Category: Apparel

In 1905, Bittner, Hunsicker & Co., a Pennsylvania clothing company, had a truly excellent logo as their letterhead. It’s a skep – an early beehive – with the slogan: “Never Despair: Nothing Without Labour.” (FYI, bees and skeps were early symbols used by tradespeople. It’s not a Masonic, Mormon or cult thing. It’s bees, people. Bees are busy and productive – end of story.)

Now we have put the image on a bandana and printed the slogan on some excellent shop pencils. We are offering them together for one price: one bandana and five shop pencils for $33. Sorry, they are not available separately.

About the Bandanas
The original art was a bit dense for a clean, crisp screen print. So our pal and talented illustrator Page Biersdorff tidied up the image with screen printing in mind, and our bandanna beaus at One Feather Press worked their magic

The Lost Art Press bandana is designed by us and made by the fantastic One Feather Press in East Nashville, Tenn. Each bandana is cut, sewn, printed and washed by hand, one at a time. It’s a true water-based discharge print, so the design is visible on both sides of the fabric. The edges are hemmed, and one edge is the fabric’s selvage – the clean edge of the fabric that can’t unravel. They’re softer than our old bandannas, and an even better print quality.

Limited quantities. Once they are gone, they are gone forever.

Some statistics:

22″ x 22″
100 percent cotton
Cut, sewn and printed in Tennessee
Limited edition of 240

About the Pencils
For years we have searched for shop pencils that were durable, had lead that wasn’t gummy, were easy to hold and didn’t have the silly eraser (which is worthless in the shop, in our opinion). And we wanted them to be inexpensive.

We aren’t pencil hobbyists who debate the fine points of the Blackwing 602 vs. the Caran d’Ache Hb1 (where each pencil costs $2 or more).

We finally found these pencils via one of our local contractors, who picked his up from an old hardware store. I traveled to the store and sweet-talked their buyer into giving up the supplier. 

These are tough pencils at a full 3/8″ in diameter and won’t snap without a fight. The lead is stronger than a typical pencil, takes a fine point and makes a dark mark.

If you are looking for a pencil to take to the Fancy Lad Academy, look elsewhere. If you want a day-to-day tool, these are great.

— Christopher Schwarz

After dealing with the hassle and unreliability of print-on-demand tees for a few years, we’ve shifted gears big time. We figured it’d only be right to sell tees that reflect our values just as much as our chore coats, vests, hats and bandanas. That meant good materials and responsible domestic manufacturing.

Our new short-sleeve tees are a thick, tough 6.1-ounce jersey, tube-knit in the USA from domestically grown cotton. That’s about 50 percent heavier than your typical cheapo tee, and the tubular knit means no side seams to chafe and/or fall apart.

The tees are proudly Union-sewn in California. Our friend Mike does the printing at his farm in Oregon, and the quality of his work is exceptional – it’s a true discharge print, which means it’s flat to the fabric, rather than the plastic-y junk that sits proud (and eventually flakes off). These cost us a lot more than a conventional cheep tee, but we couldn’t be more proud of their quality and origin. We even added our own label to the neck.

Just one color and logo, for now. It’s a dark, dark navy with a very subtle charcoal logo. It seems to be damn near impossible to photograph, like all things in the black-on-black vein, but it sure looks perfect in person.

The fit is just ever-so-slightly slimmer than, say, a Hanes Beefy-T. Order your usual size, or a size up if you’re on the fence. Don’t worry, it’s not a slim hipster fit like American Apparel. Like most tees, these shrink a fair bit on the first wash. There’s a size chart on the product page that shows their measurements after a warm wash/warm dry – have a look if you’re still not sure.

— Tom Bonamici

Editor’s note: I have been wearing the living snot out of this T-shirt since we received our first samples. This shirt gets better and better with every wash. And it breathes nicely, even when I’m working hard at the bench. Kudos to Tom for finding the right shirt and the right people to make it. — Chris