Lost Art Press

Category: Anthe Building

Progress on our New Storefront & Offices

Posted on by Lost Art Press
A sketch of the new storefront’s floor plan.

After more than a year of struggling to get our inventory under control, we did a little rearranging of things in our warehouse and figured out that we have enough open floor space to build our storefront, editorial offices and a new tool assembly area.

We were shocked that our plan worked.

For the last month, we have been building out the storefront and offices on the first and second floors. It’s going quickly because we had done a lot of prep work during the agonizing first phase of repair and restoration.

Our plan is to hold our Open Day on Nov. 23 at our current storefront at 837 Willard St. After that, we will move all our retail and editorial offices to the Anthe Building at 407 Madison Ave., about a half-mile away.

Here’s how that looks: We’ve finished building the walls in the storefront area at the Anthe Building, refinished the floor and have almost finished the interior painting.

When we move our retail operation there, we will have all our books displayed on the Monticello bookcase. We are building a tool chest that will be used to display our tools. Our apparel will be pinned to a big corkboard on the wall. And a Holtzapffel workbench will be in the center of the room for demos and trying out the tools.

The front of the storefront will be built out like a 19th-century store. We’re building a platform at window height that will fill the enormous window bay that faces Madison Avenue. On top of that platform we will have two large stair-step risers (4’ wide x 3’ tall) that will allow us to display our books, tools and apparel to passers-by. Between the two risers, we’ll have space to show off a project. The risers and platform are all mobile, so we can easily rearrange things for a holiday display (get your elf hat on, Megan).

We are still working out where to display the blemished books and tools. That will come after we get the other fixtures in.

Offices

On the second floor we are building our offices and tool-assembly area. The walls of the front third of the building have been scrubbed to remove the old dirt and grease. The fireproof drywall (at the county’s order) has been mudded, sanded and primed. We have a heat pump system installed on the second floor. We just need a little paint, a little electrical and some yellow-pine flooring installed over the original old flooring (which is too delicate for us to use, but we are preserving it).

What About Willard Street?

As most of you know, Lucy and I live above the shop at Willard Street, so this will reduce the hustle and bustle below for us. The first floor will remain exactly as it is now – except for the fact there will be no retail sales there. 

The bench room will remain the same and be used for classes. The mechanical library will be intact. And the kitchen and biergarten will remain the same for students and our employees to enjoy.

The machine room won’t change at all. All the machines are mine personally, anyway. So there’s no plan to move those.

Megan, Kale and I will work at both locations, depending on the day. I’m sure we’ll find a rhythm eventually.

And Then…

There is still tons of stuff to do at Anthe. We need to restore the exterior and make storm windows for the third-floor windows. And eventually we will have a break room on the third floor (or maybe the second floor) for employees. 

But this is real progress.

Update on the Blog & Substack

Posted on by Lost Art Press

The last year has been chaotic here at Lost Art Press as we doubled in size, bought a warehouse, fixed it up and launched new ways of teaching people the craft. This blog entry is a brief update on… everything. But especially the “teaching people the craft” part.

First let me say that printing good books will always be my No. 1 priority. Right now we have so many books backed up on our printing schedule that we are a bit frustrated. Printing schedules that are out of our control have stalled three books that should – by all rights – be out right now.

We have poured that frustration into other worthwhile projects. Most of that effort has been with our three “Substacks.” Substacks are just fancy blogs. They allow you to charge a subscription fee, and Lost Art Press gets the lion’s share of the money. What we like about Substack is that we can offer a good balance of free and paid content. We want everything to be free, of course, but we also have six stomachs that now rely on this business.

If you have missed our Substack stuff, here is a rundown.

The American Peasant

This is my unfiltered self. It’s PG-13. And yes, it’s all about woodworking, but it also delves into other issues – mostly deconstructing the BS that permeates our craft. I also post entire chapters of my forthcoming works. Plans, drawings, everything. Readers there have already read my next book “American Peasant” (and have helped to make it better). Right now we’re building a Hobbit Chair together. 

You can subscribe for free or pay $5/month. About half my Substack posts are free. And about half of each paid post is available to free subscribers to read. There’s a lot of stuff to read – more than 260 posts. And it’s some of my writing that I dislike the least.

Never Sponsored

Megan Fitzpatrick and I have collected a lifetime of knowledge about tools. We reviewed them for magazines. We see hundreds of student tools. And we – weirdly – still keep up with the industry out of habit. Our knowledge is mostly useless for publishing books. Spitting out model numbers and details of how certain motors work isn’t useful in a book. It becomes quickly outdated.

But what we know is great for a Substack. So Megan and I are opening our veins and offering our opinions on tools and other products without the threat of any flack from manufacturers. We don’t take free or discounted tools. We don’t do affiliate programs. The tools we own we paid full price for. And I’ve been at this since 1996.

Like “The American Peasant,” about half the posts are free. Paid subscriptions are $5/month. 

The Anarchist’s Apprentice

Our third Substack is the most unusual writing exercise I’ve ever been involved in. This year we hired Kale Vogt, an aspiring chairmaker, to work here. And I’m about to take Kale on as an official “apprentice.” This Substack is journal entries written by me and Kale (and sometimes Megan) about the process. 

It’s messy. Sometimes difficult. But also a chance for everyone to grow. 

The Substack covers a lot of ground, from how to teach the basics to the economics of running a furniture shop to …. Who knows?

“The Anarchist’s Apprentice” is the start of something that I suspect will be important. Or it will crash and burn. Either way, you can be ringside. Half the posts are free. The rest are $5/month.

So Why?

A few people have asked us why we don’t just post all this stuff here on the Lost Art Press blog?

Well, it would be too much – multiple posts a day. And the tone of the blog would flop all over the place. We would chase away readers with my foul mouth, and we would enrage manufacturers with our tool reviews (which I’m actually OK with).

This blog is about straight-ahead woodworking. I’ve moved my personal stuff to “The American Peasant” (much to the relief of some of our readers). The three Substacks are a way for you to pick and choose what you like. Subscribe to all three for free, and you will get a huge amount of information. Pay if you want more.

News About This Blog

This year has been a technical pit of quicksand for this blog. To remedy the problems, we have moved the blog to a self-hosted site (long overdue) and switched our email notification system to Mailchimp (also long overdue).

I promise we are not trying to make things worse for you, or add layers of advertisements and marketing. We just need to be able to send an email to you and know that it went out. That’s what this is about.

So email notifications about new blog entries will come from Mailchimp instead of WordPress.That’s really the only change.

OK, time to sign off on this administrivia update. And get back to the bench.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Final (I Hope) Sale to Free Up Floor Space

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Things are better – but still way too tight – in the warehouse.

We’re having one last sale to get our inventory under control. We have put seven books on sale from now until June 14 – some of them deeply discounted. You can see all the titles on sale here.

We don’t like to put things on sale, so why do this? Last year we bought a historic warehouse in downtown Covington and have fixed it up so we have full control over our fulfillment operations. This is why we can now offer books that have been signed by authors, and it allows us to throw a wooden bookmark or sticker into your order as well.

It’s also why we now ship books faster than ever.

The downside to owning a warehouse is it holds a finite number of books. We had far more books and tools than our inventory numbers suggested. So it’s been a challenge to get everything into the circa 1896 building.

Gabe and Mark move the last of our inventory out of a truck and into the warehouse.

Two weeks ago, however, we reached a milestone. Every single product we sell is now under one roof. I can finally see how much floor space some titles gobble up (it was surprising). This sale will make room for new books, plus books that we are sold out of. I estimate that if we can free up space for a dozen pallets or so, we should be in good shape for a long time.

The seven books now on sale are not stinkers. They are just taking up more than their fair share of space. If you aren’t familiar with Lost Art Press, know that every one of our books requires years of editorial work to produce. Our books return more than twice the royalties to our authors compared to the publishing industry as a whole. And all of our books are printed in the United States using high-quality materials. These are permanent books.

The books on sale.

“The Stick Chair Book” by Christopher Schwarz. Regular price: $47. Sale price: $29. This book represents my life’s work from 1996 to present. It felt weird to put it on sale, but the book takes up tons of space in our warehouse.

“Vol. III of The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Joinery.” Regular price: $42. Sale price $21. These Hayward books are huge in size. That’s one of the reasons they are great – there is a ton of information in them. But they also gobble up floor space.

“Vol. IV of The Woodworker, The Charles H. Hayward Years, The Shop & Furniture.” Regular price: $44. Sale price $22. It might seem weird this book is $1 more than Vol. III, but the manufacturing price of this book went loco a couple years ago.

“Mechanic’s Companion” by Peter Nicholson. Regular price: $27. Sale price: $17. This is one of our historical reprints. This book is one of the foundations of Western hand-tool woodworking. When I reordered it in 2021, I ordered way too many.

“Leave Fingerprints” by Brendan Gaffney. Regular price: $49. Sale price: $25. One of my favorite titles. Brendan did a fantastic job of demythologizing James Krenov and painting a true portrait of Krenov’s incredible life. Gaffney distilled more than 150 interviews into a biography of one of the 20th century’s most important woodworkers. 

“Make a Joint Stool From a Tree” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee. Regular price: $31. Sale price: $17. One of our earliest titles, and one of the most difficult to get to press. The book took 20 years for the authors to finish. And thanks only to the absolute doggedness of Follansbee, the book was completed. It’s a great book about green woodworking, joinery and carving from two of the modern architects of green woodworking’s renaissance.

“Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” by Roy Underhill. Regular price: $41. Sale price: $19. This is the world’s first-ever woodworking novel with measured drawings. Another labor of love that took years of work and tons of money to complete. The book is great fun to read. And the book’s manufacturing details, such as the diestamp, ridiculously expensive dust jacket and endsheets, create a book you don’t see much in modern times.

Thank you for enduring this awkward time with Lost Art Press. I hope this sale helps you complete your collection of the Charles Hayward books or garners you some good gifts for the woodworkers in your life. 

Barring that, shredded book paper can give you an R-value of 3.6 when insulating your home – or warehouse.

 — Christopher Schwarz

Anthe Update: Some Good News

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Our future retail space is now clear of piles of books.

Our fulfillment center at the Anthe (pronounced Ann-thee) Building is now fully operational. The material lift has been repaired, the new roof is on, the skylight has been replaced, the back wall masonry has been rebuilt, and we have dehumidifiers on every floor – plus extra heating capacity to deal with the occasional cold snap.

The price: in$ane. Thank goodness John and I both have other ways to make money. Because Lost Art Press has primarily been paying contractors for the last 11 months.

Next month, John and his fulfillment crew will move the last of our inventory from storage units in Cincinnati and Latonia into the Anthe Building. If all goes well with that, we’ll have an opening day party for y’all (I hope you like Milwaukee’s Best and oyster crackers). 

I know this doesn’t look exciting. But this is inventory that Mark and Gabe moved to the third floor with our material lift.

Now John and I can finally start looking ahead to what to do with the space. What is the next project? Restoring the exterior storefront? Getting a retail store up and running? Building a break room for fulfillment employees (probably this one).

This project has been the most stressful and difficult thing John and I have ever done together. If we could do it all over again, we’d probably do something different (a pole barn in unincorporated Kenton County would have been faster and cheaper). But for now, we’re just happy that the place is running and running well. John, Mark and Gabe have been getting orders out faster than our fulfillment house ever has. And we’re able to offer some signed editions and other niceties for customers that were once impossible.

So thanks to everyone who helped. Whether you bought a hammer, a class, a book or a bandana. Every penny helped.

— Christopher Schwarz

Anthe Update & Delay in Our Opening Party

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Well, at least the awning works and looks good.

When we started fundraising last year to help repair the Anthe Building (the location of our warehouse in downtown Covington), we thought that surely, we would be ready to show it to the public in early 2024.

Unfortunately, old buildings don’t care about our plans.

Right now the back wall is being rebuilt and mortared. The roof needs its new skylight. And the material lift, which moves books from floor to floor, is being repaired. As a result, all our books and tools are crowded into the first floor, plus the planned storefront and the second floor. Until we can get the material lift functioning, there is little room for employees to move.

So as soon as we get the place functioning and safe for the public, we will notify everyone who donated about the Opening Day. Right now, we are shooting – with confidence – for June.

Even though I know the building is laughing at us right now (and leaking gas, which plumbers are fixing this minute).

Thanks for your patience!

— Christopher Schwarz