This seven-stick comb-back is Katherine’s first apprenticeship chair, which we built together while teaching a class last week. It’s set up for lounging, with back sticks that rake 20° back and a seat tilt for lounging.
Like all stick chairs, this one bears imperfections that mark how it was made. The leg angles are not exact because they were drilled by hand and without guides. Two mortises in the hands have small cosmetic gaps around the hands when the bit wandered as I drilled. (Yes it was me. Katherine was the spotter.)
All in all, it’s an excellent chair in the way it sits and looks. But it’s not manufactured perfection.
The chair has a red elm seat that is pierced with red oak legs and sticks. We drove the legs and sticks into the seat so hard that the oak’s facets cut into the elm. This is why stick chairs last.
The arm is quartersawn sycamore. Like elm, it’s unlikely to split, but it has a little flash of ray flake in the hands. And the comb is elm – because that’s what we had at the end of the day. The wedges are straight-grained hickory, which we drove like nails to hold the chair together.
The entire chair is assembled with animal glue, which is reversible should your ancestors ever need to repair it. And the chair is finished with soft wax, which we make here in Covington. Both of us have signed the chair.
The seat height is 17”, which we are happy to cut down for you before shipping. The overall height of the chair is 39-3/8”.
Half of the chair’s proceeds will go to Katherine. Being an apprentice isn’t easy.
How to Buy the Chair
I’m selling this chair for $1,800 via a random drawing. The price includes shipping and crating to anywhere in the lower 48. If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Monday, September 29. Please use the subject line: “apprentice chair.” In the email please include your:
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
If you are the “winner” the chair will be shipped to your door. The price includes the crate and all shipping charges. There are no additional charges. Alternatively, the chair can be picked up at our storefront. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)
The new edition of Drew’s book on top of my paperback copy.
One of the rewards for running a publishing company is getting to say “yes” when other people wouldn’t even know to say “no.” Two summers ago, chairmaker Chris Williams and I visited Drew and Louise Langsner in their home outside Marshall, North Carolina.
And as we were sitting there, being feasted upon by bugs (as we ate a delicious meal from Louise’s hands), I was overcome by gratitude for the work these two people had done their entire lives for the craft.
Drew’s book “The Chairmaker’s Workshop” (Lark, 1997) was a constant guide as I made my first steps into chairmaking in the early 2000s. I carried the book around like a lost puppy. And in time it fell apart. I bought another. It wasn’t made particularly well, but I have kept it in decent shape.
Why, I wondered, can I not buy a library-quality copy of this book that steered my life?
I blinked and sat up a little straighter. Chris shot a look at me, concerned.
I said, “I’d like to republish ‘The Chairmaker’s Workshop.’”
Drew agreed.
And after a fair amount of work on everyone’s part, we did just that. And it is finally a version that will last for at least a century.
We did everything we could to make this archival-quality edition of “The Chairmaker’s Workshop” a joy to read and use. The print job is better than the original (thanks to a Japanese sheet-fed press and excellent paper).
This book has all the details we love. A bookmark ribbon, contrasting headbands and footbands, heavy endsheets, casebound binding, sewn signatures, and on and on. Oh, and we made special letterpress bookplates that Drew signed individually. As I write this, we’re affixing them to the endsheets.
This is an expensive endeavor. So we’re printing only 750 copies. If this book is important to you – like it is to me – here is your best chance. It’s $78. I know that’s a lot of money, but if we’d priced it like we normally price books it would be $95.
Way more information on the book can be found here.
As I write this, we’re awaiting proofs on our latest pocket book, “Make Fresh Milk Paint,” by Nick Kroll. Nick was in one of Christopher Schwarz’s Germany classes this summer, and he showed up with a hand-bound book about making milk paint in your kitchen. Chris sent an email to Kara Gebhart Uhl (she handles contracts for us) and me that night with a PDF of the book, letting us know he thought it was a winner.
We all agreed, and have since been busy making milk paint in our Covington shop. It’s so much fun (and simple) to make, and the paint results in a rich and gorgeous finish, plus it doesn’t cost much. It’s rare that you get cheap, easy and good, all at the same time!
Brings back memories of my bartending days.
The book will be printed in the U.S. (like all of our books). This one features a “Hot Toffee” cover (that’s mustard yellow to you and me) and garnet end papers – vibrant, like the paint. Barring problems at the printer or bindery, we expect it will be available before Thanksgiving.
Below is a sneak peek, Nick’s introduction.
– Fitz
Make Milk Paint
The howling silence of sterile, lifeless paint swatches. The dented tin lid that imprisons your creative soul in a mass-produced can of petrochemical swill. The gnawing anxiety of spending your Saturday morning standing in the fluorescent-washed aisle of a big-box retailer, trying to convince yourself that Hessian Taupe is the sensible buy.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
It’s OK to hate paint. We all do. Our collective contempt for industrial paint is so deeply ingrained that we close the container by hammering the lid shut like we’re trying to kill an E.T. with a tire iron. To be fair, that animosity goes both ways. The second you two are alone in a room together, that zesty blend of plasticizer and industrial solvent hits back with noxious volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can inflict solid damage per second on a cellular level.
Even if you find a low-VOC paint in a color you like, you’re still likely dropping at least $20-$30 a pint at your local PaintTM retailer. That’s more than Jiffy Plasma would pay you for a pint of your own sweet blood. And unless everything you build ends up with two coats of Walton’s Own Eggshell Sage from a 5-gallon pail, you’re going to have to keep buying paint at that stiff price point. Even if you drop $100+ bucks, you’d still be locked in to only three to four colors, like a pack of kids’ menu crayons. Of course, once you pay that much, you can’t throw out the leftovers, right? What started as a fun project turns into overpriced chemical soup that’s gelling up on a basement shelf like week-old ham.
I’m here to free you. All we need is a bit of barnyard alchemy. Let us talk milk paint, elemental in nature and humble in its glory.
Making a batch of top-grade milk paint from scratch takes 10 minutes and costs less than five bucks. It has zero VOCs. It’s durable. It’s easy to apply. It looks fantastic. The color options are limitless. And you’ll have made it with your own hands.
You’re here because you like making things yourself. You can buy paint off the shelf just like you can buy furniture at Ikea – yet here we are. Paint should be the finishing touch on a labor of love, not a cheap shell that hides your hard work. You’ve spent hours cutting rabbets for a bookshelf and tapering the legs for a staked bench. Don’t stumble on the home stretch. Your handmade furniture shouldn’t be buried under a nano-homogenized ooze that smothers out every last bit of depth and character.
Come with me. Let’s set off on a journey to free your creative instincts. We’ll get lost blending pigments and chasing fleeting hues. We’ll defy the unyielding beast of corporate commerce and shun all the bitter progeny of the refinery. We’ll make something we love, for the ones we love.
Let’s make milk paint.
I’m not talking about mixing up a batch of the ready-mix powdered paint. I’m talking about taking fresh milk and making great paint. I know you can do this. It’s not hard, and you don’t need any special equipment. It’s a quick learning curve and there’s no risk. I started right where you are today – and by the end of the weekend, you’ll be on the fast track to catching up.
If you can make a pot of mac and cheese, then you can make milk paint from scratch. Making milk paint is easier than making bread, bathing a dog, putting on a duvet cover, staying awake in church or carving a pumpkin. Honestly, it’s easier than practically any woodworking task. I’m not even talking hand-cut dados or perfect dovetails – if you’ve glued up a butt joint, you have more technical skill than you’ll need to make milk paint.
This isn’t a treatise on period-accurate finishes for Shaker purists. This isn’t trad-life cosplay or Luddite revivalism. This is a guide to making damn good paint. I’m writing this for everyone who is tired of every microplastic and macrotoxin being dumped into our homes. This is for anyone who wants to be able to take a single breath without being squeezed into a transaction. This is for anyone who just wants to live in a world that’s a little more colorful.
There’s a German word, ohrwurm, to describe a song you can’t get out of your head. To be fair, “homemade milk paint” is perhaps a bit closer to a brainworm, carving out a little beachhead of gentle obsession in your mind while your loved ones begin to wonder about your mental state. But soon you’ll thank me and this little worm.
Let’s begin.
Nick, applying the first coat of homemade milk paint on the chair he’d just completed.
In their efforts to make chairmaking more accessible, Alexander Brothers in Virginia now offers steambent arms and armbows that will work with all the armchairs in “The Stick Chair Book” (a free download) and the Hobbit chair in The Stick Chair Journal No. 2.
You can get the bent components in red oak or cherry. And you can buy them individually or as a set. I recently purchased a couple armbows from them (at full retail, natch), and their work is as good as I could do. Read more and purchase the parts here.
Note: We do not get any royalty or compensation or consideration from Alexander Brothers. Like them, we are just trying to remove the barriers to chairmaking.
So if you have a big old comb-back chair on your wish list, but you don’t have a steambox, your work just got a lot easier.
Thanks here to Shea and all the people at Alexander Brothers. Good people.
— Christopher Schwarz
One of the chair designs that uses this armbow and comb.
South Arts, a nonprofit regional arts organization that supports artists and organizations, is now accepting applications for its FY26 Emerging Traditional Artists Program (ETAP).
“This program recognizes and supports a new generation of traditional artists that have demonstrated a high level of skill in, commitment to, and leadership in their traditional art form. Artists must reside in anAppalachian Regional Commission-designated County in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee. Awards provide financial support to ETAP participants to ensure the continuation of traditional knowledge and artistic skills within their cultural communities.”
ETAP artists receive $5,000, and participate in workshops to further their education and opportunities.
ETAP “advances the purpose of the In These Mountains initiative to ‘provide intergenerational opportunities to share, teach, learn, preserve, document, and carry forward the folk and traditional arts and culture of Central Appalachia.’”’ For emerging traditional artists who have demonstrated a commitment to their artform and community and exhibit a high skill level, this award will provide resources for learning opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible.
