The new edition of Drew’s book on top of my paperback copy.
One of the rewards for running a publishing company is getting to say “yes” when other people wouldn’t even know to say “no.” Two summers ago, chairmaker Chris Williams and I visited Drew and Louise Langsner in their home outside Marshall, North Carolina.
And as we were sitting there, being feasted upon by bugs (as we ate a delicious meal from Louise’s hands), I was overcome by gratitude for the work these two people had done their entire lives for the craft.
Drew’s book “The Chairmaker’s Workshop” (Lark, 1997) was a constant guide as I made my first steps into chairmaking in the early 2000s. I carried the book around like a lost puppy. And in time it fell apart. I bought another. It wasn’t made particularly well, but I have kept it in decent shape.
Why, I wondered, can I not buy a library-quality copy of this book that steered my life?
I blinked and sat up a little straighter. Chris shot a look at me, concerned.
I said, “I’d like to republish ‘The Chairmaker’s Workshop.’”
Drew agreed.
And after a fair amount of work on everyone’s part, we did just that. And it is finally a version that will last for at least a century.
We did everything we could to make this archival-quality edition of “The Chairmaker’s Workshop” a joy to read and use. The print job is better than the original (thanks to a Japanese sheet-fed press and excellent paper).
This book has all the details we love. A bookmark ribbon, contrasting headbands and footbands, heavy endsheets, casebound binding, sewn signatures, and on and on. Oh, and we made special letterpress bookplates that Drew signed individually. As I write this, we’re affixing them to the endsheets.
This is an expensive endeavor. So we’re printing only 750 copies. If this book is important to you – like it is to me – here is your best chance. It’s $78. I know that’s a lot of money, but if we’d priced it like we normally price books it would be $95.
Way more information on the book can be found here.
As I write this, we’re awaiting proofs on our latest pocket book, “Make Fresh Milk Paint,” by Nick Kroll. Nick was in one of Christopher Schwarz’s Germany classes this summer, and he showed up with a hand-bound book about making milk paint in your kitchen. Chris sent an email to Kara Gebhart Uhl (she handles contracts for us) and me that night with a PDF of the book, letting us know he thought it was a winner.
We all agreed, and have since been busy making milk paint in our Covington shop. It’s so much fun (and simple) to make, and the paint results in a rich and gorgeous finish, plus it doesn’t cost much. It’s rare that you get cheap, easy and good, all at the same time!
Brings back memories of my bartending days.
The book will be printed in the U.S. (like all of our books). This one features a “Hot Toffee” cover (that’s mustard yellow to you and me) and garnet end papers – vibrant, like the paint. Barring problems at the printer or bindery, we expect it will be available before Thanksgiving.
Below is a sneak peek, Nick’s introduction.
– Fitz
Make Milk Paint
The howling silence of sterile, lifeless paint swatches. The dented tin lid that imprisons your creative soul in a mass-produced can of petrochemical swill. The gnawing anxiety of spending your Saturday morning standing in the fluorescent-washed aisle of a big-box retailer, trying to convince yourself that Hessian Taupe is the sensible buy.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
It’s OK to hate paint. We all do. Our collective contempt for industrial paint is so deeply ingrained that we close the container by hammering the lid shut like we’re trying to kill an E.T. with a tire iron. To be fair, that animosity goes both ways. The second you two are alone in a room together, that zesty blend of plasticizer and industrial solvent hits back with noxious volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can inflict solid damage per second on a cellular level.
Even if you find a low-VOC paint in a color you like, you’re still likely dropping at least $20-$30 a pint at your local PaintTM retailer. That’s more than Jiffy Plasma would pay you for a pint of your own sweet blood. And unless everything you build ends up with two coats of Walton’s Own Eggshell Sage from a 5-gallon pail, you’re going to have to keep buying paint at that stiff price point. Even if you drop $100+ bucks, you’d still be locked in to only three to four colors, like a pack of kids’ menu crayons. Of course, once you pay that much, you can’t throw out the leftovers, right? What started as a fun project turns into overpriced chemical soup that’s gelling up on a basement shelf like week-old ham.
I’m here to free you. All we need is a bit of barnyard alchemy. Let us talk milk paint, elemental in nature and humble in its glory.
Making a batch of top-grade milk paint from scratch takes 10 minutes and costs less than five bucks. It has zero VOCs. It’s durable. It’s easy to apply. It looks fantastic. The color options are limitless. And you’ll have made it with your own hands.
You’re here because you like making things yourself. You can buy paint off the shelf just like you can buy furniture at Ikea – yet here we are. Paint should be the finishing touch on a labor of love, not a cheap shell that hides your hard work. You’ve spent hours cutting rabbets for a bookshelf and tapering the legs for a staked bench. Don’t stumble on the home stretch. Your handmade furniture shouldn’t be buried under a nano-homogenized ooze that smothers out every last bit of depth and character.
Come with me. Let’s set off on a journey to free your creative instincts. We’ll get lost blending pigments and chasing fleeting hues. We’ll defy the unyielding beast of corporate commerce and shun all the bitter progeny of the refinery. We’ll make something we love, for the ones we love.
Let’s make milk paint.
I’m not talking about mixing up a batch of the ready-mix powdered paint. I’m talking about taking fresh milk and making great paint. I know you can do this. It’s not hard, and you don’t need any special equipment. It’s a quick learning curve and there’s no risk. I started right where you are today – and by the end of the weekend, you’ll be on the fast track to catching up.
If you can make a pot of mac and cheese, then you can make milk paint from scratch. Making milk paint is easier than making bread, bathing a dog, putting on a duvet cover, staying awake in church or carving a pumpkin. Honestly, it’s easier than practically any woodworking task. I’m not even talking hand-cut dados or perfect dovetails – if you’ve glued up a butt joint, you have more technical skill than you’ll need to make milk paint.
This isn’t a treatise on period-accurate finishes for Shaker purists. This isn’t trad-life cosplay or Luddite revivalism. This is a guide to making damn good paint. I’m writing this for everyone who is tired of every microplastic and macrotoxin being dumped into our homes. This is for anyone who wants to be able to take a single breath without being squeezed into a transaction. This is for anyone who just wants to live in a world that’s a little more colorful.
There’s a German word, ohrwurm, to describe a song you can’t get out of your head. To be fair, “homemade milk paint” is perhaps a bit closer to a brainworm, carving out a little beachhead of gentle obsession in your mind while your loved ones begin to wonder about your mental state. But soon you’ll thank me and this little worm.
Let’s begin.
Nick, applying the first coat of homemade milk paint on the chair he’d just completed.
Two weeks ago, James Wright and his daughter Melody visited Lost Art Press to do a video tour and interview. James – aka Wood by Wright – is one of the important people who are keeping hand tool woodworking alive on the internet. (Also important in my book: Rex Krueger.)
I love both these guys – though I hardly know them – because they are passionate about handwork. But they also don’t take sponsorships or money from tool companies. This means that when James goes on a multi-year investigation of glues, that the whole series isn’t going to end with #ad.
I’ve been watching their videos for years, and it’s fair to say that we don’t agree on everything. But that’s the beauty of the (I’ll say it) kinder hand tool community. I’ve always felt in good company at meetings of EAIA and M-WTCA, even when a few of them wanted to wring my neck for my love of Stanley Type 11 bench planes.
Anyway, James and I had a nice long chat about what we do at Lost Art Press and why. In the coming weeks he says he’ll edit and post his tour of our workshop, storefront and warehouse.
If you aren’t familiar with James or Rex, it’s time to remedy that. Subscribe to their YouTube channels and (at the very least) Instagram feeds.
In their efforts to make chairmaking more accessible, Alexander Brothers in Virginia now offers steambent arms and armbows that will work with all the armchairs in “The Stick Chair Book” (a free download) and the Hobbit chair in The Stick Chair Journal No. 2.
You can get the bent components in red oak or cherry. And you can buy them individually or as a set. I recently purchased a couple armbows from them (at full retail, natch), and their work is as good as I could do. Read more and purchase the parts here.
Note: We do not get any royalty or compensation or consideration from Alexander Brothers. Like them, we are just trying to remove the barriers to chairmaking.
So if you have a big old comb-back chair on your wish list, but you don’t have a steambox, your work just got a lot easier.
Thanks here to Shea and all the people at Alexander Brothers. Good people.
— Christopher Schwarz
One of the chair designs that uses this armbow and comb.
To mark the release of the revised edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” we asked the artists at SKT Ceramics in Cincinnati to design a large porcelain coffee mug in the company’s signature green-blue celadon glaze.
We are offering 100 of these handmade 12-ounce mugs. Each is stamped on the underside by SKT and signed by me. The mugs are about 4″ tall and 3-1/2″ in diameter at the rim. They are made with lead-free glaze and are both dishwasher and microwave safe.
The mug-making process began with Susannah Tisue – the founder of SKT Ceramics – visiting our workshop to photograph the chest and discuss what was important to see. Susannah then made several sketches to see what looked best.
The final design was silkscreened onto rice paper, then applied to the handmade porcelain. It was then fired, waxed, glazed and sanded over a period of a couple weeks to produce the finished mugs. Each one is a little different, and they have that familiar feel – that someone made this by hand.
We’ll have them up for sale sometime this week, $44 plus shipping.
Kale, Katherine and I shot the video above, documenting the process of making the mugs.
