Lost Art Press

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A Primer on Copyright for Those Living in the 21st-century Wild West

Posted on by fitz

Last week I wrote a blog post about my visit to the Wharton Esherick House, my last stop on a two-week work trip to the East coast. It was a job to find the place (I have it on good authority that they’re working on better direction signs); I was so over everything by that point in the trip that I nearly gave up and turned around to head home. Fortunately a kind driver stopped to set me straight at the final intersection, as my GPS had already told me I’d arrived. (I clearly hadn’t.)

My grumpiness dissolved as soon as I entered the office to buy a ticket for the house tour. I’ve long been a fan of Esherick’s woodblock prints and furniture. Now I was surrounded by stunning prints for sale, informative posters about the artist’s life and books about the man and his work. The Esherick House, essentially a work of sculpture in which the artist lived, has been on my top 10 pilgrimage sites since I first saw pictures of the place.

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The office and book store are located in this fantastical 1928 garage, one of the most potent antidotes to grumpiness I’ve ever encountered.

We should all know by now that it’s essential to get permission before photographing anything in a museum – and this includes house museums. Different places have different rules. The Cheltenham Museum (now known as The Wilson) told me it was fine to take pictures but not to publish them on a blog without express permission and payment of a fee. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House Museum in Hartford, Conn., permits picture taking for Instagram posts, while the neighboring Mark Twain House does not. (Major downer.) So I dutifully asked whether it was permissible to take interior and exterior photos at the Esherick House. The staff person said yes, and yes to posting on Instagram, but not for publication.

“Publication” is a tricky word in our time, not least considering that Instagram is a publishing platform in its own right. I knew I wanted to write a blog post about the place. Blog sites, contrary to what many imagine in our laissez faire “sharing” age, are no less subject to copyright restrictions than traditional forms of publishing on paper. So before writing my post, I contacted Julie Siglin, the executive director of the museum, to request permission, which she granted.

Bottom line: Ask before taking.

Yesterday evening I came in from the shop to find a message from Julie who was puzzled that my post had appeared on another site – with no credit to the original publisher or author – AND under another “author’s” name. I looked up the site, wrote to the purported author, told him to remove the post from his site and told him I was going to report him. While there, I noticed other posts he had taken from Popular Woodworking, so I notified the editors there. Then I read his disclaimer, excerpted below. I’m guessing that the owner of the site is not a native English speaker and that “Brandon Hamilton” is not his real name.

This immediately had me picturing a guy sitting at a kitchen table trying to come up with the most plausible name for a woodworker. What name says flannel checks and three-day stubble? 

For the record, Popular Woodworking blog posts do not fall into the legal category “public domain” any more than do those published here at Lost Art Press or on other blog sites that post explicit copyright notices. Even when something does fall into this category, it is illegal to put your name on it as the author when you did not create the content. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling the content or using it to generate any kind of gain (other than traffic to your site). You are breaking the law.

— Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work“

Disclaimer

All content images within our website are images that we take from various sources that we believe as “public domain”. Therefore all content images we display pure just to complement information from the picture we uploaded without any intent to we sell-buy, in violation of copyright or intellectual property rights, and a valid artistic. For those of you who feel as the legitimate owners of one of the images we display and didn’t want us displaying images valid belongs to you, please contact us through the Contact page and send us an email to follow up, be it delete images belong to you, or maybe you’ll give us maturity date where we can display content images. All content images that we display we only use properly without any intention of us to gain financially from one image or as a whole.

Thank you.

I Love Difficult Teachers

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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This is a tricky topic to discuss. Good teaching can resemble abuse – at least from the outside. But I don’t think that good teachers ever actually abuse their students. Instead, I found that my best teachers were both scrupulously fair and uncompromising. For me, as a student, that was the combination that worked.

During my first year at Popular Woodworking, I spent every free moment in the workshop. I’d blast through my editing duties during the morning, and by lunchtime I’d be helping out the other staff or working on my own projects. Jim Stuard, one of the junior editors at the magazine, was a long-time professional woodworker and had excellent hand skills. He was always in the shop. Naturally, I latched onto him like a puppy.

Jim took teaching seriously and imitated his German masters when it came to doling out instruction. When I screwed up, he yelled “You’re fired!” and would walk away. This happened almost every day. He wasn’t a fan of answering my 100 questions about why something was. He was just there to show me how to do it. How to get through the day.

And occasionally, he was there to open my eyes.

There are a few points in the craft where you feel like you have turned a corner. Jim offered me my first corner. I was cleaning up the edge of a circular Arts & Crafts tabouret, and Jim came over to watch my progress. I did my best, but Jim rolled his eyes, sighed and pushed me aside.

“See these?” he said, pointing to some machine marks I had completely missed. “These have to go.” He cleaned up one quadrant of the tabletop and put the scraper down.

“Do that,” he said. “That’s craftsmanship.”

I was grateful that he didn’t “fire” me that day. That tense exchange unlocked a keen awareness and sensitivity to surfaces that has only become stronger and more refined every year. That day started me down that path, and I am forever grateful for the kick in the pants.

Why am I telling you this?

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When I spent my two weeks at the Rowden Workshops run by David Savage, I was delighted to see that same sort of teaching style in evidence. The students were tasked with the impossible: Please do the work of a high-level professional. Right now. Right here. If they failed, they had to try again. David, like all good shop owners, was always there at the worst possible moment when you had really mucked something up. His staff was there to guide you to the solution.

I got to eat several meals with the students and listened to their begrudging admiration of the whole process. They were grumpy because they were always on notice. They were stressed because their work was constantly being evaluated. And they were wondering if the whole experience at Rowden was worth it – because we should all question our sanity at trying to make money at woodworking.

I thought about telling the students that they would get some perspective in time. They would see how much better they had become compared to other young woodworkers. But that’s like telling a teenager that life is short. They simply aren’t ready to receive the message. So why bother?

So I just listened.

If you would like a dose of this hard truth, salted with failure and seared with difficult trials, I recommend “The Intelligent Hand” to you. This book by David Savage contains the core ideals from Rowden, but without the hard looks or the glorious teatime. The print version will be released in mid-October. If you order it now, you will receive a pdf of the book (for free) at checkout.

Several friends who have read the book have sent me private messages, such as this one:

I opened up David’s book last night about 11:00 to take a quick look. Could not put it down til I got maybe 40 pages in. It may not appeal to everyone (though I think it will to most people) – but it is ***** awesome. My initial opinions are always tentative, but this is on a very very short list of best overall books on craft that I’ve ever opened.

Seriously.  It is incredible.

I can’t let myself open it back up til things settle here, because it’s a total black hole for my attention. But it really is the book I wish I could have written in another 20 years or so.   I met and liked David briefly last year – but I can understand exactly why you’re so taken with him. I truly cannot praise it enough. For ME, this is in the three or four best things LAP has done.

I agree. It’s very good.

— Christopher Schwarz

My Upcoming Classes in 2019

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I am teaching a few classes at the Lost Art Press storefront in 2019. I admit I’m a little gun-shy about teaching. I feel quite rusty as a teacher, and I am wary of classroom duties spiraling into a huge part of my life.

The year I quit teaching, I was on the road for 18 weeks and felt like a carney – unkempt, unshaved, grizzled, ragged out and a bit foul-mouthed. (So, not much has changed.)

Here is my completely sane schedule for the first half of 2019. Registration opens at 10 a.m. (Eastern time) on Oct. 12, 2018.

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Build a Staked High Stool
Date: Jan. 19-20, 2019
Location: Lost Art Press storefront
Link for registration and full description

This class is designed as an introduction to chairmaking (except for saddling the seat). It is a crash course in sightlines, resultant angles and how to manage all the compound-angle drilling without any math skills. Plus, you get to build this stool and experiment with shou sugi ban if you like.

Build a Staked High Stool
Date: Feb. 16-17, 2019
Location: Lost Art Press storefront
Link for registration and full description

Same class as above, except this class is in February, which is a very different month from January.

Build a Staked Armchair
Date: March 4-8, 2019
Location: Lost Art Press storefront
Link for registration and full description

This armchair was created for the forthcoming expansion of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” It is designed to be a class for first-time chairmakers. The only prerequisite is that you can sharpen your edge tools.

About the Storefront
We did not set out to teach classes at our storefront, but it turns out to be a nice environment for it. Class size is limited to six. Everyone gets a massive, well-equipped workbench. The bench room has oak floors, lots of natural light and is climate controlled. Students also are encouraged to explore our Mechanical Library during their downtime. We have a lot of rare and interesting woodworking books.

Just as important as the building is where it is located. We are one block off Main Strasse in Covington, Ky., a small city adjacent to downtown Cincinnati. You don’t really need a car during your stay. Hotels and restaurants are a short walk. And downtown Cincinnati is nine blocks away, where you can pick up the streetcar and get anywhere in the urban center.

Plus, if you bring your family, there is lots to do – the zoo, aquarium, children’s museums, multiple art museums and all the other amenities of a mid-size metropolis.

A complete list of classes from Megan Fitzpatrick, Brendan Gaffney and a few guest instructors will be coming soon.

— Christopher Schwarz

Design Curves Back in Stock

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Good news: We have 250 more sets of Design Curves in stock in our store. They are $37 a set plus shipping.

If you make chairs or curvaceous furniture, you’ll find these curves a nice addition to your tool kit. They are designed for woodworking – not drafting. Unlike drafting curves, ours don’t have the weird ink ledge, which is designed to prevent ink from smudging. The ink ledge also makes the curves less accurate (thank you, parallax).

Plus, ours are wood, not plastic. Well, actually they are a seven-layer bamboo ply (bamboo is a grass). They are durable, stay fairly flat and the world ain’t gonna run out of bamboo.

These curves are laser-cut here in Covington, Ky. Then I sand them on both faces to #220 grit to remove all the burn marks and dress the edges by hand to remove the extra carbon from the laser-cutting.

In other Crucible news, we are working on our next batch of lump hammers. We hope to have another group ready in the next week or so. Stay tuned for more news.

Also, if you have a question about Crucible Tool stuff, be sure to send it to help@crucibletool.com (not to Lost Art Press). We have different people managing each site, and we want to make sure we get your question answered promptly.

— Christopher Schwarz

‘Make a Chair From a Tree’ Streaming Video Now Available

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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We are pleased to announce that after years of work, revisions, agita and waiting, that you can now watch the great video “Make a Chair From a Tree” streaming on virtually any device.

The video, shot by Anatol Polillo, has been digitized and is available through our store for $25. When you order the video, you will be able to stream it to almost any internet-connected device. You also will be able to download it to watch it on your phone, tablet or desktop machine without an internet connection.

We offer this two-hour video without any Digital Rights Management (DRM), which means you will be able to play the file on any device without any passwords, keys or other inconvenience.

This video was based on the second edition of Jennie Alexander’s “Make a Chair From a Tree” book and includes many of the improvements she developed after teaching this post-and-rung chair for years.

The chair itself – what we call the “Jennie Chair” – is the most comfortable wooden chair I’ve ever sat in. And I say that as a chairmaker. The chair is made from an economy of both tools and materials. It really is an astounding piece of work.

In addition to the video, we have produced a packet of updated drawings that illustrate the important bits of the chair and the jigs that Jennie discusses in the video. You’ll receive a link to download the pdf at checkout. Or you can download these drawing here. These drawings are the latest and most accurate – we were working with Jennie on these up until her death in 2018. If you own a copy of the DVD, please feel free to download these updated drawings.

On a personal note, thanks to all of the people in Jennie’s life who allowed us to move forward with this important project, from Jennie’s heirs to her woodworking colleagues to her family, friends and caregivers. We think Jennie’s legacy and her influence on woodworkers will not end with her death. And that’s why we will offer this video and a third edition of the book “Make a Chair From a Tree” in the coming months. With any luck, there will be future generations of woodworkers who will be inspired by her simple (but elegant) designs and methods.

You can order the video here.

— Christopher Schwarz