“Set & File: A Practical Guide to Saw Sharpening” by Matt Cianci is back in stock after we absolutely burned through the first printing. We now have enough copies to begin filling wholesale orders for our international retailers. So stay tuned.
Now the not-so-good news: Two titles have been delayed because of manufacturing glitches. The Stick Chair Journal No. 2 and “Principles of Design” are stuck in the cover department of the plant. They are having trouble getting a clean diestamp on both covers. Here are some photos for those of you who are curious about what gets rejected.
We are trying to find a foil and cover material that will give a crisp impression. I hope it won’t take long.
fig. 2.2.22. The human form resides just beneath the surface.
Below is a short excerpt (a sidebar) from “By Hand & Eye,” the first artisan geometry book by George Walker and Jim Tolpin.
In “By Hand & Eye,” the authors show how much of the world is governed by simple proportions, noting how ratios such as 1:2; 3:5 and 4:5 were ubiquitous in the designs of pre-industrial artisans. And the tool that helps us explore this world, then as now, are dividers.
One key to good design is to master these basic “notes” – much like learning to sing “do, re, mi.” How to do this is the subject of the first three-quarters of the book. It offers exercises, examples and encouragement in opening your inner eye, propping it up with toothpicks and learning the simple geometry that will help you improve your design.
Critics point out that modern builders and architects can fall into a malady called the Greek Temple disease: slapping together classical elements from antiquity to somehow capture a sense of power and integrity. Of course, they do so without a clue about where these qualities came from, and how they came to be imbued in buildings from antiquity. It’s an easy conclusion to make if we focus on the surface without considering there might be something deeper. It’s true that many of our revered civic buildings often were modeled after temples from antiquity. Historical design literature emphasized the perfection found in the Greek and Roman classic orders.
fig. 2.2.23. Because classic orders are anthropomorphized forms, it was even thought that an interior with multiple layers of objects based on the orders was filled with human forms.
Yet the tradition reveals something deeper than a fascination with carved stone columns. To the Greeks, the classic order was the embodiment of the human form, but also of the building itself. Sweep them away and the roof collapses. The Romans extended the idea that the orders embodied the human form, yet applied new materials: concrete and brick. The result was that walls could support a building without requiring the orders for structural integrity. Yet they still used the classic orders to organize the façade, even though columns often had little or no structural role. They began to shadow the orders using shallow representations, sinking pilasters and half-columns into a wall to suggest the order. Later, designers completely eliminated columns or pilasters but continued to weave the proportional sequences to organize a façade. An exterior or interior wall could be divided into beginning, middle and ending using mouldings and paneling to echo an invisible classic order. Not just walls, but just as the order has internal elements that repeat the beginning, middle and ending, other elements in an interior – windows, fireplaces, furniture, candle stands, lamps – all could shadow the classic orders. Because the orders embody the human form, designers were in essence filling their homes with a host of human figures large and small.
p.s. We’re working right now on a new artisan geometry book from George Walker and Jim Tolpin, “Good Eye, Skilled Hands,” that we hope will be out later this year. In it, they explore the practical applications of lessons found in historic furniture forms.
The underside of Chris’s two most recent arm bows.
It’s no secret that ensuring a tight joint between arm and mid-arm can be a challenge. We know this first hand and because readers have reached out in the past asking for advice on the matter. Well readers, wait no longer – Chris has spilled the beans on his method!
We recently created a video highlighting Chris’s match planing method, the technique he uses on all his arm bows. In the video, Chris welcomes all skill levels as he breaks down this approachable technique step-by-step. You can catch the how-to video below and on Youtube.
Enjoying this technique and video content? Take your skills even further and learn how to build a stick chair with Chris in this 18-part video series: Build A Stick Chair. Chris takes you along with him as he builds a chair design not found in ‘The Stick Chair Book’. From selecting lumber to applying wax, each step is explained and demonstrated with the beginner woodworker in mind.
Click here to buy and own the entire video series.
Students from our first scholarship class with The Chairmaker’s Toolbox.
This fall, Megan and I are each teaching scholarship classes for The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, which offers free training for people who have been historically excluded from the trade.
I’m teaching a stick chair class Sept. 16-20. And Megan is teaching a Dutch tool chest class Oct. 11-13. Megan and I both volunteer our time and the workshop here for the classes. We also cover the students’ materials, plus breakfast and lunch during the class.
For that last few years, readers have asked to donate to help cover the materials and the food for these scholarship classes. If you would like to help out, you can send a donation via this link. Any amount helps. (Please note a donation is not tax deductible. We are not a charity or nonprofit.)
If we collect more money than we need, every penny gets donated to The Chairmaker’s Toolbox to help fund its expenses. We do not make any money off these classes.
Thanks to everyone who has donated in the past. Many of our students from these classes have gone on to teach chairmaking to others or have launched their own businesses. (In other words, it’s working!)
Here’s the link again (because they tell me we are supposed to do that).
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Don’t bother leaving a comment that craps on the program or us. No one will ever see it. At Lost Art Press, we help anyone who wants to enter the craft. We teach scholarship classes (and donate money) for need-based students, students who have been historically excluded and those who serve (such as our military). Don’t get ugly about something beautiful.
The following is excerpted from “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” by Christopher Schwarz. The new, expanded edition of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” is an exploration of furniture forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years.
There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for almost 1,000 years that don’t get written about much. They are simple to make. They have clean lines. And they can be shockingly modern.
This book explores 18 of these forms – a bed, dining tables, chairs, chests, desks, shelving, stools – and offers a deep exploration into the two construction techniques used to make these pieces that have been forgotten, neglected or rejected.
“The Anarchist’s Design Book” is available for order in print, or you can download a free pdf (and you don’t need to register, sign up for dumb marketing or even tell us who you are). Just click through this link and you’ll find the download in the second sentence of the first paragraph – the one in italics.
Embrace or Reject the History Lesson
If you want to make historical furniture reproductions or pieces that are inspired by vintage work, you must devote yourself to studying old work – in person, up close and without prejudice.
But if you want to make things that are new or modern, you instead must devote yourself to studying old work – in person, up close and without prejudice. Otherwise, how will you know what it is you are rebelling against or rejecting?
In other words, no matter what sort of furniture maker you are, understanding the furniture record will make you a better one. Otherwise you might end up like some members of the Bauhaus, for example, who rejected historical work and set out to reinvent architecture, furniture and other crafts from first principles. As a result, they made a lot of unnecessary and time-consuming mistakes to create a new world. (See armchair F 51 designed for the director’s room of the Bauhaus.)
As I see it, every generation of makers has goals that fall upon these three lines:
Exalt old work to revive principles that have been forgotten by our degenerate society.
Create new work that rejects the principles of our degenerate society.
Make birdhouses.
All three are completely valid ways of approaching the craft. Only No. 3 allows you to skip the furniture record and create something useful with minimal effort.
Another Chinese chair. Hans Wegner’s Chinese Chair No. 1 (1944).
As I write this, I am surrounded by hundreds of books filled with thousands of pieces of furniture that I’ll never build. Many of those pieces are somewhat ugly or, at the least, too ornate for my taste. Yet I am thrilled to study every line and curve of every William & Mary, Georgian or Seymour piece that I can lay my hands on. Some of these pieces are brilliant because of their technicality. Their talented makers found clever ways of making extremely complex pieces in a shockingly simple way. (If you have studied furniture bandings, then you know what I mean.)
Other pieces are notable because of the sheer patience and focus of the maker (see French marquetry).
Still other pieces are forms that are perfectly proportioned in silhouette.
In my personal work, I seek to combine all three of those properties (though I rarely succeed). And the only way I can try to reach that goal is to study old work. So every day I open an old book, go to a museum in a strange city (thank you, crazy teaching schedule) or plumb the Internet.
Example: In a manor house in Cornwall there’s a beautiful Chinese chair. Why is it there, surrounded by 300-year-old English stuff? The house’s docents don’t know. So I buy a book on the history of the manor house and its contents. I explore Chinese chair construction on the Internet. I turn up some Hans Wegner chairs in my search and find a bright string from traditional Chinese furniture through Danish Modern.
Suddenly, the curve of the chair’s crest rail makes sense, across time and cultures. What I do with that information is up to me as a designer – but if I decide to incorporate a wishbone shape into a future design, I have a path to explore all the possibilities. And I can embrace or reject the history lesson.
