Lost Art Press

Category: By Hand & Eye

Update: Leather Books, Roubo, Audiobook & etc.

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Next week we will be able to sell the leather editions of “Mouldings in Practice” in our Lost Art Press store. There will be 26 to 30 copies available (depending on how many survive the binding process) and they will be $185 postage paid to any address in the United States.

The books were delayed by the leather supplier – Ohio Book said it took three weeks to secure the brown leather we use for these books. I suspect a bovine rebellion was the real cause.

So for those of you who have itchy mouse fingers, you can relax this weekend. Monday will be the earliest they will be available. As always, it is first-come, first-serve on leather editions.

So while I’m explaining myself, here is a quick update on some other projects we are working on:

“To Make as Perfectly as Possible” aka, the Andre Roubo translation. This book is entirely in my hands right now. The translators have done their job. We have paid an obscene amount of money to get every single plate digitized. The essays are complete. I’m the problem.

“By Hand & Eye” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. This has been edited and flowed into the InDesign layout files. All the images are digitized. I’ve edited it once. But once again, I am the impediment here. I need to get the design work underway.

Audiobook of “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” as read by Roy Underhill. This is fully recorded and about 25 percent edited. What’s the holdup? It might surprise you that it is me.

Other books that are a little further out:

“Virtuoso” or the H.O. Studley book: Our team is going back to visit the tool chest again next month to take the final photographs. Then the real work begins.

“Furniture of Necessity:” This is my own book. I’ve shelved all my writing projects until I get caught up on editing the titles above.

“Campaign Furniture:” Ditto.

All our other titles are still being written by their authors – except one. That one is being designed right now in hopes of getting it out by the end of the year. More on that title as we get things firmed up.

— Christopher Schwarz

Books in the Works, an Update

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If I were a smart man, I wouldn’t discuss my failings as an editor, writer and publisher. But I do like to keep people informed on how our upcoming books are going. So here goes:

“Mouldings in Practice” by Matt Bickford. This book is almost completely designed and ready for the printer. What has slowed me down is the number of illustrations. There are hundreds and hundreds. And each one had to be converted from SketchUp to Illustrator, and that is a very manual process. The book will be released this summer. The people who have read this book have had their minds blown. It’s good.

“To Make as Perfectly as Possible” by Andre Roubo with a translation and essays by Don Williams and Michele Pagan. Work is going full-bore on the first volume of this book. The book designer, Wesley Tanner, is building the templates. The translation is complete and the supporting essays are being polished. We are going to publish this volume in two editions: a fancy 11” x 17” deluxe edition (only 500 copies) and a trade edition that will be more like a typical Lost Art Press book. More news to come. The first volume should be out by the end of the year — or early 2013 at the latest. Expect great things.

“By Hand and Eye” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. I’m reading the first draft of the book now — the final draft will be in my hands in three weeks. It is fantastic. It will be out by the end of 2012 as well.

“The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” audio book, ePub and Kindle editions. I’ll be recording the audio book this week with our voice talent (news to come on that) — the electronic editions of the book will be in the store in a couple weeks. And the second printing of the book is now in stock.

Oh, and my books. I’m working actively on my own books on “The Furniture of Necessity” and “Campaign Furniture” on this Southern tour. I’ve got a few research stops planned for these books. However, don’t expect anything from me this year — I’m trying to get these other projects to press first.

There are a lot more things in the works: Peter Follansbee is working on a book on chests, we have a book on chairmaking in the works and (perhaps) our first deck of playing cards. Finally, there’s our super-secret project I cannot talk about (aw, crap, I just did). It has been in the works for two years now and will be huge. Literally.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Glimpse of ‘By Hand & Eye’

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“I appreciate what George is trying to do with his column. His heart’s in the right place. But it’s like pushing water uphill with woodworkers.”

— Anonymous

George Walker’s “Design Matters” column in Popular Woodworking Magazine is one of the publication’s most polarizing. It’s not “love it or hate it” (read “Arts & Mysteries” for that). Instead, it’s more like you “get it or don’t get it.”

For many woodworkers learning to design furniture is as important a skill as learning to accurately sex a fruit fly. They see no need, especially with all the plans out there, beckoning to be built, luring you in with their come-hither cutting lists and scale drawings.

Other woodworkers want to learn the “assembly language” of good design – the architecture of a balanced composition. Like the pivotal scene in “The Matrix,” they want to see the ones and zeros – the straight lines and curves – that are used to create the grand illusion of furniture.

As I’m writing this blog entry, George and Jim Tolpin are finishing up work on a new book for Lost Art Press tentatively titled “By Hand & Eye,” which seeks to decode the pre-Industrial concepts of design and translate them into something we can use and will use in the shop.

Today I got a small glimpse of the work that Jim and George are doing when George made a short presentation on drawing curves at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at Popular Woodworking Magazine.

He showed us a simple thing. He drew a circle. Then he adjusted his compasses and drew one-quarter of a circle inside that circle along the diameter. He readjusted and drew one-sixth of a circle along the same chord.

Though the final result looked a bit like a laughing PacMan, the individual curves were powerful stuff. If you had even a passing familiarity with furniture you would recognize them. Then George held up drawings of pediments and photographs of well-designed furniture and began pointing out these curves in the work. He showed how cabriole legs could be broken down into just a series of curves and straight lines.

It was, all in all, an extremely cool lesson.

I can’t wait to read the book when the draft is delivered to my desk in June (right George and Jim?).

— Christopher Schwarz