Frat boys rejoice! There is now a low-cost way to brand your young pledges this fall!
Wait, wrong blog.
Uhh. Well this will work here, too. Thanks to a tip from a reader, I have found the most clever way to brand your work. It’s a custom-made branding iron that clips onto a Bic Classic lighter. Flick your Bic for 2 minutes and then simply press the iron against your work. A small puff of smoke later, your work (or the backside of a naughty pledge) is branded for life. Here’s some video I shot this evening.
The inexpensive branding iron – prices start at $22 – is custom made with your logo. To make your own, you simply upload a logo to the Shapeways web site and pay for it. In a couple weeks, they send you an envelope with the doohicky inside. Clip it to your Bic (not included) and you are in the branding business.
I was impressed by the detail from such an inexpensive gadget. I have no idea how many uses I’ll be able to squeeze out if it, but the metal is quite stout. I have high hopes.
In fact, I think we might skip implanting the subcutaneous computer tracking chip in our next batch of kitty cats and just go with a simple low-tech brand.
Man, I hope my wife doesn’t read my blog.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The music in the video can be found here at FreeMusicArchive.org.
This is uncomfortable for me to admit, but here goes. When I was a kid I was so enamored with Frank Lloyd Wright that I would wear a cape around the house as I built Prairie-style homes using wooden blocks, Legos and my sisters’ books.
The cape, which I still own, was from my first Halloween costume – Superman. I’ve since been Batman-tized.
I must admit that I’m not particularly a fan of Wright the person, Wright the builder (I’ve been to Fallingwater) or Wright the furniture designer. Then why the heck did I wear that cape for so many years?
I am a fan of how Wright turned architecture on its side to produce a style that was adapted to the Midwestern landscape. His low-slung Prairie houses look as if they grew, like corn, from the flats and rolling hills of the country’s midsection.
My introduction to Wright was not through books or school or even popular culture. It was through osmosis and E. Fay Jones, who was one of Wright’s apprentices and an enormous influence on the 20th-century architecture of Northwest Arkansas.
Like Wright, Jones designed structures that were in harmony with the landscape. And the city of Fort Smith where I grew up is chock full of homes that Jones designed or heavily influenced – he was the dean of the architecture school at the University of Arkansas.
His buildings use native materials and are so well adapted to the landscape that you almost don’t notice them at first. You might see only a brown roof that is hiding on the side of a hill. You have to get right up on the house to understand it. Oftentimes, a Jones house is a private treat for the residents alone. Though the house might look like it was built into a hill, it offers astonishing vistas for its owners.
For me, it was Jones that sparked my interest in buildings and design. Through him, I learned about Wright. Then, after learning all I could about Wright, I put away the cape and retreated back to Jones.
I can remember the moment this happened. My sister Ashley was married in Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., which is Jones’s most famous structure. It’s a huge building of glass and wood inside a forest. When you are inside the chapel you feel as if you are simultaneously both inside and outside. It’s a weird and beautiful feeling that I have never had anyplace else.
As my first-born daughter spread rose petals down the aisle before the processional, I can remember looking up into the beams of the chapel, which were shrouded in darkness like the limbs of the tallest trees of the forest. It was both disorienting and exhilarating. And no, I had not been drinking.
This weekend I’m up in Oak Park, Ill., and as the sun started to set on Friday I happened to be near Wright’s home and studio on Chicago Avenue. For the most part, I think that this structure is one of the least impressive Wright buildings in Chicago. It looks like two buildings lumped together – a Shingle-style house Wright built while working for Louis Sullivan plus a rambling structure behind it that looks like a largish Prairie-style addition.
However, from the front, the Shingle-style section of the house was catching the failing light just right on Friday. And I could almost picture the guy at the front door with a cape and cane in hand.
Since the summer months I’ve been sifting through every source I have to see if I have found a good idea for my next book, or just several thousand photos of furniture in neatly arranged folders on my laptop.
In some ways, I don’t really want to know the answer to the question.
Still, I keep amassing data from sources ranging from auction catalogs to the Early English Books Online (EEBO) data base. And after sorting through more than 10,000 images I think that things are coming into focus.
The thrust of the book is that there are several forms of furniture that haven’t changed significantly during the last 300 to 500 years. And those pieces of furniture, which show up repeatedly in the archaeological record, are the pieces of furniture that look simultaneously ancient and modern – depending on the context.
And that curious characteristic is important to people who want to make work that is divorced from style or fashion.
Today I stumbled on a great drawing that shows this idea fairly well. It’s of a trestle table – one of the 14 forms of “elemental” furniture I’ve identified. If you look at the drawing and ignore the style of the drawing – clearly early 20th century – you might just see what I see.
It’s a trestle table from the Tudor Renaissance – 1509-1603.
Or perhaps Lucy is slipping extra peyote into my coffee. Either way, it will be an interesting book.
I’ve always been fascinated by work songs – generally A capella performances where the tempo governs (or is governed by) the pace of the labor. I first encountered these songs after high school while I was working on factory lines at liquor plants, table-making factories and a door-building facility.
These were sung, or sometimes hummed, in pace with the machinery. It is mesmerizing to participate in these songs, and that reverie is much needed when you spend 10 hours doing the same activity over and again. These songs are trance-inducing, like the hum of a beehive or the roar of an interstate.
Shakers were known for their work songs, which celebrated such mundane tasks as sweeping. And every since attending a performance of these Shaker work songs, I have yearned to write ones for woodworking.
Hand-tool woodworking has a rhythm that is absent in the roar of a planer or table saw. It is as regular as our hearts and our breathing.
Today as I was sawing up a bunch of red oak for a project, I tried to find a beat or a tune that corresponded with every stroke. I wanted something as transfixing as these work songs from 1966.
Perhaps we need to implore Tom Fidgen – a hand-tool woodworker and songwriter – to give it a stab. I know it’s possible.
Why? One of my most indelible memories from college is the day after U2 released the album “The Joshua Tree” in 1987. As I was walking through the food line that day the entire staff was singing “With or Without You” in full harmony.
It left me with chicken skin – like the FolkStreams film – that I cannot shake.
