Lost Art Press

Frank Lloyd Wright and Fay Jones

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This is uncomfortable for me to admit, but here goes. When I was a kid I was so enamored with Frank Lloyd Wright that I would wear a cape around the house as I built Prairie-style homes using wooden blocks, Legos and my sisters’ books.

The cape, which I still own, was from my first Halloween costume – Superman. I’ve since been Batman-tized.

I must admit that I’m not particularly a fan of Wright the person, Wright the builder (I’ve been to Fallingwater) or Wright the furniture designer. Then why the heck did I wear that cape for so many years?

I am a fan of how Wright turned architecture on its side to produce a style that was adapted to the Midwestern landscape. His low-slung Prairie houses look as if they grew, like corn, from the flats and rolling hills of the country’s midsection.

My introduction to Wright was not through books or school or even popular culture. It was through osmosis and E. Fay Jones, who was one of Wright’s apprentices and an enormous influence on the 20th-century architecture of Northwest Arkansas.

Like Wright, Jones designed structures that were in harmony with the landscape. And the city of Fort Smith where I grew up is chock full of homes that Jones designed or heavily influenced – he was the dean of the architecture school at the University of Arkansas.

His buildings use native materials and are so well adapted to the landscape that you almost don’t notice them at first. You might see only a brown roof that is hiding on the side of a hill. You have to get right up on the house to understand it. Oftentimes, a Jones house is a private treat for the residents alone. Though the house might look like it was built into a hill, it offers astonishing vistas for its owners.

For me, it was Jones that sparked my interest in buildings and design. Through him, I learned about Wright. Then, after learning all I could about Wright, I put away the cape and retreated back to Jones.

I can remember the moment this happened. My sister Ashley was married in Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., which is Jones’s most famous structure. It’s a huge building of glass and wood inside a forest. When you are inside the chapel you feel as if you are simultaneously both inside and outside. It’s a weird and beautiful feeling that I have never had anyplace else.

As my first-born daughter spread rose petals down the aisle before the processional, I can remember looking up into the beams of the chapel, which were shrouded in darkness like the limbs of the tallest trees of the forest. It was both disorienting and exhilarating. And no, I had not been drinking.

This weekend I’m up in Oak Park, Ill., and as the sun started to set on Friday I happened to be near Wright’s home and studio on Chicago Avenue. For the most part, I think that this structure is one of the least impressive Wright buildings in Chicago. It looks like two buildings lumped together – a Shingle-style house Wright built while working for Louis Sullivan plus a rambling structure behind it that looks like a largish Prairie-style addition.

However, from the front, the Shingle-style section of the house was catching the failing light just right on Friday. And I could almost picture the guy at the front door with a cape and cane in hand.

— Christopher Schwarz

Bye-bye Beige

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This morning I braved the chill in a T-shirt (my nipples are now like drill bits) to fetch a couple boxes of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” from the Lost Art Press warehouse garden shed.

The shed, which was filled to the rafters in September, is now all-but empty. We are almost out of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” but I’m not stressed.

Next week a new shipment of the book arrives. The third printing will have an index from Suzanne Ellison, a few typographical corrections and some editorial tweaks that aren’t worth mentioning. But the biggest change will be the cover. The third printing will have a charcoal gray cover with lettering and image debossed in white.

We made this change because we wanted to differentiate between the pre-index and post-index printings. Plus, I’m an endless fiddler.

Still, it’s a bit sad to burn through the last few boxes of the beige books – I think it’s a good-looking cover.

If you are waiting to purchase a copy with the index bound in, I’ll post a notice when we start shipping the gray book – it should be next Friday or so.

In other Lost Art Press news: The design work on “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee is in full swing. That book will go to the printer before the end of the year and be on sale in January.

Matt Bickford’s “Mouldings in Practice” is about to head into design. An outside editor is finishing his tweaks to Matt’s verbiage and we are now converting the hundreds – yes, hundreds – of drawings to a publishable format.

And on the first Roubo volume: There have been a couple delays because of a personal issue with a member of the team – not Don Williams, by the way. Lots of work is being done, but I don’t have any dates to report at this stage. I am as eager as you to read this.

There is lots more to report, but I’ve got to get to the Post Office with this morning’s load of orders.

— Christopher Schwarz

This Board May Well be Left Out

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Some readers are sure I was a little drunk when I designed the lower sliding till of my tool chest. Why didn’t I allow the lowest till to slide all the way forward? Heck, all I had to do was lower the wall of the sawtill an inch.

When researching tool chests for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” there were several features I saw on old chests that I considered adding to mine.

1. Putting a hinged lid on the top sliding tray. Why didn’t I do this? I had a lid like this on my first chest and disliked it. Horizontal surfaces get covered with stuff – particularly in a shop with several woodworkers. I was always cleaning off the lid to get to the tools below. So I nixed this lid.

2. Putting a sawtill on the underside of the lid of the chest. Why didn’t I do this? I have a sawtill on my old chest and am ambivalent about it. That particular sawtill – based on Benjamin Seaton’s example – likes to eat the horns of nice saws for breakfast. Plus I really wanted that space for my sliding trays.

3. Adding a sliding panel or door above the well of bench planes. This feature appears in many old chests and is touted as a way to protect your bench planes and to have a shelf in the chest to hold items overnight, such as your shop apron.

That sounds reasonable. So I built it.

And that is why the lowest tray of my chest doesn’t slide all the way forward. I built a nice raised-panel door and hinged it to the wall of the sawtill. The door came to rest on the lowest runners and acted as a stop for the lowest tray.

It looked clever on paper but it was immediately obvious that the door was a dumb thing. It impeded the travel of the trays above and added more hand motions for me to get to the bounty at the bottom of the chest.

So I removed the door.

Why didn’t I remake the guts of the chest to allow the lower tray to slide all the way forward? I’ve always meant to do that. It would be a quick fix – all of the chest’s interior parts are fit with friction and nails. But I haven’t felt the need. I simply keep the lowest tray at the back and the other trays at the front – it works fine.

There’s a lesson here, really. In dealing with the woodworking public since 1996 I can report that we like to complicate things. We add features or decorative details more readily than we will take them away.

Resist the urge to add cupholders to your tool chest. Instead, first try taking things away from a design.

And if you have to be drunk to do something that crazy, then so be it. I won’t judge.

— Christopher Schwarz

Anarchy in the TX

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Of all the photographs of tool chests that have landed in my inbox since the summer, this one is my favorite so far.

Not because it’s a fairly faithful version of the chest I built from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” but because of the differences added by the maker, Jim Burton, an adjunct professor of art at the University of North Texas and a Libra.

Some of changes that Burton made are obvious: He built a sawtill in the lid for his bowsaw – a nice touch for an awkward-to-store tool. My solution was to break down the bowsaw into its components and store it in the drawer.

Other touches require a second look. He painted the inside rim of the chest’s lid. I wish I had done that; it frames the lid’s interior and makes it look more finished. Many of you will also clap your hands like you’re starring in “Romper Room” when you see what Burton did in the sawtill area inside the chest. Yes, he has a toggle for a backsaw. I remain too lazy/busy to do this myself. I just slide my backsaws between my panel saws, toe down. It ain’t elegant, but it is also inelegant.

Burton, who enjoys long bike rides and sci-fi movies, used white oak for the bottom boards of the chest, which is a smart move if your chest will ever encounter water – white oak resists rot quite well.

Thanks to Jim (and his wife who took the photos) for sharing photos of his chest. It takes guts to show your work in public.

— Christopher Schwarz