Category: To Make as Perfectly as Possible, Roubo Translation

Canadians can now order our “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” T-shirts through our Zazzle.ca store.

The T-shirts use exactly the same design as the shirts we sell in the Lost Art Press store. The images are printed on 100-percent cotton American Apparel T-shirts. The shirts are $35.25 (Canadian) each with reasonable shipping (about $6 on average).

You can order the shirts directly through Zazzle.ca using this link.

We will be opening other Zazzle portals in Europe and Australia in the coming months.

As these T-shirts are being made by a third party, we do not have complete control over the quality (this makes us a little nuts). If you have a complaint about a shirt – and we hope you don’t – let both us and Zazzle know.

— Christopher Schwarz

To celebrate the release of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry,” we have created this short-sleeve T-shirt screen printed on a gray American Apparel garment.

The shirt features a detail from one of the plates from the marquetry book of two Frenchmen busy at some marquetry or inlay. The rear of the shirt features the slogan: “Getting Inlaid Since 1769.” (That was the year Roubo’s first volume was released.)

The shirts are available in sizes medium, large, XL and XXL. The shirts are 100-percent cotton and made by American Apparel in Los Angeles. The screen printing was done in Indiana (wait until you see the detail we squeezed out of this one).

The shirts are $20 plus domestic shipping. Once these shirts are gone, we will not reprint this design.

To order the shirt click here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Woodworker Jonas Jensen finished making his horse-based dye from “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” and has posted the results on his blog here.

The dye, according to A.-J. Roubo, is made by straining horse urine through horse dung. The results (and the smell) were surprising. Check it out.

— Christopher Schwarz

We hope to have some copies of the deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” to sell to customers once we ship out all of the copies that have already been sold and paid for.

We are not certain how many copies we’ll have left to sell, perhaps something between 60 and 100. We are going to sell these in the Lost Art Press store. Here’s how it will go down:

1. Once all of our existing customers for the book have received their copies and any damaged or missing ones have been replaced, we will count up what’s left.

2. We will announce here on the blog how many we have to sell and a date when they will go on sale in our store. There will be different instructions for domestic and international customers.

3. We will put them on sale in our store on that date. No phone orders. No mail orders. Note that we will hold a few copies back to ensure we can replace any damaged or lost copies.

4. Once those copies are gone, the deluxe edition will be finished. Forever.

5. There is no waiting list for this book. It is strictly first-come, first-served. No exceptions.

My apologies for the strict rules here. I hate rules. But we want to be as fair as possible to all of our customers. So this is how we are going to proceed. (This means that asking us to change our operating procedure is wasted breath/keystrokes on your part.)

— Christopher Schwarz

Readers of this page have often seen the logo for Lost Art Press, a pair of dividers. This was developed from an image in one of the plates Joseph Moxon published in the joinery volume in his “Mechanick Exercises.” Chris isn’t the first publisher to use such a mark, he was proceeded in the mid 16th-century by his namesake Christoffel Plantin. Plantin founded one of the most successful printing/publishing companies ever; the company in fact outlived him by almost 300 years. After 1557 Plantin always used a pair of dividers for his mark, and included with it his personal motto “Labore et Constantia” (Labor and Constancy).

One of the design features used in the deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” is the adoption of Plantin’s mark for the title page. Redrawn from a 1578 version, the motto was changed to “hoc opus hic labor est.” For this we reached even farther back in time to Virgil’s famous poem the Aeneid.

Facilis descensus Averni:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras.
hoc opus, hic labor est.

The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.

Lines 126-129, translated by John Dryden

True enough, as we found out. . . . Tomorrow, the typefaces used in the deluxe edition.

— Wesley Tanner, designer of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible”