This year has been a good one – maybe our second or third best since we started in 2007. I won’t have all the numbers for a couple weeks, but to close out the year, here are our top 10 books in terms of unit sales. There are some surprises.
The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: This book topped the list because we printed the last press run of the current edition in an original tan cover. (If you want a copy, you better snatch it because we are almost out.) I’m working on the revised edition, which will be in color and will be released in 2025.
The American Peasant: We sold out the first press run and we are now into the second.
Principles of Design: We printed (and sold) 3,000 copies in three months. We weren’t planning on doing a second run, but y’all changed our minds. This book will be back in stock in January.
Set & File: Not a surprise. This book sold well right out of the gate and has long legs.
Dutch Tool Chests: A surprisingly strong showing for a book that was released so late in the year (October). The book sold more copies on the first day than any book in our history.
The following is excerpted from “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” by Christopher Schwarz. The new, expanded edition of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” is an exploration of furniture forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years.
There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for almost 1,000 years that don’t get written about much. They are simple to make. They have clean lines. And they can be shockingly modern.
This book explores 18 of these forms – a bed, dining tables, chairs, chests, desks, shelving, stools – and offers a deep exploration into the two construction techniques used to make these pieces that have been forgotten, neglected or rejected.
“The Anarchist’s Design Book” is available for order in print, or you can download a free pdf (and you don’t need to register, sign up for dumb marketing or even tell us who you are). Just click through this link and you’ll find the download in the second sentence of the first paragraph – the one in italics.
Embrace or Reject the History Lesson
If you want to make historical furniture reproductions or pieces that are inspired by vintage work, you must devote yourself to studying old work – in person, up close and without prejudice.
But if you want to make things that are new or modern, you instead must devote yourself to studying old work – in person, up close and without prejudice. Otherwise, how will you know what it is you are rebelling against or rejecting?
In other words, no matter what sort of furniture maker you are, understanding the furniture record will make you a better one. Otherwise you might end up like some members of the Bauhaus, for example, who rejected historical work and set out to reinvent architecture, furniture and other crafts from first principles. As a result, they made a lot of unnecessary and time-consuming mistakes to create a new world. (See armchair F 51 designed for the director’s room of the Bauhaus.)
As I see it, every generation of makers has goals that fall upon these three lines:
Exalt old work to revive principles that have been forgotten by our degenerate society.
Create new work that rejects the principles of our degenerate society.
Make birdhouses.
All three are completely valid ways of approaching the craft. Only No. 3 allows you to skip the furniture record and create something useful with minimal effort.
Another Chinese chair. Hans Wegner’s Chinese Chair No. 1 (1944).
As I write this, I am surrounded by hundreds of books filled with thousands of pieces of furniture that I’ll never build. Many of those pieces are somewhat ugly or, at the least, too ornate for my taste. Yet I am thrilled to study every line and curve of every William & Mary, Georgian or Seymour piece that I can lay my hands on. Some of these pieces are brilliant because of their technicality. Their talented makers found clever ways of making extremely complex pieces in a shockingly simple way. (If you have studied furniture bandings, then you know what I mean.)
Other pieces are notable because of the sheer patience and focus of the maker (see French marquetry).
Still other pieces are forms that are perfectly proportioned in silhouette.
In my personal work, I seek to combine all three of those properties (though I rarely succeed). And the only way I can try to reach that goal is to study old work. So every day I open an old book, go to a museum in a strange city (thank you, crazy teaching schedule) or plumb the Internet.
Example: In a manor house in Cornwall there’s a beautiful Chinese chair. Why is it there, surrounded by 300-year-old English stuff? The house’s docents don’t know. So I buy a book on the history of the manor house and its contents. I explore Chinese chair construction on the Internet. I turn up some Hans Wegner chairs in my search and find a bright string from traditional Chinese furniture through Danish Modern.
Suddenly, the curve of the chair’s crest rail makes sense, across time and cultures. What I do with that information is up to me as a designer – but if I decide to incorporate a wishbone shape into a future design, I have a path to explore all the possibilities. And I can embrace or reject the history lesson.
Driving on the comb during a chair class in Bavaria.
I just returned from two weeks (and then some) in Bavaria. For the most part I was teaching classes put on by Dictum GmbH. It’s been more than five years since I’ve taught there, so it was great to catch up with old friends and make some new ones.
Here’s a typical scene at dinner one night with the students. We got our menus and the students were explaining what a “divorce salad” was.
“Is this what you eat when you want a divorce?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” they said.
“No,” I replied. “You are pulling my chain.”
Eventually we realized they were saying “die wurst,” which means “the sausage.” Not “divorce.”
And yes, they put hot sausages on a green salad here. Don’t knock it until you try it.
I’m returning to Dictum next year for two more weeks of teaching. The plan is to teach two chairmaking classes: A big ole comb-back at the workshop in Niederalteich. And an Irish armchair in the workshop in Munich. When registration opens for these classes, I’ll post the links here.
I made a short video of the Dutch tool chest class. Students came from all over the globe.
In between a few too many beers and Bavarian food, I managed to finish editing Megan’s Dutch tool chest book. It was worth waiting for. Soon we’ll begin designing the book, so it’s definitely coming out this year.
After teaching, I traveled to Nuremberg with Lucy to explore the city and see a lot of folk furniture at the Fränkisches Freilandmuseum. I could have spent three or four days there, but we had only one. I made a video of some of my favorite pieces and interiors. Take a look.
And now I’m back in the States. Happy to be home, but falling asleep at odd times until my body adjusts.
I have been invited back to Germany this summer to teach a four-day introduction to chairmaking course at Dictum’s classroom in Niederalteich, a gorgeous monastery in Bavaria.
The class is in English (my German is terrible), and the location is a fantastic place to stay and learn. You can rent a room at the monastery. And we all eat meals together in the monastery’s gasthaus.
The class runs from July 9-12. Beginning chairmakers are most welcome. In the class we will each build a simple backstool and focus on the fundamentals – the angles, the joinery and training your hands to be a chairmaker.
While the chair shown is unsaddled, we will also cover basic saddling.
You can read more about the area and the class here.
I hope to teach a Dutch tool chest class the following week in Munich. More details on that class soon.
“The Anarchist’s Design Book, Expanded Edition” is now a free download for everyone. You don’t have to register, sign up for dumb marketing or give up your email address. Simply click here, and the book will start downloading to your device.
If you want to read more about what is in this book, click here. We will continue to offer printed copies of the book. I love physical books, and this one is particularly nice, with its premium endsheets and bookmark ribbon.
This is the fifth book of mine that I have made free as a download. Here are links to the other four (if you are interested):
