Category: Roman Workbenches

Good news, everyone. “Roman Workbenches” has arrived in our Indianapolis warehouse and looks stunning. When I got word that it arrived at 2:39 p.m. on Monday I dropped everything and drove to the warehouse to grab some copies.

If you ordered a copy (or hope to), please read the following crap carefully so you don’t give poor Meghan at help@lostartpress.com an aneurysm.

We will ship these out as soon as we can, but it will take some time. Our warehouse has to schedule an assembly-line process when fulfilling big batches of new titles. That takes time. I hope they will finish up in the next six days.

You might receive an email from our store indicating that your book has shipped. Depending on how the assembly line is going, it might take a couple days for your book to hit the mailstream after you get that email.

If you are an international customer, please be patient. It takes three weeks on average for a book to travel from the United States to anywhere else. And then it can be delayed in customs. Or toads.

To sum up, I’m asking for a little patience with this shipping process. Since we switched to SmartPost we have lost only one or two books (out of 60,000). So you will get your book, I promise.

The Good News
We will have some more copies of this book to sell soon. Thanks to some great work on the press and at the bindery, we had almost no waste. So we expect to have as many as 120 more copies to sell. However, we first need to fulfill everyone’s order and replace any copies that are damaged in shipment.

So later in May we will make an announcement as to how many books we have to sell and when they will go on sale.

And if the price for the letterpress version is too steep, know that we will have an inexpensive version printed on modern offset presses later this year.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today I crashed back – hard – to the United States with little sleep, folders full of photos and memories of the best pizza I’ve eaten. And as I twitched to sleep on the airplane this afternoon or morning or whatever, I wondered if I had enough information for a book.

I don’t. But I think I will soon.

If things go well this summer in Germany. If a package arrives in Kentucky. If a translation pans out. Then I’ll have an expanded book for you this fall on so-called Roman workbenches that will probably have to be called something else other than “Roman Workbenches.”

While these benches have their roots in Greco-Roman culture, the form is ubiquitous in the West and the East in both modern times and those of two millenia ago. These benches, and the techniques to use them, have been hiding in plain sight. Recorded. Written down. And mostly ignored.

I don’t have many more words for you this evening (or is it early morning?), so instead enjoy these images taken by Narayan Nayar during our trip to Pompeii.

— Christopher Schwarz

Brian Stuparyk at Steam Whistle Letterpress reports that he (and his family) have completed printing the letterpress pages for “Roman Workbenches.” Soon (I hope this week) the sheets will be packed up and trucked to the bindery in Massachusetts.

As you can see from the image from above, the paper and letterpress printing have a texture that I think you’ll enjoy, especially if you grew up on offset printing like most Americans.

I don’t have a date for when the bound books will be ready. Once the sheets arrive there, the bindery will be able to give me a better idea. But it won’t be long.

We have long been sold out of the entire run of “Roman Workbenches” in letterpress version, but we’re hoping that not too many sheets will get spoiled during binding and we’ll have some extras to sell. Stay tuned.

In other shameless product news, the deluxe version of “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture” has been sent to press. We’re on track for a summer release.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today Narayan Nayar and I took the train to Pompeii to look at a fresco that features Perdix, a Roman workbench and some adult content suitable for Cinemax. (“Oh my, I don’t think I have enough money for this pizza.” Cue the brown chicken, brown cow soundtrack.)

As we got off the train, my heart was heavy with dread. Yesterday, our visit to Herculaneum blew my mind but was disappointing in one small way: The House of the Deer was closed that day to visitors. The House of Deer had once housed a woodworking fresco that has since been removed and has since deteriorated. So all I was going to get to see was the hole in the wall where the fresco had been.

But still.

So as I got off the train this morning, I fretted: What if the House of the Vettii is closed? After a not-quick lunch that involved togas (don’t ask), Narayan and I made a beeline to the House of the Vettii. And as I feared, its gate was locked. The structure is in the midst of a renovation and was covered in tarps and scaffolding.

I peered through the gate and saw someone moving down a hallway inside. He didn’t look like a worker. He looked like a tourist. Then I saw another tourist.

We quickly figured out that a side entrance was open and they were allowing tourists into a small section of the house. I rushed into that entryway and waved hello to Priapus. After years of studying the map of this house I knew exactly where to go. I scooted past a gaggle of kids on spring break and into the room with the fresco I’ve been eager to see for too long.

It’s a miracle this fresco has survived – not just the eruption of Vesuvius but also the looters and custodian that decided (on behalf of Charles III) which images to keep and which ones to destroy. (Why destroy a fresco? According to the Archaeological Museum of Naples, many were destroyed so they didn’t get into the hands of “foreigners or imitators.”) The royal collection preferred figurative scenes or ones with winged figures. For some reason, this one stayed in place and has managed to survive.

Narayan spent the next 40 minutes photographing the fresco in detail. The photos in this blog entry are mere snapshots I took with my Canon G15. His images will be spectacular.

OK, enough babbling. I need some pizza. Thank goodness they’re only about 4 Euro here.

— Christopher Schwarz

No matter how much you read about a person, a piece of furniture or a place, the real thing is always different. Today, Narayan Nayar and I visited Herculaneum, the doomed coastal city in Italy that has changed the way I look at woodworking workbenches.

There are no workbenches at Herculaneum. But there was an image of one. Once. But it was cut from the walls of the House of the Deer, shipped to Naples where it deteriorated to the point where almost nothing of the bench is now visible. Still, the image (actually an image of the image) is incredibly important to me. It’s the first drawing of a holdfast that I know of. And it shows a low workbench being used for sawing – another critical clue.

So I had to visit Herculaneum and other sites involving the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius. Not that I expected to discover “new” information about woodworking, workbenches or tools. But to give me some context for everything I’ve read for the last 20 years.

What was shocking? For me, it was the paint and the painting. I now need to do more reasearch on the surviving frescoes at Herculaneum, but I was struck dumb by the detail, clarity and color of what I saw today. Was it restored by modern hands?

As Narayan and I walked around the ruined city it became clear that that modern people are both the saviors and sackers of the now-exposed stonework, plaster and frescoes. Narayan and I saw a little girl rummaging inside an ancient clay vase. Other frescoes were covered by Perspex and clouded by the sun and humidity.

I tried to tread lightly all day because Herculaneum is a non-renewable resource. But my tiptoeing is a drop in the bucket against modern air pollution, adventurous little girls and 2 million other visitors. Ultimately, everything turns to dust.

So the best I can do is to provide an account of what I saw that is unprejudiced by cultural or temporal bias so that future woodworkers will know why Herculaneum is a pile of rubble to be remembered.

— Christopher Schwarz