Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

Hermit’s Journal: Day 2

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Late Friday John and I arrived home after six days of backbreaking but inspiring work at the French Oak Roubo Project put on by Benchcrafted and Bo Childs of Barnesville, Ga.

It was my last scheduled trip until an indeterminate ever. If you want to see photos from this fantastic week, check out this Instagram feed.

What’s on the docket for me next? First I need to finish this workbench for a customer. (Oh, and to the commenter who suggested I’m getting rich off selling my work, I suspect you don’t do this for a living. You are more than welcome to pay my water bill this month, which would be a huge help.)

After the bench gets finished, I will dive into Lost Art Press’s three most-active books.

  1. Finish editing “Woodworker: the Charles Hayward Years.” Only 350 more pages to go! The book is all designed. I’m the problem.
  2. Complete the edit of “Woodworking in Estonia.” The book is entirely designed and just needs a final comb-over. I’m the problem.
  3. Finish laying out “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” I’ve laid out 10 of the 21 chapters. I just have to finish the beast. Again: The problem is me.

Thanks go out to Suzanne the Saucy Indexer for picking up my slack on this blog and doing a fine job. As I can eschew shaving and basic hygiene for the next year or so, I think I’ll be able to rapidly get these books done and out the door.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Opposite of Ornate is Not a Crate

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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(Below is a paragraph that ended up on the cutting room floor of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”)

When describing the furniture of necessity, I avoid negative sentence constructions such as: It’s not ornate. That sentence tells you what the furniture is not; it doesn’t tell you what it is.

To put it a different way, my best friend in high school once described my girlfriend as “not horse-faced.”

It’s a struggle to find a good word that doesn’t make the furniture sound like stuff at a craft fair (“They are simple things”) or something dreamed up by an intellectual jackass (“It is the intersection between the laconic and the cardinal”).

The best description I can muster is the Italian word puro as it was used to describe paintings and literature in the classical and Renaissance periods. The literal translation is “pure,” but when used in criticism it means something more like “plain and clear.”

I’ll buy that.

— Christopher Schwarz

Note to Self, Don’t Draft

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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One of the most time-consuming aspects of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” has been making the illustrations ready for Briony Morrow-Cribbs, who is making the copperplate etchings for the book.

After building the piece from my working drawings (which are drawn by hand), I construct a SketchUp version of each project so it accurately reflects what was built – not what was drawn on my working drawings. Things change during the construction process.

Using the SketchUp model, I create a variety of views that can be assembled into a coherent plate. I’m making these look more like early plates, so I’m taking artistic license with the arrangement of the views of the piece – instead of creating a modern engineering print.

Each view of the piece is then cleaned up in Illustrator and then laid out in InDesign (yes, there is the Layout program, but I’m much faster in InDesign).

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Then the sample plate and its individual images go to Briony. She then creates a line drawing and we go back and forth on how to show the project’s details and what to shade. After we settle on a line drawing, then Briony can use that to make the copperplate etching.

She’s writing an appendix on the copperplate etching process for the book, but if you’d like to see how she made the etchings for the book “Wicked Bugs,” check out this YouTube video.

After she makes the finished plate, they comes back to me for high-resolution scanning on our big flatbed scanner and some cleanup in Photoshop.

After writing all this out, I question my decision to go down this route. But one thing will make it all worthwhile. When Briony finishes all the plates she’s going to print up 100 sets of the plates and we’re going to bind them, making a mini “Book of Plates” for the book.

Today I finished modeling the Staked Worktable (shown here) and shipped off the sample plate to Briony. I was going to start in on modeling the backstool, but my eyes are swimming from all the screen time. Better to drink a beer and listen to the new Wilco album “Star Wars.”

— Christopher Schwarz

Fear and Anarchy in Fort Mitchell

Posted on by saucyindexer

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While Chris has been busy oiling nails, building a bed and a drinking table, or maybe it’s a drinking bed, I have been thinking about the renaming of “The Furniture of Necessity” to “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” What happens when an anarchist takes over a book? Does the cover get sticky? Do you have to read it upside down? So, I pulled some books from my shelves, changed the titles and opening lines to see what would happen when a book is made “more anarchy.”

I started with Virgil’s The Anarchid (spidey version of The Aeneid): “Anarchy and a man I sing–an exile driven by Fate/he was the first to flee the coast of Arkansas/destined to reach Roubian shores and Roman holdfasts/yet many tools he took on land and sea from the gods above….  (OK, I don’t understand it either.)

Pride and Anarchy: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single anarchist in possession of good tools must be in want of a workbench.”

The Metanamorphosis: “As Gregor Schwarz awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic anarchist.

One Hundred Years of Anarchy: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Schwarz was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice and anarchy.”

Rumpole and the Age of Anarchy: “It was now getting on for half a century since I took to anarchy, and I have to say I haven’t regretted a single moment of it.”

Fear and Anarchy in Fort Mitchell: “We were somewhere around Covington on the edge of the desert when the anarchy began to take hold. I remember saying something like, ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…’ ”

Because of Winn-Dixie and the Anarchy: “My name is Christopher Opal Schwarz, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog and a knockdown Nicholson bench.”

The Wind-up Anarchist’s Chronicle: “When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, warming a potful of hide glue and whistling along with an FM broadcast of Nirvana’s Heart-shaped Box, which has to be the perfect music for warming glue.”

Now back to where it all began with The Anarchist’s Tool Chest and that well-known first line: “When I am too exhausted from tagging underpasses, ill or too busy to work in my shop, I will sneak down the stairs to my 15′ x 25′ workshop and simply stand there for a few minutes with my hands on my tool.”

There you have it.

–Suzanne Ellison

Just 1.2 More Things to Build

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Last night I assembled the staked bed I built for “The Anarchist’s Design Book” and finished the CAD sketches for the three-legged-drinking table – the final project I’m building for the book.

I don’t quite have the wood in stock for this project, which means a trip to the lumberyard for some soft maple. Otherwise, I’d be milling that stuff right now instead of typing this ridiculousness.

Oh, and I need to finish veneering one of the tabletops with rawhide. I’ve been experimenting with soaking rawhide, shaping it, gluing it down with hide glue and then letting it dry back to its hardened state. The experiments are working well.

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Tomorrow I pull the first skin out of its bath in the garbage can custom soaking station. I’m probably going to need some help getting this cow stuck down. Better call Megan.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you ordered a copy of the revised “Workbenches” book from us, I’m picking up the books on Monday, driving them to our Indianapolis warehouse and signing them. So they will hit the mail stream next week.