We have more Crucible Type 2 Dividers in the warehouse and ready to ship. And we have another batch in the pipeline. Dividers are $120 plus domestic shipping.
Also, we have a second run of “The Family Tree of Chairs” letterpress posters in the works. These will be printed in glorious PMS 364 U (aka green). We hope to begin selling those in two weeks. The price will be the same. And we will reach out to our international distributors to see if they want to carry them. No promises – it’s up to them and not us.
The new cover cloth for “The Stick Chair Book.” We had to switch colors because one of our vendors stopped making the cloth we’ve been using for 14 years.
For the last 13 years, our books were printed on a reliable schedule. Five weeks after we sent a book to press, a semi would show up at my house (in a torrential rainstorm) with pallets of books for us to unload.
During the last 18 months, however, the printing industry has turned upside down. There are crazy paper shortages. Getting the cotton cloth we use for our hardcover books has become impossible. (Holliston stopped making it because it can’t get the raw materials.)
The pandemic is to blame in part. But U.S. printing plants were shutting down and consolidating before the first COVID cough.
What does this mean for Lost Art Press and y’all? Well, we are better off than most small publishers. We have long-term relationships with our printing plants, so we can still get time on press. But the big publishers are bullies, and they are first in line thanks to their fat checkbooks.
So the biggest change ahead is that our books will take longer to come out. In the olden days, “The Stick Chair Book” would be sitting in our warehouse right now. Today, we are negotiating to get it printed in October.
Other changes ahead: We’re going to have to change the cover cloth colors of almost all of our titles in the coming year. So some of our books will look different. We’re switching to more expensive cover cloth, but we hope to hold retail prices where they are. Also, some books will have to use a different paper (I can’t get 70# opaque at a decent price to save my soul). But again, we are opting to use better paper and eat the extra expense for as long as we can.
There are some quick solutions available to our problems. We could print overseas, switch to web-press printing for all our books, use perfect binding and softcover (which are easier and cheaper to do). We could also stop using cotton cover cloth altogether and switch to another cover material (rayon? vinyl?).
None of those solutions appeal to us. So instead, we’re going to keep on the same course. This might result in some books going out of stock for a month or two. And for that I apologize. We are going to do everything we can to stay fully stocked until the industry regains its balance, but I’m sure we’ll make some mistakes.
Sorry that this reads like an automotive recall letter.
I’ve just completed this comb-back stick chair in oak with a blue-green paint finish and am offering it for sale for $1,200 plus domestic shipping.
The chair is based on the Scottish Darvel chair, and it is designed for dining or keyboarding. The seat is 17” off the floor, and the back tilts at 15°. The overall height of the chair is just under 42”.
Construction features of this chair:
The stretchers are pitched low on the legs, giving the chair an old-school stance.
The legs are joined to the seat using tapered and wedged tenons. The more you sit on the seat, the tighter the joints become.
All joints are put together with hide glue, so the chair is easily repairable by future generations.
The arm and comb are steambent oak with no short grain.
The oak seat is gently saddled by hand, like many vernacular chairs.
All surfaces are finished with edge tools (planes and scrapers). So all the surfaces feature fine facets.
The finish is a hand-brushed and durable acrylic paint.
This design is one of the chairs featured in my forthcoming “The Stick Chair Book.”
Purchase Information
Send an email to fitz@lostartpress.com. Ask as many questions as you like, but the first person to say “I’ll take it” gets it. The price includes a custom wooden crate and packing. Shipping is via common carrier. Typically shipping runs $100 to $200, depending on the destination. Delivery is free within 100 miles of Cincinnati. You can also pick the chair up at our storefront.
Although I’m grateful to spend time with my beautiful wife and three kids – the latter known as The Backseat Mafia™ – cramming everyone into our 14-year-old Volkswagen and driving the 620 miles to our family cabin seemed like Armageddon On Wheels to me. So, I had to be lured in. And boy did Marie know what bait to use: I was promised that we could stop the car whenever along the route to do chair-spotting.
I also wonder where the true Norwegian stick chairs are. We’ve been woodworking for over 1,000 years. We built our country and tradition on wood. I’m sure we’ve got birch sap running in our veins. Thus, there are of course stick chairs being made here, too. Some of them, like the Windsor-inspired Budal Chair, are even considered classics. The problem is that none of them are genuinely Norwegian in either form and origin. So I thought I’d start looking for them, and this trip seemed a good way to kick it off. Here are some of the chairs I encountered:
128 miles from home: Dalen, Telemark
In the traditional region of Telemark lies the small village called Dalen. We stopped here to visit the museum for Norwegian sculptor Anne Grimdalen. Part of the permanent exhibition was a display of her personal belongings. And among them was this staked Brettstuhl. Although the ornamental style of painting is almost quintessentially Norwegian, this is the first time I’ve encountered a chair like this in Norway.
This type of chair is more common in Germany and some surrounding countries. I don’t know much about them, so I got in touch with my buddy and fellow Chair Chatter™, Rudy Everts, who knows more:
Rudy: This is an odd one…. The interesting thing about this chair is that it looks like a Brettstuhl but the construction is different. The first thing I noticed was the stretchers, these are very uncommon for a Brettstuhl to have. In fact it might be the first one I have ever seen with stretchers!
When you look closer, you see the seat is thicker than a normal Brettstuhl and it lacks the cross battens that are so typical for these chairs. So the maker constructed it like a normal stick chair. And added stretchers.
The design definitely draws its inspiration from the Germanic Brettstuhl, but with its own twist. The shapes are more straight and the ornamentation more “Nordic.” A Brettstuhl often has round details in the backrest, flower motifs and so on. And there is usually a hole in the back rest to pick up the chair when not in use. Therefore I would say the chair was made there locally and not imported from the Germanic countries and painted afterward.
454 miles from home: Alvdal, Hedmark
Back on the road again. Next stop: The village of Alvdal, which is another very historical place. The oldest pair of skis known to man was found here, dated back to the year 600. We came here to visit a museum. And while my family went to see the main exhibitions, I scoured the building for chairs. The first one I stumbled across was this one. A freak of nature, begging for attention.
I’m really not sure what to think of it. Except that it looks like a giant insect. The low seat and short back could indicate it being a children’s chair. But that’s hard to say. Although this doesn’t look like the typical fireside chair, history is full of low chairs made for different uses
Each of the four legs are placed at the very edge of the seat. Combined with only a minor splay, this makes the stance of the chair clumsy to me. This combination is however not uncommon. English West Country chairs often look like this. Although it looks more balanced in a full size chair. Here it just looks a a bit wrong to me eyes. Kinda cute, but definitely more weird than wonderful.
So, I went to the café and got myself an overpriced cup of lukewarm motor oil labeled as coffee. Feeling robbed and unwell I looked for a place to sit, when lo and behold, this three-legged charmer made its appearance. Hand planed surfaces, octagonal legs and nicely worn original paint – what’s not to like? The large bevel around the half moon shaped seat also adds elegance. Though I would normally place such a bevel on the underside to make the seat appear lighter and thinner. Then again, it’s exactly these variations and improvisations that make the stick chair form so exciting to me. There’s often an element of surprise. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t.
The rest of the construction was also unusual. Instead of mortising the legs through the seat, they were mortised into three separate battens that were screwed onto the underside. That at least tells me the stool wasn’t hastily put together by a farmer who needed a seat.
Two hours and three ice creams later we all cramped up in the car again and went to find a place to put up our tents. We found a pretty decent spot and called it an early night.
The next morning we rose early. After coffee, bread and brown cheese we hit the road again. I encountered even more vernacular chairs during the following days and miles on the road. Some of them were even not weird at all, just plain beautiful, with some interesting stories to them also.
I’ll share them with you in part two. For all of these and future chair encounters, I’ve set up an Instagram account for you to follow. As always, please share your thoughts and comments on these chairs or chairs you’ve encountered yourself!
If we had a company motto, it would be something like this: “If it were easy to do, then every idiot would do it.”
It’s something we say to ourselves when we’re fighting to find enough cotton cloth for a run of books, or a vendor for hinges for our dividers, or looking for damn Chicago screws without a burr on the underside of the head that has to be machined off and who does that and why am I not able to finish this sentence like a normal person?
And so we look to Craig Jackson for salvation.
Craig is the machinist we use for a lot of parts. He’s like if Matlock and Columbo had a baby. He’s easy to underestimate because of his Kentucky accent, and you do that at your own peril.
Anyway, for the last few weeks, we’ve been wrestling with the tips of our Crucible dividers. They have been getting bent in transit, and we’ve tried lots of strategies to stop the damage. All through the process, Craig kept saying: I can show customers how to heat-treat the tips at home.
But we ignored him. At our peril.
Finally, we came up with a solution with the CNC mill that would strengthen the tips. Craig said it would work, but he also sent this message:
“Heat treating the tips now.”
OK, because we live in a litigious society I have to say: Don’t do this, you fool. It’s a joke. You will hurt yourself badly (but please tell us if the tips increased in Rockwell hardness).
