Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

A Staked Armchair for ‘The Anarchist’s Design Book’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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When I finished up writing “The Anarchist’s Design Book” in January 2016, there were two projects that I wish I’d included: a staked armchair and a staked settee.

At the time, my designs for these two pieces were still juvenile. Well maybe that’s not correct. They were too complex to be presented in a book aimed at simple forms. So I set them aside. During the last 12 months, I’ve completed these two designs and began building the staked armchair this week.

For the armchair, I finally got the arm shape to my satisfaction while drinking a beer in a Cleveland restaurant (that’s the 45-second sketch above). While the arm is dead simple, it has an interior curve that echoes the curve at the back of the seat and a bevel on the front that repeats the bevel on the underside of the seat.

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I’m going to photograph the construction process and share it here on the blog. After I get this armchair built and I also finish the settee we might add them to the next printing of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” (If we do that, we will offer free downloads of the new chapters to all previous purchasers, no matter where you bought the book.)

This armchair will be made with sycamore and hickory left over from the last chair.

— Christopher Schwarz

Nice Staked Bench from Destrehan Plantation

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Mark Firley of The Furniture Record sent me the above photo he took at Destrehan Plantation, which is 30 minutes west of New Orleans. It’s a nicely proportioned staked bench that is supporting a crackling press, which is used to press lard from cracklings or juice from fruit.

I quite like how the cross-grain battens are oriented at the ends of the top. All in all, it’s a nice piece, despite its primitive appearance.

— Christopher Schwarz

Pressing the Clutch on this Chair Design

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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One of the advantages (or curses) of studying a lot of old furniture is you can feel certain designs tug at you as you work on a piece. This weekend I got a little time to work on this Hall’s Croft chair and I could feel several other similar chair designs tug at my brain.

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I love quartersawn sycamore. It’s a junk tree but, when used properly, is beautiful and stable (enough).

First, I abandoned the pine seat and switched to quartersawn sycamore for the seat, arms and crest. The spindles are hickory and the legs are beech. I selected the stock so I could use an oil and wax finish instead of paint or a dark pigmented finish.

I changed the seat profile slightly to make the front corners sharper. I altered the leg shape a bit. But the biggest change is going to be the crest rail. Instead of the “three holey mountains” of the original I’m going to use a different shape I’ve been experimenting with. It uses rived stock that is somewhat triangular in cross-section.

When I offer it for sale, I’ll give the customer both crest rails and let them decide which they prefer. Or they can swap them out when they are feeling sassy.

— Christopher Schwarz

Boarded Bookshelf

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

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This is an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” by Christopher Schwarz. 

Trying to improve a simple set of bookshelves might seem ridiculous. But I think there are significant things to say about the warped state of bookshelf construction in the modern age.

What could be wrong about horizontal surfaces fastened to vertical ones? Plenty.

For starters, I’m not a fan of adjustable shelving. I think that if you gave enough monkeys enough mescaline, you might be able to come up with a plastic jig to drill the right number of holes for adjustable shelf pins that weren’t a waste of time or space. But that’s a lot of mescaline. Adjustable shelving is, in my opinion, mostly a cop-out.

Books come in fairly standard sizes. Heck, they once came in sizes that were based simply on how many times you folded a large sheet of paper. But thanks to the miracle and wastefulness of modern book manufacturing, we now have some bizarre sizes to deal with.

These odd books are at the extreme ends of a bell curve of book shapes (called “form factors” or “formats” in the design world). You can find books out there that are 18″ wide and 10″ high (yup, a book on billboards). But if you are someone who reads woodworking books, novels and non-fiction (and not art books on Estonian midget nudist wrestlers), then trying to accommodate whack-doodle form factors isn’t necessary.

So I’ve always viewed adjustable shelving with great suspicion. Do we need to adjust every shelf in a carcase 1″ up or down? I don’t.

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What Sizes are Important?
Go to any bookstore and you’ll find that most books come in roughly three sizes: small, medium and large.

Small books are 6″ x 9″ or smaller – these are the novels and standard woodworking books of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s a convenient size for reading in the subway or the park. And they fit easily into a knapsack or shoulder bag.

The medium size is about 8-1/2″ x 11″ (slightly more if it’s a hardback). This became a fairly standard size for how-to books in the latter 20th century and is economical to print. So you will encounter a lot of these books as you build your library. I find them to be a stepchild size. They are too big to travel with easily. Yet when I am reading them at home I always wish they were bigger.

The large size of book is 11″ x 17″ or some close variant. These books are uncommon in the modern age, unless you are into art books or old books. But when I find them they are worth the extra expense.

Many excellent old books on woodworking, including the 18th-century pattern books, were oversized folios. So I think it’s worth making a place for them in a bookshelf. It might be wishful thinking, but so what?

So this bookshelf has shelf openings of three sizes: 18″ high for big books, 12″ for the medium books and 9-3/8″ for the small ones. (However, the top shelf has no top, so you can fit taller books up there if you dare.)

Other Advantages of this Form
So now that you know the typical book sizes, wouldn’t it be sweet to provide just a wee bit of adjustability – up and down – for odd sizes?

No, it wouldn’t.

Fixed shelves are far stiffer than adjustable ones. You can nail a fixed shelf in place though the back of the carcase. This adds immense stiffness so the shelf won’t sag. (And if you think that sagging shelves aren’t a problem then you don’t own enough books.)

The other advantage to fixed shelves is they add to the overall soundness of the carcase. If you have only two fixed shelves – which is typical in a commercial bookcase – the carcase is more likely to rack compared to a carcase that has multiple shelves that are nailed through both the back and the bookcase’s vertical uprights.

One last thing I like about fixed shelves: They don’t ever collapse or slide off their adjustable shelf pins.

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Dropped Edge on a Shelf

How to Cheat
So let’s say you think I’m full of crap or you pine desperately for adjustable shelves. Can you make a shelf unit that is stiff enough? Yup. Do these two things: Use a plywood back that is glued and screwed in place. That will stiffen the carcase. To make the shelves stiff, use what is called a “dropped edge” on every adjustable shelf. This is when you attach a strip of solid wood to the front and/or rear of the shelf to stiffen it.

A typical dropped edge is 1-1/4″ wide and is attached to the front of the shelf. Note that the dropped edge can also be used to hide the fact that you used plywood for the shelves. (Naughty, naughty. Plywood isn’t as stiff as solid wood – hence the name “solid” wood.)

If you look at the bookcase in this book, the “kick” (the horizontal strip affixed to the lower shelf ) works exactly like a dropped edge. There’s good reason for it to be attached to the lower shelf because it’s designed to hold the heaviest books.

— MB

Seeing Red

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Sometimes I think my taste in furniture comes from the fact that I’m easily startled. I’ll sometimes spit a mouth full of toothpaste onto the mirror when my wife appears behind me in the bathroom.

I don’t want to be alarmed or injected with adrenaline when I look at a chair, table or a sideboard because of its car-like surface finish, carving, inlay or dizzying grain patterns.

Furniture should be as natural as your fingers. Your hands are logical, unadorned and familiar. Yet when you choose to examine them closely you will be amazed at every aspect of their mechanics and form.

So when I look at furniture, I mentally divide what I see into pieces that are “red” and those that are “green.” This is all standard color theory stuff that you can learn about in an introductory psychology class.

Colors in the “warm” spectrum – red, orange and yellow – tend to excite us. Colors in the “cool” spectrum – blues and greens – tend to relax.

The first time I visited Winterthur Museum – Henry Francis du Pont’s amazing collection of high-style furniture from the entire timeline of American history – I felt like I needed a stiff drink afterward. While there are some fine vernacular pieces in the collection, the entire experience left me wrung out and on edge. That was a red day.

Seeing one carving by Grinling Gibbons inspires awe. Seeing an entire room of his work induces nausea.

I don’t mean to pick on Winterthur. It’s one of the most fantastic furniture collections on the planet. To be fair, I get the same unpleasant blood buzz in European castles and manor homes. There is only so much of the stuff I can endure.

Contrast that with my first visit to the Aiken-Rhett House in Charleston, S.C. The 1820 house is opulent in many ways, but much of that is muted by the fact that many rooms were empty of furnishings during my visit. For me, what’s most remarkable about the house are the slave quarters and work areas on the building’s ground floor. And the work yard.

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