John needed an advance copy of “l’Art du Menuisier: The Book of Plates” so our box supplier could measure it and make a custom carton – no one wants a $100 book with bumped corners.
The bindery sent this early bound copy – without the cover stamp, which is weird.
The book will start shipping next week. Order here before Wednesday to get free domestic shipping. After that date, shipping will be significant – this book is whopper-big, thick and heavy.
After writing last month about the “doe’s foot” appliance in A.-J. Roubo’s plate 14, I decided to make a couple of these devices that resembled the ones shown in the plate.
For the last couple years, I’ve been using a doe’s foot that is about 1/4” x 2” x 24”. Roubo’s looks shorter and wider. So today I made two doe’s feet that were 3/8” x 5” x 14” and tried them out on the bench.
The big advantage of the ones shown in Roubo is that their increased size makes it easier for them to be positioned anywhere on the bench. Because they are wider, a holdfast is much more likely to find them.
Its shorter length makes it easier to secure the doe’s foot without hitting the shop wall – assuming your bench is up against a wall.
Because I am a woodworker, I couldn’t help trying to improve the doe’s foot a bit. While it works fine as-is, I added stick-on sandpaper (#150-grit) to the underside of one of the appliances and tried the two side-by-side to compare, naked vs. grippy.
The one with the sandpaper was almost impossible to slide laterally. The one without sandpaper was secure enough, but I could rotate it with the pad of the holdfast serving as the centerpoint. So I like the addition of the sandpaper.
— Christopher Schwarz
Plate 14 and 384 more plates are all shown in our forthcoming “l’Art du Menuisier: The Book of Plates.” You can still order this book with free domestic shipping until Nov. 19, 2014. The book ships on Nov. 19.
Several readers have asked why we don’t offer a digital version of “l’Art du Menuisier: The Book of Plates” when we sell digital versions of almost all of our other titles. It’s a fair question.
My answer will seem lame until Nov. 19, which is when the book ships.
During the last five years of dealing with A.J. Roubo’s “l’Art du Menuisier” on a daily basis, I have come to understand how the work was supposed to be read. I’ve read and edited about one-third of Roubo’s translated work now, and I used the plates constantly to follow along with the prose.
Time and again, I reluctantly but with a secret joy returned to the full-size 18th-century originals to help me decipher Roubo’s text. At first, having those plates on the screen of a computer seemed like a good idea so I could zoom in on details. But the plates are not just collections of little images that are meant to be digested one bit at a time.
Instead, each plate is like a living organism. Every drawing relates to the other bits on the plate. So staring at one detail will at times mislead you, or at least induce an unintentional myopia.
The plates are meant to be taken as a whole. Otherwise, what you have is like a map of Ohio with Cleveland, Columbus and Marietta missing.
But there’s more. The physicality of the original volumes is important. We wanted to try to give readers a small taste of that by printing the plates full-size and on paper that is usually reserved for corporate annual reports or art books.
To be honest, publishing “The Book of Plates” might be a financial misstep for Lost Art Press. This book was more expensive than any other single project we’ve undertaken. We had to print a large number of books in order to get the price down to a reasonable level, $100. And even then, the margins on this book are much smaller than usual for us.
We did this because we want to share this somewhat magical experience with you. And we wanted to do it so you didn’t have to spend $1,500 to $10,000 for the experience of seeing these plates as they were intended.
And that is why we are not issuing a digital edition.
— Christopher Schwarz
“The Book of Plates” is available in the Lost Art Press store for $100 with free domestic shipping until Nov. 19, 2014.
Chris had been studying A.-J. Roubo’s writings for years, but lately there was something strange about the three volumes. He couldn’t put his finger on it; sometimes he thought he heard voices near the books. It was creepy and unsettling and he had avoided the books for several days. His fascination overrode any unease he felt and soon he was back on the couch poring over all those cool plates of tools and furniture. The tiny voices he heard had to be his imagination.
“Cool,” he exclaimed as got to the series of plates showing 18th-century coaches. “These are so cool!” He heard a murmur coming from the book. “No, it’s just my imagination.” As he turned a few more pages and said a few more “cools,” the murmuring grew louder. It seemed to be coming from the plates showing chairs. Chris leaned close to the book and was astonished to hear a heated conversation.
“How many times can a human say ‘cool’ in the space of one hour?”
“He could try ‘remarkable,’ ‘wonderful’ or ‘extraordinary.’ We only get ‘cool!’”
“He is the ass of a Jacques!”
“I think it is said that he is Jacques’ ass.”
Chris flipped quickly to the plates featuring chairs. “What? These plates shouldn’t be side-by-side!”
He was met with pages of complaints about his overuse of “cool.”
“But you are cool, so very cool. I can’t help myself,” he tried to explain. The chairs, and some of the other furniture, were not listening.
“We can’t take it anymore!” they shouted back. “We want out!”
“You want out?” Chris roared back. “I have been protecting you – admiring you – and you want out AND you call me an ass of a Jacques?! I’ll give you out!”
And with that he held the book upside down and shook it. There was a cacophony of shrieks as the tiny furniture fell from the book.
Coming to his senses, Chris stopped shaking the book and exclaimed, “What have I done? Have I ruined them? I’ll put them back and everything will be all right.” He put the book down and looking at the floor saw none of the tiny chairs or tables. “Where are they? They were there. They yelled at me and called me the ass of a Jacques. It was real, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?” He stood stunned not able to comprehend what had happened. Chris ran from the room.
“That was fun. We haven’t been out of the book in decades!”
Whenever woodworkers come to my house, two things happen. We drink beer and we gaze longingly at my 18th-century copies of A.-J. Roubo’s ‘l’Art du Menuisier.”
I assure you that we keep the beer far away from the books.
I’ve owned many copies of Roubo, from the trade paperbacks all the way up to this beautiful first edition. And it is the detail and size of these original plates that grab your eye and cause you to press your face to the page.
“Why did he draw that tool in that way?” is a common question.
With many old woodworking books, the answer is, “He didn’t draw it that way. Some illustrator did.” But in this case, Roubo himself drew most all of the plates. Nothing is unintentional – I can say this because I know many of these plates by heart and have been editing our upcoming translation, which will be published next year.
With “The Book of Plates,” we wanted to capture that same experience of examining the 18th-century original by giving you the plates at the same size they were drawn in the 1700s. We wanted to offer the extreme detail from the original. Oh, and the paper is the nicest stuff available.
To give you a feel for that experience, I made this short video tour of two plates in the book – one on trying planes and one on measuring tools. The book shown in the video is my first edition – “The Book of Plates” is still on press. I apologize in advance for how many times I say “cool.” I recommend you turn that quirk of mine into a drinking game.
We are now accepting pre-publication orders for “The Book of Plates.” Order soon to ensure delivery by Christmas. The book ships starting Nov. 20, 2014.
