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Handworks: Stuff to Stand in Line For

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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When the doors open at Handworks 2017 at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 19, here’s a list of the stuff we’ll have in limited supply. In other words, stop by early to avoid disappointment. Also, please don’t ask us to reserve items for you via help@lostartpress.com or phone calls to John. To be fair to all of our customers, it’s first-come-first-served.

H.O. Studley Posters
These 13” x 19” posters are printed on 80 lb. recycled paper with a matte aqueous coating (in other words, they aren’t shiny like your Farrah Fawcett poster from high school). The poster features an image taken by Narayan Nayar during our work for the book “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of H.O. Studley.” Both Narayan and the author, Don Williams, will be at Handworks, so you can track them down to get yours signed.

We’re bringing about 1,000 of these posters, which will be $20 each. We’ll have kraft paper and tape on hand so you can roll your own protective covering (we don’t have the room in our trailer for mailing tubes). After Handworks, we will sell these posters in the online store.

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Crucible Improved Pattern Dividers
Raney and John have been working every day to finish and assemble dividers for Handworks. We hope to have 130 pairs or so to sell at Handworks. If we don’t sell out, these will go up in the online store as well. As you might know, we have had a heck of a time getting these made to keep up with demand. After this batch, I suspect we are going to retool the process (again), so this might be the last time we’ll have dividers for a while.

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Crucible Design Curves
When I’m not editing or building, I’m sanding these design curves to get the sets ready for Handworks. We’ll be selling a set of three for $37 and they will come in a protective box suitable for traveling. I hope to have 250 sets of curves ready for handworks with another 750 sets ready soon after the show.

Other Stuff
We are bringing our full line of books, plus a variety of American-made T-shirts for Lost Art Press and Crucible. Because books are heavy, we can tow only so much. As a result, if you are there to get a particular book so you can get it signed by one of the many Lost Art Press authors in attendance, don’t tarry.

Authors who have told us they’re attending:

Don Williams
George Walker
Jim Tolpin
Peter Galbert
Roy Underhill
Matt Bickford
Mike Siemsen
Joel Moskowitz
Nancy Hiller (she’ll be signing her book in our booth at 2 p.m. Saturday)
Wesley Tanner (the designer of our Roubo and Studley volumes)
Narayan Nayar (photographer for the Studley book)
And me (duh).

— Christopher Schwarz

The Piano Maker

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
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This account celebrates Studley’s accomplishments and leaves no doubt as to the stature he – and his tool cabinet – held in the world of piano craftsmen. (Image courtesy of Arthur Rebletz)


This is an excerpt from “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley” by Donald C. Williams, photographs by Narayan Nayar.

Unfortunately we have no record of exactly what Studley did at any point of his employment with Smith. However, the later portrait of Studley as a piano’s action builder does allow us to propose that he had a similar role at Smith.

In his 60th year, Studley left Smith American Organ Company to work for the recently formed Poole Piano Company. The reasons, motivation and terms of that change are unknown, but the reference in The Music Trade Review of Dec. 17, 1921, to Studley’s having been hired by Poole Piano to be in charge of its “voicing” (or action) department surely means he was well-accomplished and respected for the tasks and responsibilities incumbent to the new position. Part of the larger economic reality of the organ and piano trades at that time was the falling popularity of organs and the growing role of pianos in the American home.

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The decorative details of the organs built during the early part of Studley’s career, such as this illustration from a Smith American Piano and Organ catalog (roughly coincident with his tenure there), no doubt served as inspiration for many of the decorative details in the tool cabinet. (Winterthur Library)

The 1899 illustrated catalog from the Poole Company, roughly contemporary to Studley joining the firm, emphasized its grand and upright pianos and is instructive, even given the florid prose of Victorian marketing. Three brief passages in particular caught my eye. “We make no pretensions as manufacturers of cheap instruments. Considering the fact that we use only first-class material and employ only the most skilled workmen…”

And, “[finish] may apply either to the workmanship of the action and other interior details, where it cannot readily be seen and appreciated, or to the exterior appearance. Straws indeed show the direction of the wind, and the nicety of adjustments and carefulness with which every detail of our instruments is worked out, although such things may be regarded as unimportant, certainly show the character of the final work.”

Finally, “Tone. It will be admitted that this is a much-talked-of and much mystified subject. The general public can get little knowledge of it by reading over the worn-out adjectives usually employed in piano catalogs.

“If, however, we may attribute any special quality of excellence to the characteristic of the Poole Piano, we would say that the almost freedom of vibration is insured by the well-drawn scales employed, and the nicety with which every detail is worked out.”

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Though this aesthetic is decidedly over the top for our sensibilities, it is the atmosphere in which Studley perfected his skills and achieved renown. (Winterthur Library)

Of course there is no way to know how much of this is bloviation and how much is an honest statement of mission and purpose, but at least rhetorically Poole is throwing down a marker. The advertising copy is saying all the right things to describe an atmosphere that allowed Henry Studley to express that excellence in his work ensemble.

To the extent that there is any historical record of him in either the organ or piano trades, it refers to him as a prominent and respected craftsman. The indication of Studley’s stature in the Boston piano manufacturing world can be seen in an article in the periodical The Music Trade Review during the final year of his career, celebrating his 46 years in the trade. Simple arithmetic allows us to affix approximate working dates for him as 1873-1898 for Smith American, and 1898-1919 for Poole Piano. The breadth of tools in the cabinet, combined with the photographic portrait, leads us to the fully defensible conclusion that Studley was at various times both a case builder for Smith and a builder of piano actions for Poole.

In the only known image of him, Studley is seen as an 80-year-old man standing formally at a workbench, his famous tool cabinet hanging on the wall behind him. Dressed in the peculiar (to us) attire of a dress shirt and necktie that was typical for skilled tradesmen of the era, he is shown with a felt cutter in hand and an open upright piano nearby. Thus we are left with the distinct impression that he was not merely running the action department, he was still actively engaged in the trade himself.

— MB

Bringing Jonathan Fisher Back to Life

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Editor’s Note: One of the many exciting books in the works at Lost Art Press is Joshua Klein’s book on Jonathan Fisher (more on Fisher here). Fisher was an ingenious American colonial polymath and woodworker who could fashion almost anything out of wood – a clock, a lathe turned by a windmill, his own tools, furniture for his town, convertible beds and on and on.

This project will be in our hands for editing soon and you’re going to hear a lot more about Fisher and Klein’s personal journey of discovery in researching Fisher. In the meantime, here’s a crazy story about the lengths Joshua is going to for the book.

— Christopher Schwarz

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I remember talking with Don Williams about his struggles working on the H.O. Studley book, “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley.” He said the challenge was unearthing information about who H.O. Studley was. Don searched far and wide to understand the story of this man and his legendary tool cabinet. Studley left no paper trail of letters describing his work, little if any of his other woodwork has been identified and much of the research required extensive traveling. Talk about a complicated project!

When Don visited my wife and me in Maine a few years ago, I took him through the Jonathan Fisher house. As we walked around the house looking at artifacts, we discussed the fact that the Fisher story has the opposite problem. Fisher’s house (five minutes from my own) is full of furniture, tools, paintings, journals, letters, etc. The archives are brimming with tiny little notebooks full of 18th- and 19th-century script, most of which was written in a shorthand he developed at Harvard. There are boxes of drawings, historic photographs and archaeological findings. Digesting this enormous body of information in order to discern a cogent furniture-making narrative would be an enormous task. If Studley was about accumulation, Fisher is about distillation.

As I was writing the chapter about Jonathan Fisher’s barn workshop, I was presented with the task of bringing together all of these artifacts into one scene. I know them all so well and am so immersed in the journals that I could picture it in my mind. His “tool closet” of planes, his lathe in the background, the sheep in the corner, his bald head and the “grave” demeanor on his face. It was almost like I was there. The problem was to describe it to the reader. Although I explained the setting as best as I could, I realized that looking at photographs of objects was not going to be enough. I wanted the reader to see things in context.

To my knowledge, no one writing a historic monograph on a pre-industrial furniture maker has ever commissioned an artist to recreate a workshop scene. Usually, there just isn’t enough information to create such a thing. But because almost everything from Fisher’s shop is either extant or we have paintings or photographs of it, I knew it was possible.

Is it necessary? No. Is it awesome? YES!

Fortunately, I’m working with Chris and John on this book so, of course, they were game. I contacted my first-choice artist, Jessica Roux, from Brooklyn, N.Y. I’ve admired Jessica’s work since seeing it on the covers of Taproot magazine. It struck me right away because it reminded me of Fisher’s own balance of academic training and folk whimsy. Also, the way she uses color and texture reminded of the many 18th/19th-century workshop paintings we all drool over. Her aesthetic vision seemed just right for this.

When I explained the project to Jessica, she was interested. I expressed how important historical accuracy was and she assured me she was used to several rounds of back and forth with authors to make sure things were conveyed correctly.

With the green light, I assembled images of the tools, historic paintings and Fisher himself and sent them along with a rough compositional sketch as a starting point. Then the back and forth began. During the last three weeks, Jessica has been refining a sketch that Chris and I will approve before she creates the final image. The color will happen in a magical digital process I look forward to learning more about.

We hope this artwork will bring Jonathan Fisher to life for you as you read this book. His life was one full of beauty, drama and lots of wood shavings — I can’t wait to share this unbelievable story.

The manuscript will be in Chris’ hands in a matter of weeks. Stay tuned.

— Joshua Klein, Mortise & Tenon magazine

Covington Storefront Open This Saturday

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Though we’re on the eve of Handworks (and are a little ragged around the edges), we’ll open the Covington storefront this Saturday to the public with lots of good stuff to see.

Here’s a quick list of interesting objects:

  1. We should have some copies of our H.O. Studley poster to sell at the special introductory price of $20. (They are supposed to arrive today.)
  2. I have two repaired letterpress copies of “Roman Workbenches” we can sell.
  3. Come try out the new Crucible Design Curves. I have the prototypes at the store now. I’m not sure I’ll have complete sets packaged and ready to sell, however.
  4. We have lots of blemished and returned Lost Art Press books this month. They are 50 percent off retail (cash only and in-store only).
  5. Come check out the Swedish gateleg table I just finished (it ships to a customer next month). And I have a couple other pieces that are for sale, including one of my staked three-legged stools with the charred finish.

Plus all the usual stuff: all our books, T-shirts, stickers and gabbing about woodworking.

The storefront is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is located at 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky. The Covington Farmer’s Market will be running the same day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It’s a short walk from our store and a great place to get lunch or snacks. And pet a goat.

— Christopher Schwarz

Fathers & Sons

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Recently I was corresponding with Narayan Nayar, my friend and collaborator on “Virtuoso,” about my crossing paths with an old family friend of his at a local chapter meeting of the Mid-west Tool Collectors Association, and what a small world it was sometimes. Narayan related, “I think I told you this story, but my dad – a guy with a formidable reputation himself – was traveling in Florence, Italy, last year or the year before and someone in his travel group approached him and asked him, ‘Are you related to the photographer of the Studley Tool Chest?’” That exchange confirmed for Mr. Nayar the path his son had chosen, and I can only imagine the swell of pride he had in knowing Narayan’s impressive successes.

That vignette brought to mind the tale of Lu-ban, the totemic figure in Chinese woodworking mythology. According to the tale recounted in a children’s book I have somewhere in my inventory, Lu-ban was a son of a farmer and the father was displeased when Lu-ban chose the path of becoming a temple carpenter rather than continuing in the tradition of working on the family farm. With a heavy heart his father bid farewell to Lu-ban, wondering if he would ever see his son again given that all the great temples were being built in faraway places. Decades passed with no word from Lu-ban, then one day a box arrived at the father’s farm house. The box was simple but exquisitely made, and inside the box was a single wide wood shaving, nearly transparent and many meters long. It was a simple message from Lu-ban saying, “Yes, Father, I am a success.”

I never recall that story without getting a lump in my throat.

— Don Williams, donsbarn.com