You can download a free pdf excerpt of our newest book, “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown” by Christopher Williams to get a taste for the writing and layout. You don’t have to register or give us a skin sample or anything. Just click this link:
…and the pdf will arrive in your computer’s downloads folder. The excerpt contains the Preface by Nick Gibbs, which is probably the best explanation I’ve read of who John Brown was. It also contains a section of the book on building the chair so you can get a feel for the sort of instruction that Chris provides.
It was difficult to pick the parts of the book to excerpt because it covers so much ground and contains so many interesting voices. There’s the history of Wales, philosophy from John Brown, details on the tools he used, and stories of his fascinating life.
Also a gentle reminder that if you order the book before it ships in March 2020 then you will receive a complete download of the book at checkout. After the book ships, the pdf will cost $12.25 extra.
The class I’m most excited about this year at our storefront is with furniture maker and finisher John Porritt. During the class, April 6-10, students will build their interpretation of a Welsh backstool using authentic materials and methods. And they will finish their chairs to have an aged appearance, which should be a class in and of itself.
You might not have heard of John. I hope to change that. I first read about him years ago in Good Woodworking magazine when John Brown praised one of Porritt’s chairs alongside a photo of Porritt’s chair. Fast forward more than 20 years and, out of the blue, I received an invitation to visit Porritt in Upstate New York, where he lives after moving from the U.K. (Read about that encounter here.)
Porritt has spent his life immersed in the craft, building chairs and furniture using dead-traditional techniques with wood and branches he harvested himself. He is an undisputed expert in finishing, especially repairing and coloring antiques to look like they had never been messed with. He also avoids most high technology (his wife reads his emails to him), he plays a mean guitar and is an outstanding storyteller.
During his week at our storefront, Porritt will teach students to build their own interpretation of a Welsh backstool using material from his rural New York shop. And then he’ll delve into the finishing aspects of the stool, something we don’t get to do much of during project classes.
It should be a delightful week. And I hope to lure Porritt and the students to my favorite bluegrass night at a local bar.
We have a couple places still open in the class. If you have ever wanted to get a taste of traditional rural craft, Porritt is the real, real deal. And the finishing knowledge is an impressive bonus. It’s an aspect of finishing that I know little about and I’ll be right next to you, taking notes.
I hope you can join us.
— Christopher Schwarz
Read some more about Porritt’s finishing skills here. Read about some of the chairs in his collection here.
When F+W Media fired Megan Fitzpatrick on Dec. 5, 2017, there were people inside and outside the organization who gloated over the news. That statement isn’t news. I am qualified to tell you that you don’t get to be the editor of a magazine or newspaper without making a few enemies.
I’m sure their hope was that Megan would leave the woodworking media industry with her tail between her legs. Perhaps she’d get a job in public relations or with a business-to-business magazine. Those are honorable places to land, but they are a step down from the high-wire act that is editing a national consumer magazine.
But Megan didn’t disappear into an invisible job. And today, the shoe is on the other foot.
F+W imploded, went bankrupt and sold off its assets for pennies on the dollar. The people who gloated over her firing were dismissed or have dissipated into the ether.
Megan, on the other hand, has just had her first article published in Fine Woodworking magazine (April 2020, issue 281). She is the editor of The Chronicle, the journal of the Early American Industries Association – a part-time gig. She is in high demand as a woodworking teacher all over the country. She publishes work through her own imprint, Rude Mechanicals Press, and copy edits Mortise & Tenon Magazine. She dove into commission work and now sells tool chests and other custom furniture pieces. And yes, she does some work for Lost Art Press (plus some other jobs that I’m sure I’ve forgotten).
She earned this work on her own merits, including the work she does for me. (I have a pile of resumes of people who want to edit our stuff. I am lucky to have her.)
As far as I can tell, she makes as much (or maybe more) money than she did at Popular Woodworking. And she’s a happier person, to boot (I am also qualified to tell you that editing a magazine is not a tonic for mental health).
Why am I telling you this? She cannot. She signed a non-disclosure agreement (an NDA) when she left F+W and honors that agreement, even though the company is kaput. I, however, never signed an NDA.
So congrats go out today to Megan. Who survived and thrived after a media company tried to kick her to the curb.
This week we will begin selling laser-cut templates for the Staked Armchair in “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Expanded Edition,” and I have received more than a few raised eyebrows and cutting remarks about the templates.
After all, isn’t this a Welsh stick chair of the kind made famous by John Brown? The guy who said there never ever should be a plan published for a Welsh chair? And who also said that people who sell plans should go out of business?
First, this is absolutely (and you know it hurts me to write an -ly adverb) not a Welsh stick chair. As I’ve written time and again, I call this form an American Welsh stick chair because it is designed for modern American woods and with details that make it as contemporary as I can manage. The “Welsh” part of its name is a nod to its origins. If you want to build a real Welsh stick chair, go to St Fagans, soak up the fantastic vibe there and get to work. Or get a good dose of it through Chris Williams’s new book “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown.”
One of my chair designs. It is a nod to the beautiful old Welsh chairs, but it is a contemporary design done by an American.A fantastic Welsh stick chair on display at St Fagans. My work references these chairs in a strong manner, but I would never say that I am building these exact chairs.
But still, why am I offering plans and templates?
OK, close your eyes and imagine… Wait, that’s not going to work because you have to use your eyes to read the next sentence.
OK, let’s say it’s your first ever day in music class. You’re sitting in a chair with your foreign-feeling trombone, violin or (God save my ears) a plastic recorder. The teacher then says: OK class, I’d like you each to compose a sonata in G, and please don’t forget to return to the tonic key during the recapitulation. I’ll be back at the end of the class to grade your work.
Before you can write music, it’s helpful to be able to play music.
Music class is the opportunity to learn your instrument by playing beautiful pieces composed by others. When I taught myself to play guitar about age 11, I played “Froggy Went A-Courtin” so many damn times I thought my sisters might murder me. So then I sang “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” about 60 times to torture them anew.
After learning hundreds of folk songs, standards and country tunes, I could feel their patterns in my hands as I moved them across the fretboard. I felt how suspended chords could brighten a progression. I knew so many songs composed with G, D and D chords that I also knew how odd (and wonderful) it was to encounter an A7 in a bridge. I could also spot chords that really didn’t have a name, made by people who had never formally studied music. Those were my favorites.
After a few years of playing other people’s tunes, I began to write my own. But I still continued to play other people’s songs in an effort to get inside their heads and make myself a better musician and songwriter.
A stick chair that I am “composing” this weekend without plans or drawings.
So (if you are still awake at this point) this is why I offer explicit plans for this chair. If you want to become a chairmaker, it helps to learn the processes, joinery and setups while building someone else’s design. Some people do this by taking a class. Other people can’t afford that route, so plans and templates are an effective way to learn.
It is my sincerest hope that after you build a bunch of chairs that you will see the patterns and rhythms built into my designs (and the chairs of others). The language in my chairs is as straightforward as 12-bar blues. It ain’t jazz. Then, perhaps, you will be able to build chairs of your own devising.
And then maybe someday, we’ll have a world where every chair is different.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. We are working out the pricing on the templates that were designed and made by FirstLightWorks. We’ll have full details on them and their availability in short order. So I don’t have any more information to share just yet. Apologies.
Editor’s note: Congratulations to Bruce Chaffin, the winner of our True Tales of Woodworking Contest, and a $100 gift certificate to Lost Art Press! Thanks to everyone who entered in celebration of the release of Nancy Hiller’s new edition of “Making Things Work: Tales of a Cabinetmaker’s Life.” We enjoyed reading every one of the entries – and will run a few more of our top choices next week. Nancy will also be sharing some of the entries on her Making Things Work blog, so be sure to tune in there, too! — Fitz
Maybe you’ve built something that went exactly to plan or came out better than you had hoped.
Maybe your project started out as, say, a bed frame and ended up a bench.
Maybe the partially assembled parts gathered dust for years.
Or maybe it was doomed from the start.
In 2014, a contractor I worked with contacted me with a commission – his client, a tough-as-nails restaurateur in Center City, Philadelphia, got her landlord to pay for a planter box to be installed in the tree pit outside her upscale establishment. As a sign of defiance, she wanted it to be expensive. I liked the sound of this. For once, cost was not my problem.
She wanted the box built out of clear cedar, painted white, in keeping with the restaurant’s black-and-white color scheme. To match the interior woodwork, it was to be V-panels, which translated into $150 for the router bit set. Not my problem, the client would pay for it. She also wanted the box filled with dirt and planted, so I needed to build a small interior box to go around the tree trunk. My wife (repeatedly) insisted that this was going to kill the tree. My response? Not my problem.
I went to the site to take measurements and discovered that the tree pit was cut out of the sidewalk right next to the curb. Then and there, I knew that someday a car, truck, or the #12 or #17 bus was going to hit this box. Not my problem.
The contractor and I met again to agree on construction details and to come up with a plan — the four sides and inner box would be built off-site and assembled (Dominos, pocket screws, and glue) around the tree. With the chances of getting good miter joints for the rail cap on-site being slim to none and Slim just rode out of town, the rail cap was also going to be constructed off-site and hoisted over the young tree. We also agreed that someday this box was going to get hit.
Milling the boards where I rented shop time went without incident, as did construction at the builder’s shop space. Much as I hated seeing beautiful wood being painted, I enjoyed the luxury of having someone else do it.
Installation day saw the contractor, three helpers and I descend with the unassembled boxes and necessary paraphernalia, which we scattered over the sidewalk. As we dodged traffic, I was thankful that my strategy called for placing the bar clamps parallel to 20th Street and that the tree was not centered in the pit, so we could check diagonals for square. I handed the No. 2 guy a drill and screws and he said, “Don’t you want to do it? You built it.” I said, “Nope, you’re good.” Minutes later, he climbed out of the box and said, “Man, that really sucked.” I replied, “That’s why I wanted you to do it.” The rail cap, lifted over the tree by someone younger and taller than me, was screwed to the box, and the inner box was screwed together. As we admired our work, we pondered taking bets about how long the box would last before a car, truck or the #12 or #17 bus demolished it.
My travels in town often took me by my box, and I would express amazement to my companions that it had survived. Then sure enough, this January, a little more than 4 ½ years after the box was installed, I saw that it had finally met with a car, truck, or either the #12 or #17 bus. I didn’t feel anger or sadness. I simply said to myself, “Not my problem.”
Maybe you’ve built something that went exactly to plan or came out better than you had hoped.