Due to a software failure some customers who ordered “The Anarchist’s Design Book” have not yet received their pdf of the book.
First off: Apologies. Our store software says it has sent it out to everyone. Our store software is a dirty liar.
If you have placed an order for the book but have not received the pdf, here’s the quick fix: Send an email to help@lostartpress.com. Please give us the name or email you used to place the order so we can find it.
NOTE: If you don’t see your comment below that’s because we have sent you the pdf and removed the comment so spambots won’t get your email. Check your email! Please don’t post your comment over and over and over….. Thanks!
We sold more than 1,000 copies of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” in about 20 hours yesterday. We don’t know who will get the last of the personally autographed copies – it sold about 4 a.m. Plus we have no way of knowing exactly where the cut-off point is, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait for your answer in the mail.
The good news is that all remaining copies sold through the Lost Art Press store will come with a hand-signed letterpress bookplate.
The other good news: We’re holding a book-release party for the book at 7 p.m. on March 12 at our new headquarters: 837 Willard St., Covington, KY 41011. The party will be after the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event closes at Braxton Brewing, a 10 minute walk away.
There will be some beer and maybe pizza. If you are extra thirsty, you might consider bringing some local something to share. We hope to have all our books and some special T-shirts, too. Oh, we’ll also have the original plates for the book on display. If you’ve never seen real copperplate etchings, I think you’ll be impressed.
Because of Covington fire codes, space is limited. We don’t want our first event to be our last.
As a result, we ask you to RSVP using this non-offensive and easy form. Please be certain you are coming before you RSVP. If you sign up but don’t show up, we’ll post your picture next to the cash register with the bad checks we’ve received.
Sorry for all the storefront posts. I’ll be back in the shop tomorrow to build chests and such.
Several people have asked where the idea came from to buy a storefront in Covington, Ky., and move our business and lives there.
The answer is the building above. It’s at the corner of Pike and Madison streets, the commercial center of the city. My wife’s family owned the Grote Drug store there — plus the Super D pharmacy down the road. My mother in law worked there. My father in law. My wife. And many of her relatives going back to the point where the names are unfamiliar to me (even after 23 years of marriage).
Like many businesses in Covington, the bottom fell out as commerce moved to suburban Florence. The family drugstores closed. And the family lost everything.
That event, while terrible, also instilled in Lucy a sense of financial levelheaded-ness and an acumen for revenge.
How could I not fall in love with that?
Though we’ve always been writers with lame salaries, we never went into debt. And when our kids grew up, we resolved together to move to Covington and run our business there. Completing the circle.
We’ve been looking for a building for four years — this wasn’t a lark. And when we toured the Blaze at 837 Willard St. We knew. We put in an offer that same day.
And now the hard part begins — making it our final nesting place.
I’m typing this while covered head to toe with grime at Braxton Brewing, the brewery down the road from us. And as I walked here with a mighty thirst I passed a lot of other people with the same idea that we had. Tech startups. Design firms. Artist studios. And the stores that survived the crash (thank you Klingenberg’s hardware).
We hope you can stop by sometime after we open in March and get a small taste of this up-and-coming city.
You can now place a pre-publication order for “The Anarchist’s Design Book” in the Lost Art Press store. The price is $47, which includes free domestic shipping.
If you order before Feb. 15, 2016, you also will receive a pdf download of the book. (After you check out you will receive a follow-up email with a link.) Also, the first 1,000 copies that we sell will be personally autographed. The book is expected to ship at the end of February, weather and factory schedules permitting.
“The Anarchist’s Design Book” is 456 pages that are sewn for long-term durability. The book is 8″ x 10″, casebound and sheathed in thick hardback boards that are covered in cotton cloth. We’ve also painted the edges of all the pages with a black paint to protect them from moisture and damage – a detail common on early books.
Like all Lost Art Press books, “The Anarchist’s Design Book” is produced and printed entirely in the United States.
What’s the Book About? Most of the American furniture we celebrate as the pinnacle of design is overbearing, over-embellished and a monument to waste and excess.
It also represents the furniture of people you probably dislike.
These high styles of furniture took hold in North America in the 18th century and persist to this day as both cult objects for collectors and as rites of passage for artisans. These are precious pieces that are auctioned, collected, reproduced and written about in exhaustive detail.
Or, to put it a slightly different way, the people who could afford this furniture also owned mega-farms, factories and (sometimes) entire towns. This is not a knock on their wealth. But it is a simple way of asking a question that rarely gets asked among amateur makers: Why would you want to imitate the taste of your boss’s boss’s boss?
“The Anarchist’s Design Book” is an exploration of furniture forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years.
There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for almost 1,000 years that don’t get written about much. They are simple to make. They have clean lines. And they can be shockingly modern.
This book explores 11 of these forms – a bed, dining tables, chairs, chests, desks, shelving – and offers a deep exploration into the two construction techniques used to make these pieces that have been forgotten, neglected or rejected.
You can build an entire houseful of furniture using these two methods – what we call “staked” and ”boarded” furniture. They are shockingly simple for the beginner. They don’t require a lot of tools. And they produce objects that have endured centuries of hard use.
But this isn’t really a book of plans. “The Anarchist’s Design Book” shows you the overarching patterns behind these 11 pieces. It gives you the road map for designing your own pieces. (Which is what we did before we had plans.)
All 11 pieces shown in the book are hand illustrated by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, who produced full-page copperplate etchings that were then hand printed. And there are monkeys.
Note: We do not yet have a complete list of retailers that plan to carry the book. We do know that Classic Hand Tools will carry it in the United Kingdom. When other retailers sign on, we’ll let you know here.
i can’t see myself at thirty i don’t buy a lacquered thirty, caught like flies preserved for tomorrow’s jewelry again
I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is the spot where I will die someday – tools in hand, God willing.
Today Mike and I almost completed installing the underlayment for the new shop floor. We have just one more sheet to install, but it’s a tricky one. As we were shimming things up, the room filled with the sound of a big diesel engine.
The dude was here to help remove the sign from the exterior of our building.
While dispatching the sign took only 35 minutes, it was a significant psychological step for me. Neighbors gathered to watch the purple plastic “Blaze” sign come down in pieces. And with the sign gone, it finally felt like it was our building.
Today I also received shipment of our solid-oak flooring – 54 bundles of the stuff. It will acclimate in the new shop for a week before installation. Then the guys at Lovell’s Hardwood Flooring will do the rest. And thank goodness. I have to start building two tool chests starting Saturday.
— Christopher Schwarz
i can’t see myself at thirty i don’t buy a lacquered thirty, caught like flies preserved for tomorrow’s jewelry again
Due to a software failure some customers who ordered “The Anarchist’s Design Book” have not yet received their pdf of the book.
You can now place a pre-publication order for “
