“As an instructional text, it probably has more process images than any other book on carving that I own,” O’Brien writes. ” … I can’t imagine more instructional detail being provided. If the book were composed of pictures alone, it would be worth the cost.”
O’Brien, a skilled carver himself (check out his letter carving here), writes that carving is one of the more elusive areas of the craft. “While it is disguised as woodworking, it really has more in common with drawing,” he says. “Realizing this took me a long time. The skills required for executing a carving with curves and flowing lines come from a different part of the brain than the skills we use for the predictable hard and straight lines of milling lumber and cutting joints. Think of the chisel as a drawing tool, not a cutting tool. Mary provides ample instruction on how to design, draw, and lay out the acanthus leaf and explains that this is important, not only for the task at hand, but also in order to develop our ability to see and execute fine details.”
O’Brien talks about the Eureka moment he had while reading Mary’s section on sharpening, the importance of storytelling when discussing technique (and how Mary’s memorable tales enhance the book) and, well, the fact that the book is a steal.
“The amount of time and labor evident in the making of this book belie the comparably low cost ($49 or less for the PDF version). It’s hard to imagine creating this much text and countless images in such a superbly designed, printed, and bound edition – in the United States no less!”
I’m in Charleston, S.C., this week to inventory my father’s belongings and start figuring out what to do with his possessions and his house. I also have one important personal task: retrieve a workbench I loaned him many years ago so I can restore it.
I made the bench in 2002 or 2003 for Popular Woodworking (you can see it here), and it stayed in the shop until I loaned it to dad in 2009. Like many of my early benches, it’s made with yellow pine and Veritas bench bolts – still a great combination that I recommend for bench builders. These days, however, most of my customers prefer giant oak slabs.
After my bench moved south, it endured multiple hurricanes and tropical depressions, including Bonnie, Matthew and Irma. My dad’s house is in a low-lying area with the shop on the ground floor, so there were a couple times my bench was afloat during storm surges.
Today I took it apart. This process should take 10 minutes. But everything – everything – was rusted, jammed and degraded. Wood screws that should have accepted a Phillips head were rusted to the point where nothing would unscrew them (except a hacksaw). The metal drawer slides were about 50 percent rust and required lots of persuasion to expectorate their drawers.
But the wood was in surprisingly good condition. The laminated top hadn’t split. The Veritas Twin Screws still turned (despite heavy rusting) and even the plywood edge tape on the drawer cabinet was in perfect condition.
Tomorrow the bench begins its journey back north, where I will clean it, replace the rusted parts and true up the benchtop. It’s going back to work. And I hope the that worst weather it will ever see is a Midwestern thunderstorm.
My daughter Katy made a huge batch of soft wax during spring break, and you can order it from her etsy.com store here.
This is a 100-percent teenager enterprise. She makes it from scratch in my shop, cans it, labels it and ships it out. Then she spends the money on rock music and chicken nuggets (I hope).
A painting of our storefront by my daughter Katy (this is before we painted the exterior).
The Lost Art Press storefront in Covington, Ky., will be open April 14 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and there will be a lot to do and see that day.
I’ll be furiously dovetailing the six tills for two tool chests for customers. You are welcome to come check out my workmanship and some of the details on these chests, including the casters, tool racks and interior trimmings.
Megan Fitzpatrick and Brendan Gaffney are in the middle of building a run of book boxes for a client that will house the four volumes of “The Woodworker.” These are fun projects you can do in an afternoon yourself.
We have a good selection of blemished books for sale for 50 percent off (cash only on blemished books).
And I believe we’ll have some of Megan’s students in the shop who will be finishing up their silverware trays from the most recent class in the storefront. Plus, we’ll all be on hand to answer questions, demonstrate techniques and generally gab about the craft.
New Food Recommendation The food scene in Covington continues to grow. The newest addition is “Main Street Tavern,” which is about two blocks from our shop. This establishment is located in a building that has been a tavern since 1865 and is still replete with the tin ceiling tiles and wainscot of its past.
But this is not some precious restaurant that is backed by big-name chefs or money. This is my favorite kind of place: A dive bar with incredible local food.
They make their own bologna and goetta. The fried chicken is incredible. The burgers are everything you want from a bar burger. Cheap beer. Nice people. Great prices. Get the bologna sliders (then come bum some statins from me).
We haven’t been there for brunch, but it looks incredible (check them out on Instagram).
So add this to your list of places to eat near us: Otto’s, Frieda’s, Commonwealth, Bouquet, Cock & Bull, Chako, Coppin’s and Lil’s. And a dozen more…..
Few can claim that they’ve made a novel or uncompromising break from the design of their time. Whether we are interpreting, imitating, recasting or reacting to the designs of others (consciously or unconsciously), few designers add truly original elements to their forms.
For many, a search for novel design eventually leads them to “outsider” or “folk” art. While the definition of outsider art is problematic to nail down, it often revolves around a character whose drive to express themselves in a given medium isn’t influenced by or born of trend, opinion or feedback – and some of the best examples come from those who were compelled in an extreme manner by some compulsion, often psychological. This compulsion not only serves to improve the technical abilities of the artist, but accelerate and iterate their creative designs, letting them sprint rather than walk off the beaten path.
Mixing compulsion and a lack of technical ability is not necessarily a non-starter in the visual arts – when building furniture, however, there are certain baselines of ability that must be met for a piece to function as a usable object. Thus, the “outsider” furniture maker must have three things: a certain level of technical skill, the compulsion to make and a mind capable of design leaps and novelty.
Chester at his shop in Dwarf, Ky., with a few banjos and the bookcase rocker.
Chester Cornett, the “Craftsman of the Cumberlands,” had all three, in spades. Having learned traditional Appalachian chairmaking from his grandfather and uncle growing up, his technical skill with the simple hand tools he used was not simply adequate, but expert, even masterful at times. He was extremely compulsive, driven to constantly work at making chairs, making not only countless traditional forms but exploring a wide array of non-traditional forms as well, like rocking chairs with three or four feet, all manner of carving styles and motifs, even various materials like willow, upholstery, hickory bark and an array of different woods. He even made and modified banjos and guitars in his spare time.
This technical practice made him a great chairmaker and earned him a reputation among his fellow chairmakers in southeastern Kentucky. What made him exceptional, novel and unique among them (and what has drawn Chris and I to venture around Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky to see his work) is the coupling of this technical ability and practice with a positively different kind of creative brain. Cornett had a a rough life, to say the least, suffering extreme post-traumatic stress from his time in World War II and discord at home, with chronic illness in his children and marital issues. While this strife certainly caused Cornett significant emotional and psychological hardship, it seems that part and parcel along with it came a mind that was able to make creative leaps in design. Whether it was crossed wires or new connections, there is no denying his ability to come up with novel furniture forms. Add his feverish desire to iterate and his technical skill to his novel designs, and you’ve got a furniture maker worthy of investigation.
Of all the chairs Cornett made, one of the most extreme examples of “out” thinking applied with real technical prowess is what he called his “Two-in-One Bookcase Rocker, Masterpiece of Furniture,” one of a series of two-in-one rockers (each had eight legs and four rockers, or two chairs worth). At the time in 1965, he called it his masterpiece, saying “I never made nothin’ like it in my life. There ain’t nothing in the world like hit. That’s why I call it my masterpiece.”
Cornett made the chair for Michael Owen Jones (a folklorist who studied and wrote a book about Cornett) in place of the traditional seven-slat rocker the author had ordered. Cornett clearly was making a chair he thought befitting the author by including the appropriate book storage – but this chair is not simply a visual portmanteau of bookshelf and chair. While the added storage indicates a certain practicality of design, very little of the rest of the piece’s creative decisions are so straightforward. The maker chose to enclose the entirety of the chair with pinned panels (a total of 17 panels filled the spaces between the 12 posts and six shelves). Perhaps most notably, the top of each of the seven panels that make up the sides and back of the chair is adorned with a spoked half-circle, upon which Cornett carved the inscription “Old, Kentucky Made Buy Chester Cornett’s Hands Engle Mill.” (Cornett was, as Wendell Berry once noted, an “undaunted speller,” and his phonetic spelling of words like “buy” (by) “hit” (it) and “chire” (chair) not only appear in his writings and letters, but are often carved right into his work.)
As if the bigger picture of this chair wasn’t enough, it is absolutely full of details and curiosities far beyond the meaning of such half-circle motifs. The pins used to attach the shelves and affix the tenons in their mortises feature two distinct carving patterns, one faceted and the other fluted. Each octagonal post ends in a beautiful drawknife-carved finial. Each leg is tenoned to the rocker below, but instead of whittling down the leg to a round tenon, Cornett carved the tenon in a rectangular fashion, providing further glue surface and strength.
There are two things I like most about this chair. For one, it’s a chair after my own heart. I’m a “flat worker” (as Tim Manney once chidingly called me, in place of cabinetmaker) and if there’s a chair that aspires to be casework, or the other way around, it’s this one. I’m already dreaming of how floating panels and bent-lam rockers could make their way into the same piece.
The other thing I adore in this piece of furniture is the credibility that is somehow pervasive in what should be a ridiculous piece of work. Cornett was indeed an expert in dealing with wood – having rocked and moved the piece around while examining it, it feels solid and well joined at every point of possible weakness. The pins are carefully carved, the finials are a perfect example of refined handwork, the tenons are carefully staggered to allow for proper joint strength. The form may be humorous but it was made in earnest by skilled hands, and the end result is a chair with significant presence. I’ve taken the measurements, and I’ve got the reference photos – without a doubt, this chair, maybe more aptly called a “chire,” is now on my short list of builds.
Thanks to Ellen Sieber and her staff at the Mathers Museum in Bloomington, Ind., for their time and patience in helping us through the museum’s incredible archives. The museum’s collection of Cornett’s work is astounding and well kept – I look forward already to visiting them again.
