A friend recently took a furniture design course taught by a guy I’ll call Mr. Famous Furniture Maker. During the class there were lectures, field trips to find inspiration, drawing lessons, scale model-making and critiques.
“Well,” I asked my friend, “how was the class?”
“Great,” he replied. “Now I know how to design furniture that looks exactly like Mr. Famous Furniture Maker’s pieces.”
This is, of course, one way to learn design. But not everyone wants to become a Junior Sam Maloof or James Krenov the VIII. Some woodworkers just want to make a side table, dry sink or tater bin that is well-proportioned and pleasing to look at.
One excellent path to learn design has been blazed by Jim Tolpin and George Walker, who have written a series of books that teach design using artisan geometry and whole-number ratios. During the last 11 years, we’ve edited all of Tolpin and Walker’s books for Lost Art Press and deeply appreciate that their approach is style-agnostic and crystal-clear.
This book, “Principles of Design,” is an excellent and complementary approach to Tolpin and Walker. It was first published in 1916 under the title “Industrial Arts Design” and written by William H. Varnum (1878-1946). We renamed it “Principles of Design,” which is a far more apt title.
Varnum, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, was the author of two important design books, plus some other works on setting up a curriculum for shop teachers.
I own copies of all his works, but this one is my favorite. The book was written to teach shop teachers how to teach furniture design. And the book reads like the syllabus for an excellent college-level course in the fundamentals of furniture design.
Varnum lays out a series of step-by-step rules to guide the reader through the process of designing furniture, pottery and metalwork. It begins with function and form, of course. But it then delves into common-sense rules for dividing up a form both horizontally and vertically. These rules work. And once you read them and see the accompanying illustrations, I think you’ll say: “Of course.”
Varnum explains how to “enrich” the shape or contours of a design. Then how to enrich the surfaces. And there is an excellent section on using color.
Many of these rules have been embedded in buildings and furniture for centuries. Many of us know the rules innately. But Varnum puts them to paper in ways that allow us to use them to create new works.
“Principles of Design” was written during the waning years of the American Arts & Crafts movement, so the examples used in the book are gorgeous Craftsman designs and earlier traditional forms. Varnum’s rules apply to all furniture forms, but the austerity of the Arts & Crafts pieces in the book help make the use of his rules easy to comprehend and digest.
Bright paper plus stochastic printing make this book a pleasure to read.
Mechanical Specifications
The original printing of this book was gorgeous, so we sought to equal or exceed its specifications. The book is 7″ x 9-5/8″ and printed on #80 matte coated paper, which is a close match to the original. Because some of the details in the photos are dark, we chose a press that could do stochastic printing, which gives sharper detail. The book’s signatures are sewn together, backed with fiber tape and wrapped with heavy boards. The covers are wrapped in cotton cloth and printed in gold foil.
Like all our books, “Principles of Design” is printed in the United States. It is $41 plus shipping. We will offer this book to all our retailers worldwide, but it is up to them to carry it or not.
Note: We have printed only 3,000 copies of this historical text. Because space at our warehouse is at a premium, we do not plan on any future press runs of “Principles of Design.”
By the end of this week (assuming no more disasters), we should have a clutch of our new Exeter-pattern Furniture-maker’s Hammers for sale, as well as – finally! – “Principles of Design” (we thought we’d have it in June, but we’ve been bedeviled by cover problems at the bindery).
“Principles of Design” is our title for a reprint of “Industrial Arts Design” by William H. Varnum. It was first published in 1916 to help train industrial arts instructors to teach design. The book deals with furniture, ceramics and metalwork. All three crafts are regulated by the same rules laid out by Varnum in absolutely crystal-clear detail.
If you’ve been building or studying furniture for a while, there are some of these rules you know by instinct but not by conscious thought. By laying out his simple principles, Varnum makes the basic design process rational and not regulated by the dark arts of inspiration or creativity.
In many ways, Varnum’s rules prepare you for creative leaps. Here, he says, are the rules established by hundreds of years of furniture making. You can work within this comfortable envelope, or you can deliberately step outside his guidelines.
His approach is compatible with George Walker and Jim Tolpin’s writings on design. In fact, many of their ideas from “By Hand & Eye” (such as whole-number ratios) integrate easily with Varnum.
So keep an eye out for those two new offerings later this week.
And keep an eye out in early November (barring printer delays) for my book, “Dutch Tool Chests.” It will be available directly from us (yes, we will have signed copies), and we hope from our retail partners (as always, it is up to them whether or not to carry a book). In the meantime, here’s a taste of what’s inside, excerpted from Chapter 5: Dados. Below is my favorite way to cut them, though I offer other options in the book, including some that – GASP! – use electricity.
– Fitz
Saw With a Fence My preferred way to cut a dado is with a crosscut saw, followed by a chisel and a router plane to clean things up. With just a little experience, it’s easy to nibble your way back on the layout line with a crosscut saw to cut a shallow kerf. Once the kerf spans the board, you can use that kerf to guide the tool as you saw more aggressively down to the baseline.
If this is your first dado, or if you’re not yet comfortable sawing to a line, you can use a fence to help guide you. (Again, one of the skids can come in handy for this purpose – or any other piece with a straight edge that is no longer than the width of the side; otherwise, your saw handle might run into it.)
Clamp the fence down along your layout line (clamping the workpiece down simultaneously), with the waste to the inside. And here is why I like a 0.5mm pencil: if you use a fat pencil, the range of where across the line’s width to clamp is too great. A 0.5mm pencil is the perfect size for covering about half the line, leaving just enough of it to show along the edge of the fence. (If you can’t see the line, how do you know you’re sawing the line?) Make sure to arrange the clamps or holdfasts so that they aren’t in the path of your saw. Or your knuckles.
Here, I’m sawing the first side of the dado with a fence and block to guide the saw, and to help keep the cut perpendicular to the side. The goal is to cut a square dado.
Now grab your crosscut saw (backsaw or handsaw – it doesn’t matter much when you have a fence) and push the plate against the fence with a flat-sided block of wood held in your off-hand. If the block of wood is long enough, you can simply hold it in place to help keep the plate at 90° to the workpiece as you saw. With a shorter piece, it helps to move the block in tandem with the sawplate. Saw down to your baseline – and check to make sure you’ve hit it on the far side, too. Then lift the saw at a slight angle and make a few short cuts to deepen the center of the kerf. It’s possible you’re sawing below the baseline there … but more likely you’re removing waste in the middle that you missed. Either way, you’re making the waste easier to remove.
Here are the marks after I’ve removed the shelf.
Do not move the fence. I repeat: Do NOT move the fence.
Grab your shelf board and match up the marriage marks on the shelf to the mark on the side piece. (Both should be on the front edge and facing up.)
Press the shelf to the fence – on the waste side of course – and pencil a mark at the front and back edge. If the board is rocking at all, press it tight at one edge and make the mark, then rock it to press tight at the other edge and make a mark.
If the board rocks against the fence, or touches only at the edges, that’s OK. By marking only at the edges, you’re laying out the second dado wall for a tight fit.
Now you can remove the fence.
To cut the second dado wall, you’ll need to approach the work from the other side to keep your hands in the right place for ease of sawing. So if you can’t access your bench from both sides, turn the workpiece 180° before clamping the fence in place to the lines. As before, cover as much as possible of the lines, leaving just a hairsbreadth showing in the waste.
Set up, and ready to saw the second dado wall. Note that the waste is to the inside of the fence.
Double-check that the waste is to the inside of the fence, and that your clamps or holdfasts are far enough to the side so as not to impede your sawing. Now triple check. All good? OK – saw as before.
If you’re making a two-bay chest, go ahead and saw the walls of the second dado the same way. If you used the method above, I’ll bet after two cuts you’re already sick of that fence. And if you’ve made four cuts (for two dados), you’re definitely sick of that fence.
Saw Faster (No Fence) Now, you might be worried about messing things up without the training wheels of a fence – but if you’ve cut a dado or two, trust me: You’re ready to just saw. And (most) mistakes can be fixed.
Start with just the end of the saw – no more than an inch or two – on your layout line and take small bites as you work back along the line, blowing away the dust as you go so that you can see the line. Continue to gently nibble and blow for good results.
Raise the toe of the saw and use it to nibble along your layout line. Once you’ve cut a kerf all along the line (at which point the line should have disappeared), put the full plate in the shallow kerf and use the kerf to guide the tool as you cut to the baseline.
Once you’ve cut a shallow kerf across the entire board, drop the sawplate into the kerf and use it to guide the tool as you saw more aggressively down to the baseline. Do your best to keep the saw perpendicular to the work.
Once you become comfortable with that method, you can go faster still by starting the cut the same way as above, but lowering the saw into the kerf and taking longer and longer strokes to deepen the cut all the way across, using your first, nibbled kerf to guide you. (You’ll reach the baseline more quickly at the far side, so adjust your stroke as required to reach full depth all the way across.)
Note that sawing without a fence – and doing it aggressively – is easier with a backsaw because the back, or spine, help to keep the cut straight. But most backsaws have smaller teeth than a handsaw (a saw without a spine), so if you’re feeling both brave and in a hurry, grab a crosscut handsaw.
Now let’s say you started sawing without the training wheels. How, then, to mark the second wall of the dado? You could measure and mark, but that’s more likely to introduce error than simply holding the shelf in place on the waste side of the kerf, and marking at each edge of the board. Align the shelf so it just covers the full width of the kerf (you’ll be able to see it on the edge). Align it at the other side to make the mark there (just in case the shelf is not dead flat). Then use a pencil against a combination square to connect those lines.
For a tight fit on the dado, cover the full kerf with the shelf as you mark at each edge to locate the second wall.
Saw again – this time cheating just a hair toward the waste on the inside of your line. This will likely result in a dado that is too tight – but there’s a fast an easy “fix” that all but guarantees a nice, tight dado. I almost always shoot for too tight.
With all the kerfs cut on one side, you can show it to the other side and use a marking knife in the kerf to transfer the location to the interior of the second side (check those marriage marks!). If you marked the layout on both at the same time, check that your cuts on the first side match up to the lines on the second side. If not, erase the layout lines, transfer the new location and re-mark.
Here, I’m carefully aligning the two side pieces for a two-bay chest to ensure that my layout lines are in the right place on the second side. Note that I’m aligning the dovetail baselines, not the bottoms of the sides. Theoretically, the baselines and bottoms will both align perfectly. In reality, they might not. The shelf should be level after assembly – and aligning the baselines helps to ensure it is.
I prefer to put the two front edges together as I do the above, simply because that means the marriage marks are touching, and it’s easy to tell you have things facing the right way (at least, until you butt the boards together and can no longer see the marks).
Now saw the dado walls on the second side, same as before (or, if you used a fence on the first side, try it without now!).
Bash Out the Waste With the walls cut, we’re ready to remove the waste between them, down the baseline.
Grab the widest chisel you have that will fit between the dado walls. (A 3/4″ chisel is in theory the perfect size; in reality, you might need a narrower chisel. Especially if you cheated the cut toward the waste maybe a little too much.)
I don’t know if this is a 3/4″ or 5/8″ chisel, and I do not care, I just know it fits nicely between my dado walls.
Hold the chisel flat to the work (bevel up), about halfway or a little farther down into the waste, and knock out as much as you can across the width. Repeat, this time just above the baseline. (You might be able to get it all out in one go, depending on the wood species, dado depth and your tolerance for fear.)
First, work bevel up. And note how the workpiece is jammed against a secure board, which pushes the workpiece to the edge for easy access and moving. This allows you to do this work more quickly than clamping the workpiece.
Flip the piece and work in from the other edge. You might be able to reach the middle with your chisel bevel up for all the work. But if you can’t, flip the chisel bevel down to remove the remaining waste in the middle. Bevel down is faster, but the tool wants to dive in more deeply in that orientation, so stay alert.
If there’s a hump in the middle you can’t reach, work bevel down to remove it.
Get close to the baseline with the chisel. Or, finish the dado with chisel cuts if you like, taking small bites at full depth for a clean dado floor. But it’s easier to get a nice, smooth bottom by using a router plane. Use the baseline to set the router plane blade to the final dado depth. Make sure there are no chips under the plane’s sole, then simply zip out the remaining waste, working in from both sides so you don’t blowout as you exit the cut (blowout is never pretty).
A router plane is fun to use – and it cuts a nice smooth bottom in the dado.
Why not use the router plane to remove all the waste, lowering the blade with each pass? You can, but that’s a lot slower, and you miss out on mallet fun. Also, the router plane blade is more fussy to sharpen than a chisel – so I’d rather my chisel take the brunt of the waste removal.
This comb-back stick chair is designed for dining and working at a desk, though its back is leaned back just a bit more to add some comfort.
I’m offering it for sale for $1,500 via a random drawing. The price includes crating and shipping to your door anywhere in the lower 48 states of the U.S. Details on the sale are at the bottom of this entry. First, some notes about the chair.
The chair is made from American sycamore (seat, arms and comb) and dead-straight red oak for the legs, stretchers and sticks. The sticks are shaved and left octagonal. All the tenons are cut slightly proud and burnished. All the chair’s joints are assembled with animal glue, which is reversible, and wedged with hickory wedges selected for arrow-straight grain.
The seat is tilted 2.5°, with the chair’s back tilted 14.5° off the seat, making this a great chair for enjoying a meal or writing a letter. The seat is 17” off the floor, making it comfortable for most sitters. The chair is 40” tall overall.
It is finished in soft wax, a non-toxic finish we make here in the shop. The finish is not terribly durable, but it is easy to repair if you ever damage it. The finish lasts many years if you don’t abuse it, and the oil from your skin enhances it and adds to the luster. THis is a finish that looks better every year.
Like all my chairs, I make them as best I can, but most of the work is by hand. So you will find an occasional stray tool mark or tiny imperfection. These are not left intentionally, but they are the result of hand work.
This is my 19th chair this year.
How to Buy the Chair
The chair is being sold via a random drawing. If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Friday, Sept. 27. Please use the subject line: “Sycamore Chair.” In the email please include your:
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
If you are the “winner,” the chair will be shipped to your door. The price includes the crate and all shipping charges. Alternatively, the chair can be picked up at our storefront. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. You can get free patterns for this chair here.
In an article in “The Conversation,” researchers Rob MacKenzie and Richard Norby, with the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), shared findings from a recent study published in Nature Climate Change. Their question: How will trees respond to more CO2 in the future?
Their laboratory is a forest in Staffordshire, England. Their equipment, tall pipes that infuse the air with extra CO2. Their samples, 180-year-old English oak (Quercus robur).
“After we increased CO2 levels to what will be the planetary level in the 2050s, trees took more of it from the atmosphere and their wood production increased by 10%,” MacKenzie and Norby wrote.
Several FACE (Free Air Carbon Enrichment) experiments are happening around the world in an attempt to better understand which trees are more likely to thrive in the future. You can learn more about BIFoR FACE here. And you can watch a video about the BIFoR FACE facility here, and a more recent video about BIFoR FACE experiments here.
I’m headed to Virginia this weekend for a few days at Colonial Williamsburg where I’ll be studying, measuring and taking careful notes on all the details of a late 18th/early 19th-century Virginia blanket chest in the CW collection – a chest I’ll be replicating for the 27th Annual Working Wood in the 18th Century Conference, Jan. 23-26, 2025.
The 2025 Conference theme is “To Furnish a Town: High, Low, and In-Between.” At a glance – and that’s all I’ve had so far – I think this chest part of the “in between.” While it’s not a fancy piece, it likely wasn’t made for the least fortunate. I’ll use it as a stepping off point to discuss dovetails (surprise), blanket chests and painted furniture…and will discuss my presentations in more detail when I have more detail. The most difficult thing (other than standing on a stage and speaking to an audience) will, I think, be finding air-dried yellow pine boards wide enough to replicate this piece, which has overall dimensions of 22-5/8″ x 45- 1/2″ x 17-7/8″ – and I might not be able to (in which case I’ll call it a reproduction rather than a replica).
High-style work will be represented by renowned cabinetmaker and teacher Steve Brown, who will present the build of a Virginia cabriole leg dressing table, discussing its design and construction, as well as its relationship to New England examples. And by CW cabinetmakers Bill Pavlak and John Peeler who will trace the evolution of style and construction through the lens of fall-front desks and a drop-leaf dining tables (if you follow Bill and John on Instagram, you’ve seen some of what they’re working on for the conference…at least that’s my guess! And it’s making me anxious, as I’m itching to get working, too!).
Also presenting are CW joiners Brian Weldy and Ayinde Martin, who will demonstrate the sophisticated greenwood turning and joinery techniques from seemingly humble forms, and carpenter Matt Sanbury and others will show how logs were turned into lumber.
You can read more about the 27th Annual Working Wood in the 18th Century Conference and register (for in-person or virtual attendance) at the conference website.
