A quick note: Katherine has just posted about 32 jars of Soft Wax 2.0 in her store. You can read all about it in her etsy store.
Also, we have now boxed up all the special Anthe Lump Hammers, and we found we had a few extra to sell. You can visit our store here to read about them and consider purchasing one, which helps fund the restoration of our new building.
Derek Jones will be visiting from England and in our shop Aug. 2-4 to teach a class in building a cricket table. Tickets for this new class go on sale Monday, May 15, at 10 a.m., on our ticketing site.
Cricket tables range from the most basic stick variety to complex joined examples* that can only be resolved when you’ve broken free of 90° and square. In three days, Derek will help you break free as you use hand tools to create joints for tops and bottoms and all the pieces in between to build a version of this historic form.
Derek – an outstanding teacher – runs the Lowfat Roubo site, where he sells tools and offers courses in the U.K. He is currently working on a book on the cricket table form for Lost Art Press, due out late this year. He is former editor of Furniture & CabinetmakingMagazine.
* Derek is also teaching a week-long class in a complex, joined version Aug. 7-11, as well as a 2-day Focus on Handworks class Aug. 12-13, at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Franklin, Ind.
One of my earlier Gibson chairs. This one without a saddle.
Megan and I are now filming and editing a long-form video about how I build a Gibson chair, one of my favorite Irish chairs.
The video, which should be released late next week, will include a pdf of the full-size templates needed to build the chair, plus drawings for the simple jigs I use, plus a cutting list and sources for all the tools and equipment shown in the video.
The video will be $50 for the first 30 days it is on the market. After that it will be $75.
Gibson chairs look unusual to people at first. They are low and have a back that rakes at 25° – a shocking tilt angle. It might seem like a chair for sleeping, but I assure you it’s not. It sits very much like a comfortable comb-back chair. In fact, in Ireland, these are sometimes called “kitchen chairs” because they are used for eating in the kitchen.
My version of the Gibson is a little different than the originals (we hope to do a book dedicated to the chair sometime in the future). Like almost all traditional Irish chairs, Gibsons have a flat seat. The seat in this video will be saddled, both for looks and comfort. I don’t think the form really needs a saddle, but it does look like a more expensive chair.
I’ve also made a few other small alterations here and there to the chair that I explain in the video.
I’ve tried to make the construction process as accessible as possible. All the mortises are straight holes (no tapered joints), so you can use augers you already own. The tenons are made with plug/tenon cutters chucked in a cordless drill, which are cheap and easily available. (Or you can use a Power Tenon Cutter from Veritas, which I also show in the video.) There is no steambending. You don’t need a lathe or a shavehorse. Most of the work is at the bench or the band saw.
Like all our videos, this one will have no Digital Rights Management (DRM) nonsense. So you will be able to download the video and put them on any of your devices, including your phone, laptop and pad.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The next video will be on building my hobbit chair. I’ve convinced myself that it is different enough than Bilbo’s and I won’t be thrown into the fires of Mordor, which are filled with lawyers.
When I purchased our storefront here on Willard Street in Covington in 2015, I was certain of two things: 1) It was the final old building that I was going to bring back to life; 2) It would be the final resting place of Lost Art Press.
Until this month, I’ve never given more than 2 seconds of thought about what will happen to this company after John and I die. We’ll be dead, so we won’t care.
But this month, it looks like everything I wrote in the first sentence of this blog entry is incorrect. We have just purchased an old woodworking tool factory at 407 Madison Ave. in downtown Covington. This building housed the Anthe Machine Works, which made woodworking cutters from the time the company started in 1897 until it closed in 2019.
The first floor of the Anthe building behind the office. Note the lineshaft, which powers the elevator.
The building is a time capsule, with few modern improvements. Original floors, mouldings, elevator, windows, lineshaft and (yikes) toilets. It is a gorgeous space that is flooded with light. And it has no modern amenities.
The Anthe building has more than 5,000 square feet of space that is in need of preservation and restoration. And it is big enough that it now helps us see Lost Art Press as a multi-generational enterprise.
This building will allow us to bring our fulfillment operations here to Covington and have room to grow (if we want to). By June, all of our inventory will be on the floor of the Anthe building. And we will be able to mail out orders to customers with the same personal touch we bring to everything else we do.
We are thrilled by all this. But we are also a bit terrified.
In order to buy the building, we agreed to take on debt for the first time in our history. It’s not a huge loan. In fact, we will save money by transferring our inventory to Covington. But it is a debt.
More important is that we have taken on an obligation to this building, which is a historic structure with virtually no alterations. The storefront is all frame-and-panel woodwork surrounded by cast iron. The doors – all original. The trim around the windows? The original Greek key steel trim.
Though the building is in decent shape, it needs an almost endless amount of love. It needs a plan for its sensitive restoration. And it needs a lot of skilled help.
So this is the part of the blog entry where I do something I never wanted to do: show my ass.
The purchase of a huge building is something we’ve never done. And here is the other thing we’ve never done: ask for your help to restore it.
The first stage of restoring the Anthe building is to make the first floor a safe and comfortable working space. Plus maintain humidity levels to protect our books in inventory. That means we need to:
Add HVAC to the first floor (with plans for systems on the other two floors).
Pave the gravel drive to our loading dock to allow us to receive and send shipments.
Provide basic amenities. Offer a working bathroom. Add locks on doors that work. Fix the original stairs. Remove some modern “improvements” to the front office.
Get the freight elevator running.
The gravel drive that allows us to load in and out. This needs to be paved.
The building’s original freight elevator. We love it.
To help pay for these initial projects, we are asking for your help. We have four tiers of support, and each tier offers something useful or beautiful in return. You can purchase any of these tiers in our store now. Links below and here.
* A special one-week stick chair class in February 2024 here in Covington. This will also be a food tour as all your meals and drinks will be included. Together we’ll each make a stick chair (you’ll get to pick the design) from some premium wood (not bog oak – I don’t have enough; think maple, white oak, walnut). We’ll have nice lunches brought in to the shop. And we’ll go out every night to one of our favorite places in Cincinnati or Covington. Oh, and there will be a Sunday bluegrass night the evening before. The exact date will be decided by the six students, so it is a little flexible.
* Signed copy of “The American Peasant” made out to you when it is released in December
* Invitation to our Opening Day Party in early 2024
* Signed copy of “The American Peasant” made out to you when it is released in December
* Invitation to our Opening Day Party in early 2024
If you can help, thank you. If you cannot, we totally understand. Simply being a customer of Lost Art Press helps support and sustain our work.
In the coming weeks I’ll write more about the building and our plans for the future of Lost Art Press – beyond this current generation. I can tell you one thing right now: We would sooner give it away than sell it to a venture capital firm.
So if you have children, start feeding them a steady diet of Roy Underhill and Charles Hayward. We might need them here in Covington.
— Christopher Schwarz
The top floor of the Anthe building. Everything is original. And everything needs love.
The Pirate Map used by the Visitor (before aging with tea, water, dirt, crumpling and folding). The Tropics of Newport are to the east; flying pigs, muddy banks and Larry the Ferryman are on the north bank. The swine whales live near the ‘O’s on the river. The visitor’s skiff has passed the Licking River and is between the ‘R’ and ‘I’.
My internet service was out for a while and I wasn’t able to respond to the comments to Chris’ reading of “A Visitor Comes to Covington” or to the backstory of the book. Thank you for the many very kind comments.
I wasn’t sure how the book would be received. In the letter sent with the book my suggestion was to put it on a high shelf in the library, push it well to the back and put something heavy on it. Alternatively, it could be buried in the basement. Fortunately, the Stick Chair Badge Approval & Distribution Committee (Chris and Megan) liked the book and I heard there was a bit of teary-eyedness when each had read the book. I didn’t intend to make anyone cry but have to confess I got a bit of moisture around my eyes when Chris read the book.
Below is a photo of my last cat, Bunky Beanie Bronzini. He was a big and solid 15-pounder capable of herding me towards the kitchen when he thought I might be headed in the wrong direction. If he had lived another few years he would gained another name or two. This was his “No, absolutely not,” expression.