It’s difficult to believe that it has already been 10 years since John Brown died on June 1, 2008. It’s even more difficult to believe that his landmark book “Welsh Stick Chairs” is not in print.
With a little luck, we hope to have “Welsh Stick Chairs” in your hands in June 2018 for the 10-year anniversary of his passing. Today I uploaded the final files to our printer and they should start production on the book on Monday afternoon.
We hope to open pre-publication sales of the book next week. We’re still waiting on a couple elements of the print job to make sure we have the costs correct. We’re shooting for $27 to $29, which will include domestic shipping.
Note that we have the rights to distribute “Welsh Stick Chairs” only in North America. Not in Europe, the UK or – oddly enough – Wales. We’ve been told another publisher in the UK will be publishing a version for that market. But we don’t know when or what it will look like.
Ours will be printed in the United States on heavy and smooth coated paper. The signatures will be sewn for durability. And the book will be covered in heavy 100-pound Mohawk cardstock with a vellum texture. (We love Mohawk paper – it’s made with wind power.)
The dark blue cover will then be stamped with a matte silver foil. It’s going to look crisp and have a lot of nice textures.
When I was a kid, my family had a wide selection of “bathroom books.” These were books that had been taken down from the shelves on a whim and left behind on the shelf above the toilet, either because their contents were intriguing or seemed appropriate for a brief perusal. I remember a manual on grading gravel roads, a book of palindromes and, most memorably, one called “The Art of Chindogu.” Chindogu, as I learned over many short reading sessions, is the Japanese art of the unuseless (yes, unuseless) invention. These creations either fulfilled a need or solved a problem, with the catch that the solution was often overbuilt, silly looking or impractical.
What I grew to like about chindogu was the enthusiasm and professionalism with which the wacky, hyper-specialized or odd inventions were pursued by their inventors. Each one was (somewhat) professionally manufactured and photographed, despite being prototypes that were never meant to be sold. They seem like a byproduct of the design process – sometimes, pursuing something niche, unprofitable or outlandish can teach us a lot about our work that doesn’t fall to such an extreme.
And so, I spent last weekend with Narayan Nayar and Daniel Clay in a coopering class at Tillers International learning to make a handled bucket, called a piggin, despite having no need or particular desire to begin producing buckets or barrels.
Don’t get me wrong – the world still needs coopers and new barrels. Our teacher, Eric Edgin, makes vats and barrels for food fermentation. Just last January, Eric traveled to Japan to learn more about the art of soy sauce vat making. Coopering is also full of clever solutions to unique problems. Coopers have a wide range of woodworking tools and techniques that are at once specialized and widely applicable.
One of Eric’s fermentation vats, made during his trip to Japan. Photo by Narayan Nayar.
But coopering is what I would call an unuseless skill for my work. I don’t plan to make barrels, buckets or piggins any time soon. It was fun to make a bucket entirely by hand, with only a few sharp tools, but the work in no way resembles my own.
The solutions that coopers have found to their particular set of problems, however, are likely to impact or inform the way I do a few things in the shop. The use of a stationary jointer plane, to which one brings the workpiece, makes a lot of sense when tuning the edges of beveled and tapered parts. The “clapper gauge” is really a specialized style of sector, which accurately measures the outer angles of a stave against a desired diameter. The shavehorses used are familiar looking, but the use of a “belly” is common, as are all sorts of clever body mechanics and workholding.
Just like I was looking for an excuse to study something outside my usual practice, I was also looking for a reason to head to Tillers International. Located outside Kalamazoo, Mich., Tillers runs what I call a friendly “Robin Hood” non-profit model. The school teaches classes on woodworking, metalworking and all manner of skills for traditional homesteading and farming to those who can pay for them. Then, Tillers use that money to teach those same skills to those who cannot afford to pay for these classes. The organization has worked with people across the globe and is explicitly dedicated to improving the lives of people in rural areas worldwide, by teaching them skills they can use to be self-reliant and independent. This makes the act of paying a sum of money to learn to make buckets all the more sweet – it’s definitely going to a good cause.
It was a joy to spend time in a beautiful place with good friends, honing my bucket-making skills. I did not walk away a cooper – but I did walk away a furniture maker with a few new tricks. These skills may take some time to come about as a need in my work, but sometimes, a little inspiration from a bathroom shelf or an age-old vessel-making tradition is just the kind of inspiration or enrichment you need. Who knows? Maybe I’ve got a few round cabinets in me.
(From left) Me, Eric Edgin, Narayan Nayar and Daniel Clay with our brand-new buckets.
I am off to Charleston, S.C., for the rest of the week to help settle my father’s estate and clean out his house. So I won’t be posting much on the blog, if at all.
In my absence, I give you this embarrassing reading of the poem from “Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding.” It always takes me a little time to get any perspective on my own work. This book seems to be an unusual combination of deep and difficult research with Cheeto jokes. I can say at this point that the printing job is spectacular. And the paintings that Suzanne Ellison dug up for the book are worth the price of admission.
The poem is an exhortation on the sort of woods that are appropriate for a workbench. The audio was recorded and edited by Brendan Gaffney. The plates are from from M. Duhamel’s “de L’exploitation des bois.”
My daughter Maddy is ready to start shipping our latest round of stickers. They come in sets of three for $5 cash, or you can buy them through her etsy store.
Maddy graduates from The Ohio State University on Sunday and in August will move to New York for some secret research job that involves developing vaccines for infectious diseases.
While she’s saving the world from the Infectious Lizard Butt Syndrome, she has also happily agreed to continue fulfilling sticker orders.
This might sound corny, but I think she kinda likes the notes, photos and stickers that readers send her. She has decorated her apartment with some of the stickers and photos. So thanks – y’all have been right nice.
Here are details on the three stickers.
A “Disobey” sticker a la Shepard Fairey designed by Jason Weaver. Jason has published this design on a T-shirt and says that he will be offering those shirts again. I really dislike looking at myself, but Jason did such a clever thing with this image that I forgive him.
A detail of the cover of “From Truths to Tools.” This image is an homage to William Blake’s “The Ancient of Days” by Andrea Love.
An image from “Ingenious Mechanicks” featuring my personal motto: Experto Crede.
A few people have noted the disparity of having a “disobey” sticker in the same group as a “experto crede” sticker. We do this because Carl Jung.
These are quality 100 percent vinyl stickers. They will survive the outdoors – heck you could put one on a street sign. Want a set? You can order them from Maddy’s etsy store here. They are $6 delivered ($10 for international orders).
Or, for customers in the United States, you can send a $5 bill and a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) to my daughter Maddy at:
Stick it to the Man
P.O. Box 3284
Columbus, OH 43210
As always, this is not a money-making venture for me or Lost Art Press. All profits help Maddy escape Ohio for New York without selling her (boyfriend’s) plasma.
I recently purchased a No. 5 Mt. Lebanon Shaker rocker that was in need of a new seat and back. I have done a few woven-tape seats in the past; it is pretty easy work and kind of fun. One thing that I had not tried previously was a proper stuffing bag that is sandwiched between the tape layers. The modern solution is to use a piece of foam. This is quite alright and works perfectly. Just something about putting a piece of foam in a 120+-year-old chair seems wrong.
On my last trip to Hancock Shaker Village I measured and photographed two of the chair stuffing bags preserved in its collection. One was stuffed with straw, the other had two layers of old quilt inside. Stuffing bags have been documented with wood shavings, horsehair and cotton stuffing. Another thing that was cool is they were made of scrap fabric that was machine-stitched together. Some of the pieces had traces of hand stitching that had been cut loose. These were probably remnants of old clothing.
Making the bag is pretty simple. The main part is the size of the inside of the seat frame with an extra 4″ tacked to the edges that glue to the seat rungs. I used some cheap cotton muslin and an old shirt that had shrunk while hanging in my closet.
After sewing the perimeter of three sides, the bag was stuffed full of straw and then the fourth side was sewn shut.
A thin skim of hide glue holds the bags in place. The seat weave goes over the bags. When complete, the bags are completely hidden.
After sewing the perimeter of three sides, the bag was stuffed full of straw and then the fourth side was sewn shut.
