Lost Art Press

Category: Anthe Building

Coming in 2027: A New Woodworking School in Covington

Posted on by Lost Art Press
It needs some cleaning, paint and sprucing up. But the former picking floor of our warehouse should be a woodworking school by the end of the year.

Thanks to some tectonic shifts in our business at Lost Art Press, it looks like we will have a new woodworking school in Covington, Kentucky, that is literally in our back yard.

Last year we had to stop holding classes in our Willard Street workshop after our insurance carrier dumped us (it’s a long tale that does *not* involve anyone getting hurt. Basically, when you live above your business, things get weird).

In June, our Covington warehouse hit its maximum capacity while we had more than a dozen double-stacked pallets of books on the way. So we moved our warehouse operations a mile away to a building that was purpose-built for order fulfillment with a loading dock, a huge roll-up door and insane room for growth. We signed a seven-year lease.

Moving our warehouse then left us with three floors of open space in downtown Covington at 407 Madison Ave., which is where we run our retail storefront.

As luck would have it, two of our favorite woodworkers were interested in opening an independent school. So unless our Covington building gets hit with a meteorite, it looks like their school will occupy the warehouse space attached to our storefront.

The school will be an independent business, but it will be closely aligned with Lost Art Press. Megan and I will teach there, as will a whole host of great instructors.

And our storefront and as-yet-to-be-named school will share space and facilities. Visitors to the storefront will see the school in action. Students who need a book or a tool can saunter a few steps to get what they need.

Students loved the urban atmosphere in Covington, and this new school will preserve that. The new school is even closer to Covington’s hotel district and is surrounded by hundreds of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bookstores and places to buy freeze-dried ducklings.

Megan and I are planning new classes for 2027 at the school – classes we have never taught before. It’s all quite nice that this is working out for everyone: students, the owners of the new school and Lost Art Press. (And for Covington, too. The owners of Larry’s say they really miss all you guys, especially Scott.)

If all goes to plan, classes will begin in January 2027. We will let you know when the first class list will be released.

— Christopher Schwarz

New Fulfillment Center for Lost Art Press

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Our new fulfillment warehouse in neighboring Newport.

This week we will move our order-fulfillment operation and warehouse to a nearby structure with more than 8,000 square feet of space, plus a loading dock and dedicated space for tool assembly and production of glue and our soft wax finish.

So if you place an order this week, it might be delayed several days as we move everything into the new space. Apologies for this short interruption in service.

We are not abandoning our Anthe headquarters and storefront on Madison Avenue in Covington. In fact, moving our fulfillment operations will allow a lot of good things to happen at our circa-1890 factory building.

Most important, we will have space for a huge number of books at the new warehouse, which is only a couple miles from Anthe in neighboring Newport, Kentucky. This will allow us to deepen our stock of our existing titles and to stop playing the endless game of Tetris at Anthe whenever a new shipment of books arrives.

Why did we run out of space at Anthe so quickly? I don’t like to speak ill of people who cannot count, but an inventory audit at out last fulfillment center was sub-optimal in the “addition” department. We needed more space than we thought.

So much space for books, tools and growth.

The new warehouse, which I now dub “Beacon,”1 will fix all those problems. And there is lots of room for growth at Beacon because we will be able to stack books higher than one pallet.

So what will happen at Anthe? Lots.

The storefront will continue to operate on the first floor. And we hope to have it open six days each week by the end of the year.

We plan to rearrange the storefront and re-open the passageway between the storefront and the picking floor at the rear of the first floor. Why? Because that is where a new woodworking school will go. Details to follow on the school.

The second floor of Anthe will become our print production offices. As I have mentioned earlier, we plan to use Risograph machines to print some of our titles. We need room for these machines, the paper to feed them and (eventually) the machines to bind and finish books. Our current editorial offices there will remain. The only big change is that we will move tool production to Beacon. Right now, we are assembling hammers and finishing Crucible tools in the same space we are editing books and printing full-size plans and scanning images and signing books and rooting out typos. It’s cramped up there.

What about the third floor of Anthe and the basement? For me, that is the huge news. We have no plans for those spaces. We are going to sit on them and use them to grow LAP. We could put in a bunkroom for students. Or an apartment for visiting instructors. Or a machine room for ourselves.

Or a petting zoo.

I’m just happy to have some space to think and dream with. For the entire 19-year history of LAP, we have been pressed for space. For now, we have some room.

— Christopher Schwarz

1 The warehouse facility was built for Beacon Printing about 37 years ago. That is one of the reasons it perfectly serves our needs.

Jan. 29: LAP Open House with James Wright, Rex Krueger & Eoin Reardon

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Make plans to be in Covington on Jan. 29 for a fun evening with three of the best hand tool guys on the internet: James Wright, Rex Krueger & Eoin Reardon. All three of them will be at our headquarters and store on that day. And we’re all going to a local brewery afterwards to talk woodworking and hang out with readers and viewers.

Here are the details: The open house begins at 5 p.m. Jan. 29 at our storefront and fulfillment center: 407 Madison Ave., Covington, KY 41011. We’ll offer tours of the old building, which was a factory for making woodworking cutters from 1980 to 2019. The storefront will be open as well, in case you want to buy something.

Then, when we’re sick of that place, we’ll all head to Braxton Brewing Co., a short walk from our building. They have beer. You can order Dewey’s pizza from inside the brewery, or you can get food at any one of a dozen good places around the block.

If you plan to join us, could you please let us know via this link? If we get too many signups, we’ll need to let Braxton know.

It will be fun. Promise.

Why are these three guys in Covington? We are working on a group project that we’ll all be sharing via all of our free channels. Come to the open house and find out more.

— Christopher Schwarz

2025 Holiday Hours for Lost Art Press

Posted on by Lost Art Press

If you are planning to visit our storefront this season, here are our holiday hours.

We’ll be open for our regular hours (10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday) through Christmas Eve (Wednesday, December 24).

We will close all operations – the storefront, fulfillment and customer service – from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day (Jan. 1, 2026). We will resume regular operations on Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. The storefront will open that day at 10 a.m.

So if you order an item on our website between Christmas and New Year, it will be fulfilled on or after Jan. 2, 2026.

This year has been a wild one for all of us at Lost Art Press, and we decided to give everyone a week off (with full pay), to recover and enjoy some slow time before 2026.

Thanks for your understanding.

— Christopher Schwarz

Interview With ‘Wood by Wright’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Two weeks ago, James Wright and his daughter Melody visited Lost Art Press to do a video tour and interview. James – aka Wood by Wright – is one of the important people who are keeping hand tool woodworking alive on the internet. (Also important in my book: Rex Krueger.)

I love both these guys – though I hardly know them – because they are passionate about handwork. But they also don’t take sponsorships or money from tool companies. This means that when James goes on a multi-year investigation of glues, that the whole series isn’t going to end with #ad.

I’ve been watching their videos for years, and it’s fair to say that we don’t agree on everything. But that’s the beauty of the (I’ll say it) kinder hand tool community. I’ve always felt in good company at meetings of EAIA and M-WTCA, even when a few of them wanted to wring my neck for my love of Stanley Type 11 bench planes.

Anyway, James and I had a nice long chat about what we do at Lost Art Press and why. In the coming weeks he says he’ll edit and post his tour of our workshop, storefront and warehouse.

If you aren’t familiar with James or Rex, it’s time to remedy that. Subscribe to their YouTube channels and (at the very least) Instagram feeds.

Wood by Wright

Rex Krueger

— Christopher Schwarz