Category: Uncategorized

For the last couple months, I’ve been working on a new T-shirt design that combines the skep – a traditional beehive – with the tools of the woodworking artisan.

For many years, the skep was the symbol of the industrious joiner or cabinet-maker, and it shows up in woodworking books and on documents throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. (Read more about that here.) After fleshing out the idea with some preliminary sketches, I sent my ideas to Ohio artist Joshua Minnich, who designed our most recent shirt.

Joshua produced the fantastic logo you see above. In the coming weeks, we will offer this logo printed on T-shirts in a full range of sizes (XS to 3XL) and colors (gray, blue, red, black and orange). These will be available worldwide at a very reasonable shipping cost.

We are using American Apparel shirts, which are made in California, and the shirts will be printed in California. These shirts run a little tight, so we strongly recommend you order one size larger than typical. (Doing this does not mean you are fat; it just means you aren’t a skinny hipster.)

We’ll start selling these shirts as soon as we have our final printed samples in hand for photography.

— Christopher Schwarz

Lost Art Press hooded sweatshirts are now available for international customers with a reasonable shipping fee.

The mid-weight sweatshirts are made in the United States by American Apparel and the fit is a bit slim. So you might consider ordering one size larger than normal. The sweatshirts are available in sizes small to 2XL. We wish this product were made in larger and smaller sizes, but it is not.

All of our shirts are printed in California and shipped from there by a service that specializes in custom apparel. Because of the company’s volume, the shipping charge for international customers is reasonable – $10 to Canada and $11 anywhere else in the world.

You can order the sweatshirt here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Chris’s recent post about texture reminded me of this Japanese bowl that I have:

The bowl is extremely light in weight, which leads me to think that it is made from kiri (Royal Paulownia, Paulownia tomentosa). The finish is urushi, and I believe that it is tamenuri, which is “natural” urushi, without any dyes or pigments added.

The bowl is turned, and the surface texture is very rough, with substantial tear-out and other “defects.”

A view of the inside reveals what looks to have been an all-out assault with a scraper.

Here’s a close-up of an area with a lot of tear-out:

I find the bowl interesting, in that it appears as if its primary purpose is to highlight the limitations of our tools. The only place where the bowl deviates from that purpose is in its base, which is turned perfectly flat and smooth, like any other bowl.

– Steve Schafer

This week we have made a lot of changes to how we make and ship the things we sell.

First: All books now ship via FedEx’s SmartPost service. SmartPost uses FedEx to move our books across the country, and a local USPS carrier to take it the last leg to your door. The service is reliable, the packages are tracked and you can expect delivery in 5-7 days from when your order ships. We switched to SmartPost because USPS’s Media Mail service collapsed last fall during the holiday shipping season.

Second: We now offer international shipping to many countries on books and apparel. To be honest, shipping books internationally is crazy-expensive. You will be better off buying our books from one of our international retailers. However, sending apparel across the globe is actually quite reasonable. And that’s because….

Third: We have changed how we make T-shirts and hats. Until now we made T-shirts and hats in large batches that sat in John’s office until you ordered one. We had to print about 100 to 200 shirts at a time, and we usually lost our own shirts on the deal.

We now use a fulfillment service in California to print and ship our U.S.-made shirts and U.S.-made hats worldwide. The shirts are the same (American Apparel), as are the hats (Bayside). The print quality is better than we were getting in Indiana. They are in a wider range of sizes – XS to 3XL. And the packaging is fantastic.

So now when you order a shirt or hat from a store, our fulfillment service prints the shirt or embroiders the hat and sends it to you, anywhere in the world.

We will soon be able to offer many of our old T-shirt designs (and additional new ones) very easily with this service. So you should soon be able to get the shirt you always wanted.

Incidentally, we make these shirts and hats for fun, not for profit. We make almost nothing on apparel. So on that note, I’m headed back to editing some books.

— Christopher Schwarz

 

After an unholy amount of work by John, we are now offering international shipping to Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for all of our products.

Three things to keep in mind:

1. International shipping is expensive. It will always always be more economical for you to purchase books through our fine international sellers. We are using FedEx as our carrier. The rate you pay is what it costs. It is crazy expensive and there is nothing we can do about it (and still stay in business).
2. There will be a learning curve for us. International shipping is complex for a small business. We have tried to automate things as much as possible, but there will be bumps in the road for us and customers. Please be patient with us.
3. The best bet for international customers is to order T-shirts only. The shipping fees are fairly reasonable for shirts. Sending books overseas is nutty expensive.

So if you are international, check out the store. Most importantly, check out the T-shirts.

— Christopher Schwarz