Lost Art Press

On Wednesday Freddy Roman wrote an Instagram post that was part-tribute to his mentor, Phil Lowe, and part-lament.

“Master Lowe’s picture sits above my desk. A daily reminder from circa 2000 when I was punk, lost, and running. I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for him. Each day I try to carry his knowledge and pass on the torch to the next generation. Sadly there isn’t many to pass the torch to. But I do bust my rump to make him proud.”

The post struck a chord with many. Some shared their own appreciation of Phil, and also of Freddy, not least for being the kind of guy who takes the time to honor his mentor in public. As the comments went on, it became clear that many were responding more to the lament than the appreciation – some focusing on what they see as a lack of the requisite work ethic on the part of younger people, others on Freddy’s frustration with not having a worthy mentee, and a few on the dwindling number of mentors with the patience and generosity of spirit it takes to teach less experienced people on the job.

I added an observation based on my own experience: “I have to disagree. There are people aplenty waiting to take hold of that torch. The bigger question concerns the market, i.e. the ‘demand’ for the obviously super-abundant supply of skill and willing work.” Along with some other commenters, I was referring to the torch of doing the work, not teaching others how to do it; in other words, what I understood by the “bust[ing] my rump to make him proud” part of Freddy’s post.

I kept up with the comments all evening because this is a subject that interests me and I admire Freddy’s character, in addition to his work. Then I came across this one, copied and pasted here in its entirety:

“@nrhiller you’re crazy. It is common knowledge that less and less youthful people are willing to go into trades, put in the hard work, and stay off of their phone apps for more than 45mins at a time. Maybe geographically you have some different characters however this topic is discussed often in trade mags and even dudes like Mike Rowe.”

This one got to me. Not because the writer called me crazy — nothing new there. Nor was it the comment’s apparently unintended self-contradiction — “less and less youthful people” strictly means people who are growing older* (i.e., all of us). What bugged me was the generalization about “youthful people,” because I know a number of youthful people who possess an admirable work ethic and understand that nothing worth doing can be mastered without serious effort.

*I think what the writer meant was “fewer and fewer.”
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In any discussion that even implicitly invokes some supposedly better time, as many of the comments on Freddy’s post did, it’s important to distinguish between history and fantasy. I doubt that there has ever been a Golden Age when youthful people universally grasped the importance of what we geezers call paying our dues. “The younger generation” has a long history of taking knocks from elders.

What IS different today is how our culture legally and institutionally conceives of childhood and child-rearing, not to mention risk and investment, authority and discipline, work and leisure. Ours is a culture with exceedingly low expectations – a culture that heaps praise on those who do little more than show up. It’s one that rewards us for fulfilling the most basic responsibilities of citizenship with flag-draped stickers announcing “I voted” and tells university alumni they are “awesome” for taking the time to weigh in on their alma mater’s trustees. One that increasingly molds education on an entertainment model, treating students as customers in an economic transaction instead of encouraging them to embrace the existential challenges that are integral to anything worth calling education. Ours is a culture that
glamorizes consumption and goofing off and creates special incentives to attract “clean” tech jobs to century-old factories, then brands those sites a “Trades District” – because we all know the trades are cool, even if the actual work they involve is not-clean, not to mention no longer economically viable.

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As the comment about my insanity marinated, it occurred to me that I happened to have a youthful person right outside of my shop. He was working with gusto in the heat of a south-central Indiana June afternoon. Asher McDaniel is 12 and has been actively working since the age of 7. His jobs at home include feeding the dog, sweeping the barn, and tilling the garden – it’s 5/8 of an acre, on which the family grows the majority of its vegetables each year. This level of responsibility is not inconsequential.

“He’s also our mechanic,” adds his father, Aaron, who was sweating alongside him. “We were going to scrap two riding mowers, and I told him to get them out of the lean-to to load into the trailer. They hadn’t run in years. One was a gift from a client, one from a grandpa. Before I got home from work that night he got both of them running.” Bear in mind that Aaron can figure out how to make almost anything run long after others have written it off… and even he had written these mowers off.

Asher continues to maintain those mowers, in addition to the one owned by his older brother, who operates a mowing business.

Asher’s thoughts on work?

“I like it,” he says. “It pays pretty good.” How much does it pay? “Eight dollars an hour. That’s 75 cents more than what I could make flipping burgers.” (Not that he would be flipping burgers at his age. There’s a legal difference between minors working with their parents and those who are employed by others.) But the pay is far from the only motivation. He’s homeschooled. This work is no less integral to his education than his state-mandated academic studies and lessons in guitar.

Asher has been going to work, on and off, with his father for five years. This is in addition to what he does around the family farm. “I like going to work with him,” he says. “And I like the kind of work it is.” Liberate yourself from prevailing norms and you may glean just how rewarding vigorous physical work and the kind of constant problem-solving Matthew Crawford wrote about in “Shop Class as Soulcraft” can be. You may appreciate the sense of competence that comes from making an undeniable difference in the world around you.

“I didn’t have a lot of the same opportunities at his age,” says Aaron, in a statement some may imagine was intended to be ironic. (It was not.) When Aaron was 14, Aaron’s father left his job in research and development for a corporation to start a family farm. “I saw (my father’s) work ethic and admired it,” Aaron says.

As a result, Aaron and his wife, MeChelle, who shares his perspective on the value of labor and family, decided to include their children in their own work from a much younger age – not because doing so was convenient, but, as Aaron puts it, “because I wanted to share my joy and satisfaction with them.”

If your reaction to this statement is one of cynical disbelief – because how many of us today see hand-digging a trench through gravel on a humid summer’s day as a source of joy and satisfaction? – you may be contributing to Freddy’s problem. This is not just about young people.

“One of the measures of success is how far we can distance ourselves from physical and mental strain,” Aaron adds. “If we value work – if our attitude to work is that it’s profitable and good and healthy – we’ll want our children to participate with us.”

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Finally, back to that comment. I asked myself, “Who the *&^ is Mike Rowe and why should I care about what he has to say on this matter?” (We don’t have cable TV.) Before writing this post I looked him up online and found this presentation, which speaks volumes more about this subject than I can convey.

So, thanks, commenter, for turning me on to a onetime scholar of Classical Greek who is getting people to question attitudes about work. If more of us consider the bigger picture and our own part in it instead of just complaining that young people are lazy or “entitled,” we may have a shot at making things better.

— Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work“

You never know where a comment on an Instagram or blog post may take you. In this case, a comment by woodworker Adam Godet was the impetus for a seminar in our nation’s capital.

“Great post!” he wrote. “Love your work on this topic…have you ever thought of doing an in-person class on this topic? I would love the opportunity to go in depth on this stuff, imagine others would too…”

Undeterred by my reluctant reply, he contacted me a few days later. I’m sharing most of his note here, with his permission, because it’s the best way I can convey what this event will be about.

There is a charge to attend; part goes to the owner of the venue, and part will go toward the cost of the extra day away from my shop required for me to put this on.

Ms. Hiller,

I am following up on our brief correspondence on the LAP blog regarding my recommendation for a class on the business of woodworking. I did not respond sooner because I wanted to go back and look at the blogs and your book and make sure I wasn’t just being lazy and missing things.

While I can always learn more from reading things multiple times, I do know that I learn better when I’ve discussed the ideas and tried to apply them (especially if that application takes place in classroom and not in real life). That is how I think a class on the business (and life?) of a professional woodworker could be most helpful: simply taking the ideas you’ve written about and taking a group of students a little bit further with them.

I’m imagining a seminar in which we go through several modules…each student brings his/her own experiences and together, we discuss how we could best handle situations and talk about shared challenges.  You could perhaps frame out some general overarching principles to all of the experiences you’ve shared.

A few topics I’d love to cover:

1. Difficult customers has to be one…your writing on this hilarious and I know there must be details that haven’t made it into print. While helpful and entertaining to read those stories, I think people could benefit from trying to discuss how they would handle a situation, and perhaps share how they have done it in the past.

2. Pricing. This is the biggest challenge for everyone I know doing this kind of work. I’d love to hear how you do it, in detail, and discuss with a group when to use fixed prices vs. time/materials, how/if you negotiate prices, etc. Do you have spreadsheets or other technical tools you could share?

3. Accounting tips. Again, this is a big challenge…and information is available in other places on the general concepts, but working through your experiences and discussing class member’s approaches could be useful.

4. Marketing/Scaling…you talk in the book about the aversion to having an employee…I think many feel that and want to do everything (except maybe the literal heavy-lifting) on their own. How do you market to get more work and then what do you do when you have a long backlog (and have a life)?

5. Work-life balance. Woodworking in a time-intensive profession…how do you extricate yourself at the end of the day? How do you organize your day–splitting up writing, woodworking, client meetings, etc.

6. Social media…how do you do it effectively and still get pieces out the door on time. Is it actually beneficial to your bottom line?

I actually read Making Things Work twice, and then bought more copies to give away. To me, this class would be an extension of that work and help some of dive deeper into the topics you’ve laid out there.

Why I think this is a good idea:

– You already have a ton of material

– It does not require a woodshop, so it could be anywhere.

– Much of the book focused on opening the eyes of daydreamers…this class would take the next step of helping those of us who read your warning, but are hurtling forward anyway 🙂

If you are interested in pursuing this further, I am ready to help with whatever I can offer to help get it off the ground.

Adam has gone above and beyond to make this event a reality. I’m really looking forward to it.–Nancy R. Hiller, author of Making Things Work

After all the returns and exchanges, we have five black chore coats ready to ship – four XXLs and one L. They are available here if you hurry.

— Christopher Schwarz

Speaking as someone who has read too many woodworking books, there are a few archetypes: the project book (“Birdhouse Bonanza”), the tool book (“Router Rodeo!”) and the black-turtleneck-and-beret books on why me make things (“My Mortise is Deeper than My Soul”).

Nancy Hiller’s new book “English Arts & Crafts Furniture” is none of these books. But you probably knew this because Hiller’s name is on it.

Instead “English Arts & Crafts Furniture” is one of those rare books that rewrites the history of the Arts & Crafts movement (it’s not just a reaction against industrialization – plus slats ‘n’ oak) while making you laugh and occasionally blush. She delves deep into the personalities that shaped the movement – John Ruskin and William Morris, plus the makers Harris Lebus, Ernest Gimson and the Barnsleys. And she presents three projects that are directly tied to her narrative thread.

It’s quite a trick, actually. It turns out that Hiller has written a project book with some very good information on tool use that happens to make me wonder about my motivation for making furniture for sale (now, where did I put my beret?).

Among her other feats of legerdemain: Hiller’s research is impeccable and copiously footnoted, yet the book is a breezy read. Despite the high level of craftsmanship displayed in her project pieces, Hiller manages to slough off her ego by profiling all the people who helped her along the way to make these incredible works – the stained glass maker, the woman who made the rush seats, the guy who make the hardware for her sideboard. And she manages to pack an incredible number of ideas and beautiful images into a book that is just 144 pages long.

If the book has any failings, I’d say that the illustrations could be improved. While there’s enough information to build the projects (and that’s all that matters), the line drawings don’t match the gorgeous photos, layout and typography. The book has some beautiful and expensive touches – the full-color endsheets match the wallpaper on the cover – but I kind of gag when I see advertisements bound into the back of a book. Those, however, are personal problems.

In all, this is a rare woodworking book. The kind of book that makes me jealous that I didn’t write it myself. (Or at least come up with Hiller’s fascinating way of combining biography, history, sociology, workshop instruction and butt jokes.)

So buy it, even if you think you don’t like English Arts & Crafts (though you probably will after seeing the movement through Hiller’s eyes). And buy it because it supports this kind of work that has become rare in the woodworking field. Most woodworking books these days have more gimmicks than gumption.

“English Arts & Crafts Furniture” is available from ShopWoodworking and other retailers. However, Hiller will make more money if you buy it from ShopWoodworking or directly from her at her upcoming book tour.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you are particularly charmed by the side chair in the book, Hiller will offer additional plans of the chair. Those will be available through her website.