century. Though I am always looking for clues from his time.
Boyd lived on the east side of downtown Cincinnati. And starting about 1834 his address was on New Street. New Street definitely lives up to its name, even today. Everything on it is new. There are no houses or period buildings. It’s all just parking garages that service the big downtown firms, such as Procter & Gamble. The company’s world headquarters is just a couple blocks south.
St. Francis at the end of New Street. This would have been a frame building.
When I walk down New Street, I look for any landmark that Henry Boyd would recognize. There are a couple. First is St. Francis Xavier Church. Established in 1826, this church stands on Sycamore Street and looks down New Street. When Boyd left his house for work, this was likely the largest structure in his neighborhood.
The building would have looked different then. The current St. Francis is a huge masonry structure. The original one was a frame structure that was moved to this location on wheels.
The Deco structure in the center of the image is likely where Boyd’s factory was.
When Boyd went to work, he likely walked north up either Sycamore or Broadway streets to his factory at 8th and Broadway. This intersection is one of my favorites in town. After reading all Suzanne Ellison’s research on Boyd’s business it’s unclear exactly where his factory and other buildings were located, as it seems they were on both sides of Broadway. On one side of Broadway is my favorite building in the city, the Cincinnati Times Star Building. It’s an Art Deco masterpiece now used as a government building.
Some older buildings (on the right) on Broadway Street.
Across the street are a couple factory buildings that have been converted into trendy office buildings. One is from the early 20th century. The other is earlier, perhaps much earlier. Unlike New Street, this area has some very old buildings that Boyd might recognize if he were alive today. A stretch of buildings on Broadway look almost untouched from the early 19th century (you can tell by the lintels).
As I walk up and down these streets I always wonder if there was any business here he would have visited. And that always takes my mind to Arnold’s Bar & Grill. It’s at 210 8th Street East. It has been in operation since 1861. The buildings that make up Arnold’s date back to the 1830s and were a feed store and barbershop (and whorehouse).
Boyd most certainly would have walked by Arnold’s. It was only a block or so from his factory. But would he have been allowed in at the time? Unlikely. (Today Arnold’s is an inclusive gathering spot for people of all stripes and colors. We’ve had many beers there.)
The front of Arnold’s, which hasn’t changed much.
Most of Boyd’s neighborhood has been demolished to make way for an interstate, a casino and far too many surface parking lots that are virtually unused.
But I do take heart at times as I walk back to Covington and tread over Cincinnati’s public landing on the Ohio River. This area on the riverfront looks barren at times, but it has been the heart of the city’s riverfront since at least 1825. Boyd was here looking for work when he arrived as a free man in the city. And almost every day something still happens at the public landing. A steamboat arrives and disgorges passengers. A historic ship berths there for tours. The police launch a search for someone’s body. It’s an almost unchanged piece of flat land from the 19th century, sloping gently down into the Ohio River.
This is where Boyd began his life as a free man. And this is where I can close my eyes and really look for him.
