My good friend Rudy Everts has just released a short run of handmade prints of a Welsh lowback stick chair by a roaring fire. Rudy is selling them for €50 and ships worldwide.
In addition to being a talented chairmaker, Rudy is also a musician, sculptor and wood engraver. For the last few years, Rudy has focused on his woodblock prints, which remind me of the work of Wharton Esherick.
Rudy showed me this print as he was working on it, and I have been waiting for months him to get this particular print complete so that I could buy one (I ordered mine yesterday). The print itself measures 2” x 3-1/4” and is on a sheet of Simili Japon paper that measures 6.3” x 9.4”. It’s going to look great in my office here at Lost Art Press.
If you like supporting artists who make affordable, handmade things, here’s an excellent one. In addition to this print, Rudy also has other nice woodblock prints for sale in his store.
This is an experiment. A fair number of readers have asked us to restock the full-size chair wooden templates for the Staked Armchair from “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” We carried these templates for a couple years and discontinued them after sales cratered.
The templates are $49 and come with six full-size laser-cut templates for making the four-stick Staked Armchair. Unlike our earlier templates, these are made from 1/8” Baltic birch so they will be more durable.
These templates are great for any beginning chairmaker. And many of the parts are compatible with the armchairs from “The Stick Chair Book.” The seat and arm shape is the same, as are the leg locations and stick locations. So the templates are a good place to start exploring chairmaking.
(FYI, we also carry full-size paper patterns for the five chairs in “The Stick Chair Book.” These need to be adhered to your own wood and cut out.)
The templates are laser cut in Ohio. If you want a set, don’t tarry. We might not stock these permanently.
Every day (and most nights) I am working on the first issue of The Stick Chair Journal, an annual publication that will expand the universe of sticks chairs. More history. More plans. More techniques. Reviews of tools. And Big Thoughts.
The writing, photography and design for the first issue is coming together nicely, and Issue No. 1 will be released in the fall.
Every week, I’ve been pitching my ideas to Megan over lunch. Two weeks ago, I laid out the design aspects of the Journal, plus some of the mechanical aspects (paper stock, cover stock, binding, trim size and the like). As a writer and an editor, I got quite excited about the way it would look.
Then I did what every good publisher should do. I got out my calculator and pencil and did a proper P&L (profit and loss statement) for the title.
Woodworking is a niche. The craft of chairmaking is a room inside that niche. And stick chairs are a cockroach hole in the baseboard of that room inside the niche. So now our plans are to print 3,000 copies of the first issue. If it sells out, we’ll sell pdfs of the first issue and consider increasing the press run for the second issue.
So I’ve had to make some changes. Instead of hiring an artist to draw the masthead for The Stick Chair Journal, I decided to construct it myself using fonts we already own. Same with the cover border – I can get about 95 percent of where I want to be by modifying some clip art we own. Instead of hiring a woodcut artist to make a cut of the chair featured in the issue, I’ll simulate that effect in Illustrator.
Oh, and my plans to commission a series of woodblock initial caps for our stories? I nixed that, too. So, tonight I am making our own custom woodblock initial caps – using wooden children’s blocks that I am modifying with gouges and engraving tools.
While all this might sound like I am retreating or giving up on my “dreams,” I feel the opposite. By doing this work myself, the first issue will become profitable if we sell only 1,000 copies. And that small fact ensures there will be issues Nos. 2 and 3.
When I was in journalism school we were encouraged (nay, forced) to enter our work in journalism contests. We were told that we’d never get a job without a long list of awards on our resumes.
Freaked to the bone, I did as I was told.
When I got my first newspaper job, I became skeptical of contests. Here’s why. When the newspaper’s publisher (the big, big boss) met me, he said: “I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I read your resume. Under ‘professional memberships’ you listed the Radio Shack Battery Club, and we couldn’t stop laughing. We had to interview you! Good job.”
Then, a few months later, I was asked to be a judge in a journalism contest. The editor dumped a dozen stories on my desk and said: “Read these before lunch and decide who wins first, second and third.” Yup, let a junior reporter with six months of professional experience decide who wins the award for best feature writing in Nebraska.
After that day, I never entered another professional contest again.
Maybe it’s my profound dislike of hierarchy, but I have never understood contests in the same way I don’t understand watching sports, running a marathon or rank-ordering anything. Ask me about my favorite band, movie or restaurant, and I’ll just stammer. I know I’m odd, but I cannot fathom making something first or last.
This is not because I’m some hippie slug. I am the most competitive person I know. I just don’t see the point in spending energy to compete in someone’s artificial framework. I’d rather make something – a book, a cabinet, a chair – and sell it. Teach someone to do something. Read a book. Fill the bird feeder.
So it should come as no surprise that I’ve never entered a furniture-making or design contest. I’ve judged a few, and that process reinforced my unease. Even when there is a panel of judges (which is ideal), there’s always one person who barks louder than everyone else and runs the show.
And I was flummoxed as to how to judge a piece of furniture for a “Best of Show” award. I’ve seen hundreds of flawless Windsor chairs and Issac Youngs clocks in my time. Shouldn’t all these win? They are perfect. And what do you do with well-designed and original pieces that have cosmetic flaws?
Sure, you can write rules and directions for judges that guide them on making decisions. But in the end, it’s too artificial and arbitrary for my taste.
So all this is to say that we are winning an award next week. We didn’t enter a contest; we were simply notified. Sure, I could refuse the award, but to me that takes as much ego as entering a contest. So I’m just going to smile, wave and be thankful that someone likes us.
Good news. The beautiful waxed cotton canvas holders for “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” are back in stock at Texas Heritage Woodworks. And they now come in two colors (blue and grey). Act quickly because they usually sell out fast.
