Lost Art Press

Category: Yellow Pine Journalism

My Willow Phase

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The unpleasant funny thing about visiting your family during the holidays is encountering your former woodworking self.

I’m in Charleston, S.C., with my dad this week and encountered my Late Willow Phase, a time during the 1990s when I was obsessed with rustic furniture. I had honestly forgotten about this phase (unlike my leather trousers phase).

For a couple years I drove around in my Volvo 240DL station wagon cutting willow switches out of ditches on the Westside of Cincinnati. I stored all these sticks in buckets in my shop, giving it an arboreal look. Using a drill and a tenon cutter, I made dozens of chairs, trellises, frames, anything you could fashion with sticks and tenons. It was my first pleasant encounter with bending green wood.

One Christmas we planned to visit my father in Arkansas. Lucy and I were broke, and my dad already owns everything he needs. So I took an afternoon to make this little footstool for him from a scrap of white pine and discarded willow switches from a chair project.

And here it sits today (I took it out on his porch for a photo). And for something that I threw together in a day, it’s not half-bad.

Phases can fade away or end abruptly. This one had its throat slit. One day I got a letter from a family that makes willow furniture with a bunch of photos of their beautiful pieces. The letter said: “We’ve seen your stuff. It sucks. This is what willow stuff should look like. Please quit.”

I did.

— Christopher Schwarz

Saddling the Dugout Chair (and a Cologne Request)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I tried to finish the seat of the dugout chair today in preparation for our open day tomorrow (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. – lots to do and see). But I was only able to squeeze in about 30 minutes of work as I was dealing with heavy construction out back with the Lost Art Press Horse Garage.

In any case, I’m trying not to make this seat too refined or precious. I want it to match the ruggedness of the chair. But I don’t want it to look sloppy. So I’m shooting for “done quickly and with purpose.”

This seat is made from the last significant chunk of Eastern white pine from Midwest Woodworking I own. I’m going to miss this stuff.

I don’t wear cologne (heck, I barely wear deodorant). But if someone could make a cologne that smells like Eastern white pine when it’s being cut, I would actually wear that scent. Of course, the scent would only really attract beavers and some bark-eating grubs. But oh well.

— Christopher Schwarz, editor, Lost Art Press
Personal site: christophermschwarz.com

A Redneck Woodworker, Minus the Accent

Posted on by Lost Art Press
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Photo by Narayan Nayar

A few years ago, a new neighbor stopped me while I was on a run.

“Hey, I know you. You’re Christopher Schwarz,” he said. “What are you doing here, visiting?”

No, I told him, I live here. Then he looked confused.

“I thought you lived in New England, what with the way you write, look and talk,” he said. And that’s when I looked confused.

Despite 11 years of writing blogs and 21 years of writing for woodworking magazines, I’m always amused by people who think they know me but have it mostly wrong. So to mark the launch of my personal website for my furniture work (check it out here), I offer you this concise summation of me.

Though I was born in St. Louis, Mo., I grew up in Arkansas on Wildcat Mountain and did all the things that redneck kids do: fishing every day after school, hunting, hiking, camping, blowing stuff up (we made our own napalm) and cruising in souped-up crappy cars. If I had my way, every meal would feature a combination of the following foods: grits, barbecue, brisket, fried chicken, biscuits, sausage gravy, cornbread, greens, smoked ham and anything from the other allied Southern cuisines – Cajun, Creole or lowcountry.

I don’t have an accent; my three sisters do. But I am Southern to the marrow and have spent the majority of my life below the Mason-Dixon line. I am comfortable with Southern politeness (false as it may be), Southern insecurities and our hyperbole.

I attended segregated public schools. The mascot for my high school was a morbidly obese Confederate soldier; our school song was “Dixie.” I refused to sing it at pep rallies or convocations and, like most Southerners I know, am disgusted by our shameful history of racism and slavery.

I left the South to attend college outside Chicago, thinking I’d find a more enlightened place. I was wrong, and the day after graduation I moved to Greenville, S.C. I don’t fit in up North.

I’m a redneck. I have a master’s degree, but I lack the Southern accent. I drive a pickup truck, but it’s a Toyota. I love the South, but I am at odds with the backward ideas sometimes peddled down here.

That’s about all there is to say about me, except for the things I’ve built, and the things I’ve written. And that (clearly, see above) I hate to have my photo taken.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Beard is Not Enough

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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So this week I sat down with my image consultant and he had some harsh words for me: “You need a ‘thing’ to set you apart from other woodworking bloggers, podcasters and television personalities.”

I asked: “A thing?”

“Yeah. Charles Brock has that patchwork hat. Roy Underhill has his hat and suspenders. Scott Phillips has his similar hat and suspenders. Norm Abram – tool belt. David Mark has tattoos. Tommy Mac has his muscle shirts., and….”

I say: “I have a beard.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Unless your beard is equal to or greater than Peter Follansbee’s, then it’s just hardscrabble. Plus, he has cornered the market on the tie-dye T-shirt and shorts thing. So don’t even bring those up”

“Ugh,” I said. “What do you recommend?”

“You could wear a cape,” he suggested. “Maybe array tools on the interior?”

I countered. “What if it gets caught in the jointer or the table saw? That could be dangerous.” I paused. “Look, I don’t like to have my face appear on the blog or on video, what about a mask? Like a luchador?”

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The consultant had a good point: “In this day and age, dressing like a Mexican wrestler will get you excoriated by the liberals or deported by the conservatives.”

We locked eyes.

“Fancy wristwatches?”

“Mario Rodriguez.”

“Unusual fingernails?”

“David Charlesworth”

“A vicious temper?”

“I’m not touching that.”

“Large mammaries?”

“Look, I already said I’m not touching those.”

“Copious body hair?”

“Hmmm. How much body hair do you have?” the consultant asked. “Do you have to shave your back?”

“No. I pluck three hairs from my right shoulder,” I said. “Two from my left.”

“A huge afro?”

“Bob Ross.”

“Bob Ross is dead!”

“But Bob Ross’s afro is so awesome it has been retired.”

And that’s where my time was up with the image consultant. His recommendation: Mount a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to perform a statistically significant survey of what my gimmick should be.

Maybe a huge rodeo belt with a pterodactyl holding a carving gouge….

— Christopher Schwarz

The Critics Amuse Me, Part 1

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Aerial View - Garrison Ave. Fort Smith, AR

During almost every open day at the Lost Art Press storefront, someone asks the question: How do you endure the sniping, nitpicking and outright hostility toward your work? In response, I tell them one of six stories from my career in newspapers.

It started when Debbie, the city editor of The Southwest Times-Record, hung up the phone and called me over to her desk in the center of the newsroom.

That call, she said, was from the local Ku Klux Klan. They had called to complain about me.

The Southwest Times-Record is the newspaper in Fort Smith, Ark. I had grown up in Fort Smith, attended the segregated public schools there and left to go to college. That summer I had returned to work as an intern at the Times-Record and was assigned to write a history of segregation in the schools. Some of the local African-Americans who had been involved in lawsuits to desegregate the local schools were considering filing a new suit because the schools were de facto segregated again.

The Klan’s message was simple: Send the Jew ACLU lawyer writing these articles back to New York or we will shoot him. We know he leaves the side door of the newspaper every afternoon and drives a red Honda.

While the first part of the message was false, the second part was true. I left the office every afternoon, got into a red Honda and drove to the home where I grew up.

That day, I thought about leaving via another door. I remember that my hands were shaking as I gathered my stuff to leave work that day. But then I decided that if a group of heavily armed rednecks wanted me dead, there was little to do about it. For the rest of the summer I left the newspaper by the same door at my usual time.

So I have to say that on balance, a bunch of cranky old farts with keyboards and chronic back pain make me laugh.

— Christopher Schwarz