Signed by the author, Christopher Schwarz. The first 500 customers get a free merit badge.
Our latest book.
The latest book from Lost Art Press shows you how to build a comfortable and sturdy chair using only materials and tools from the home center. No jigs. No specialty tools. Literally anyone can do it.
If that’s all you need to know, you can buy the book in our store here. It’s $21 and is made in the USA. (Or you can buy the complete set of our pocket-sized books – including this one – at a special price here.)
One of the seven chairs I built while writing the book.
Still unsure? Here’s how we did it. The chair’s legs are made from hickory tool handles. The spindles are 5/8” dowels. The arm is plywood and the seat and backrest are construction pine. Most of the cutting is done with a jigsaw or small tabletop band saw. All the mortises are made with a drill and home-center bits.
What about all the compound angles? Isn’t that difficult? Nope. We developed a way to drill all the mortises for the sticks with ease. You just clamp the arm and seat together like a sandwich and drill the mortises according to the patterns. (You can download free full-size patterns for the chair via this link.)
“Build a Chair from Bulls%$t” is short – just 112 pages, written by me and fully illustrated by Keith Mitchell. You can read the book in just a few hours.
The first 500 customers receive a free merit badge.
If you are intimidated by chairmaking, the materials or the tools, “Build a Chair from Bulls%$t” will remove any doubts, fears or excuses. And what if you can’t afford the $21 to buy the book? No problem. You can download the entire book for free here. (Don’t worry. You won’t have to register or give up your email. Just click and the book will download to your device.)
The physical book is nicely printed in the USA and is worth owning. “Build a Chair from Bulls%$t” is one of our “pocket books” – inexpensive but well-made books. It measures 4″ x 6.5″. The text is printed on #70 matte-coated paper (acid free). The book’s pages are gathered into signatures and then sewn together – a step few publishers bother with today. The book block is then glued and reinforced with fiber tape and covered with heavy cloth-covered boards. This is a permanent library-grade book – designed to last a couple centuries.
In a space of just 10” x 39” x 19-1/2”, H.O. Studley managed to arrange – with perfection – more than 250 of his tools into a dovetailed mahogany cabinet that has captivated tens of thousands of woodworkers since it was first unveiled in 1988 on the back cover of Fine Woodworking with a single shocking photograph.
After a brief stay at the Smithsonian, the cabinet was sold to a private collector and hadn’t been seen by the public for well over a decade. Studley’s workbench has never been on public view.
This book is an in-depth examination of one of the most beautiful woodworking tool chests ever constructed and presents the first-ever biography of Studley (1838-1925), a piano and organ builder in Quincy, Mass. It features measurements, details and photographs of all the tools in the cabinet. Every swinging frame, hinged panel and nook of this three-dimensional, multi-layered sculpture has been analyzed so you can understand how it folds in on itself like a giant piece of mahogany origami.
But most of all, you will see the cabinet in a way that only a handful of privileged people ever have. And you will realize that the magazine photograph that electrified the woodworking world in 1988 only scratches the surface of the cabinet’s complete magnificence.
The generation of Hardwicks who were Studley’s contemporaries included three brothers: Charles Henry Hardwick, Sr., Henry Everett Hardwick and Charles Theodore Hardwick. It was these men with whom Studley bought and sold real estate. Again, according to Hardwick family legend, somewhere along the path of these ventures was a loan from one or more of the Hardwick brothers to Henry O. Studley, a loan that was secured with his tool cabinet as collateral. It is unknown whether the loan was part of a specific real estate transaction or simply part of a larger portfolio of activities.
This scenario of the tool ensemble being collateral does make sense at some level. We know these basic facts: Studley was deeply engaged in real estate deals, including many with the Hardwick family; he possessed the tool cabinet preceding his retirement about 1919, as proved by the photographic portrait; about that time his wife had recently died after a lingering and debilitating illness; and Studley’s own health began to fail shortly thereafter. It is not a great leap to wonder if any of these events had financial implications, and the conveyance of the tool cabinet and workbench to the Hardwicks was a consequence of that circumstance.
At first, I arrived at that conclusion because it made sense. However, an examination of the public records surrounding the Stetson and Studley family finances does not support the idea that Studley’s disposal of the tool cabinet and workbench was financially driven. His wife was from a wealthy family, and he had become wealthy himself along with her during their long marriage. A Stetson family deposition from 1940 relating to the disposition of some family assets states that [Mrs. Studley] “died without leaving any estate as she was bedridden for six years prior to her death and had used all her savings for expenses.” This deposition, however, does not align with the facts of Abbie’s will and probate, which lists substantial assets.
Given the probability that Studley’s finances did not force him to relinquish his tool cabinet, an equally plausible possibility, and in fact my own inescapable conclusion, is that it was a simple gift from Studley to Mr. Hardwick as a gesture of friendship and generosity, especially given that Studley was retired from the workshop and that he had presumably prospered through his partnerships with the Hardwicks over many years.
This Hardwick family Christmas card, probably from the 1950s, presents an image of the four-story granite manse that served as home to several generations of the family and was perhaps the starting point for Henry Studley’s career as a skilled craftsman. (Image courtesy of Peter Hardwick)
There is of course at this point no way to know the circumstances of the transaction and transfer; there is no known documentary evidence for the change in ownership. Still, it makes for some fascinating contemplation to consider the series of events at the end of Studley’s life that led him to part with this treasure, an inspired product of his own genius and hands.
Whatever the cause, the responsibility for custody and care of the tool cabinet and workbench now rested with the Hardwicks. Were it not for this caprice, the Hardwicks might be best known for their granite quarry and a scandalous murder that occurred there on July 29, 1910. In this sensational crime, Henry E. Hardwick and Mrs. Marianna Restelli, among others, were killed by her son, a quarryman/stone cutter named Luigi (Louis) Restelli. The relationship between Mr. Hardwick and Mrs. Restelli is unknown, and their simultaneous murder may be entirely coincidental.
Luigi Restelli was known to associate with an anarchist cell in Quincy, and a contemporaneous account in The New York Times suggests that the Quincy cell was under instructions from anarchist headquarters in Barre, Vt., to “kill rich people.” Numerous contemporaneous sources affirm the same account. The consensus for the motive behind the attacks seems to be “Madness” brought on by debt, and Restelli’s body was found in a nearby quarry pit following his suicide.
Interestingly, those infamous events are the first solid reference for anything dealing even remotely with the provenance of the tool cabinet ensemble. Yet those events have nothing to do directly with Studley or his cabinet, and tell us nothing new about the circumstances of its creation, the particulars by which it changed hands, nor even why it changed hands. But the events of that fateful day did cast the die for the chain of custody of the cabinet to this very day. Again, we do not know precisely when nor why it came into the Hardwicks’ possession, but we know where it went from then on.
With the murder of Henry Everett Hardwick, his son Charles Henry Hardwick (the first), a bachelor, inherited the family fortune and assets. This fortune eventually included the tool cabinet and workbench.
The detail of Charles Henry Hardwick’s bachelor status is critical to the story. It meant that on his death the progression of the family properties moved into the lineage of his brother Robert A. Hardwick, then down through Robert’s only son Charles Henry Hardwick II, Peter’s father, and then to Charles Henry “Hank” Hardwick III, Peter’s older brother. Hank was the family heir as the oldest son of his generation, and so inherited everything including the Studley tool cabinet. The final Hardwick steward of the tool cabinet was Charles Henry Hardwick II’s younger son Peter (thus not a primary heir), who owned it from the 1970s into the end of the 1990s.
Peter’s father, Charles Henry Hardwick II, died tragically and unexpectedly at the age of 44, predeceasing his own father.
Peter Hardwick’s earliest memories of the tool cabinet were in the 1950s when he was visiting his great-grandfather’s giant stone house in Quincy. The tool chest was displayed in the second-floor hallway next to the law office of his great uncle Charles, the older, bachelor brother of Peter’s grandfather Robert. The tool chest was protected behind a plastic panel. There it remained throughout Peter’s youth, adolescence and early adulthood, and in profound understatement he says, “It was very interesting to a little boy.”
Peter also recalls the workbench first being used as a table in the “stable-boy’s quarters above the garage” in Quincy and then the base alone used as an elegant dressing table in the mansion without the slab workbench top attached.
The Family Moves to Maine Peter joined the military in the 1960s, went to Vietnam and, “A lot happened [with family activities] during that time.” During Peter’s military service, his grandfather Robert and brother Hank sold the big house in Quincy and moved to property the family owned in Maine. They took everything from the Quincy house to Maine, including the tool cabinet and workbench, plus as much of the fine Studley handiwork from the granite house as they could move, including a number of fireplace surrounds. Two of those wound up in the farmhouse where Peter lives; the remaining examples were installed in grandfather Robert’s nearby house.
Unfortunately the space inside Peter Hardwick’s house is not conducive to an overall image of this magnificent Studley-made architectural detail. The lower portion is included in Sandor Nagyszalanczy’s original image of the cabinet. The image was edited for clarity and privacy.
Peter returned from the military and moved to Maine about 1970 where he worked on the family farm. The three men, Peter, Robert and Hank, lived on adjacent family properties in Maine.
When Peter’s grandfather Robert died in 1976, “Hank,” Peter’s older brother by three years, inherited the family properties and possessions, including the tool chest and workbench. Hank’s interests lay in other directions so the tool cabinet and workbench remained in storage in a family barn. All the while, Peter never forgot the captivating collection he remembered as a boy visiting his great-uncle’s law offices in the family home in Quincy.
Once the collection passed to the ownership of his brother, Peter urged him to “take care” and preserve the tool cabinet and contents. In the early 1970s Peter offered to purchase the tool cabinet and related accouterments, including the workbench, and as part of the transaction the brothers retained an antiques dealer to appraise it. The dealer pronounced the tool cabinet and its contents as “something special” and appraised it at $500.
Always (and still) a car buff, Peter owned a pristine 1934 Ford four-door sedan that was dark blue with low original mileage. Fortunately for our story, Hank was very much interested in the car and a deal was struck between thetwo brothers. Peter promptly made the trade and took possession of the tool cabinet and displayed it in his parlor for more than a decade.
The only place Peter Hardwick had where the tool cabinet could be displayed was inside his unused fireplace surround in the cottage parlor. Appropriately, the surround was some of Studley’s handiwork from the Quincy house. (Photo courtesy of Sandor Nagyszalanczy)
The Fan Frenzy Begins In the late 1980s Peter installed a new chimney in his home, and, in doing what guys do on such a momentous occasion, invited a friend over to show off his newly completed project. This friend, an insurance agent, saw the tool cabinet, recognized its special-ness and encouraged Peter to insure it. This event, Peter said, “Opened a can of worms!”
Peter tried to figure out exactly what it was that he had and how much to insure it for, and so he turned to Fine Woodworking, the Smithsonian and an antiques appraiser for answers. At Fine Woodworking magazine, Senior Editor Sandor Nagyszalanczy took the call and carries the memories vividly.
In early 1988, Nagyszalanczy made arrangements to go visit it during another scouting trip to Maine. When he opened the chest, it was, and I am quoting him, “Jaw dropping to floor!” He set up to take the photographs that eventually entered directly into our collective consciousnesses via the backcover of that magazine.
At that moment, Peter’s life of stewardship of the tool cabinet changed forever. In an age before e-mail, the result of that single back-cover image – and the ensuing posters – was an onslaught of actual “fan mail” for the tool cabinet that overwhelmed him. He received so much mail that he rented a dedicated post office box just for the unsolicited correspondence being forwarded to him by Fine Woodworking. Peter’s only regret from this period was that he did not save the fan mail.
The Smithsonian One of the correspondents was the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Curator David Shayt. While on vacation, Shayt visited Peter and they struck up a fast friendship based initially on their mutual interest in the tool collection, but it soon evolved to reflect the fact that both men were affable and genuinely good guys.
At the time, Peter had a dilemma. He owned a family heirloom that was also a monumental piece of Americana, and he was concerned about its security and preservation in a simple Maine farmhouse. Shayt proposed a temporary solution. What if Peter loaned the tool cabinet to the Smithsonian for a 10-year period, during which the Smithsonian would bear all the responsibility for it? Once again, Peter reached an agreement to foster the care and preservation of a genuine national treasure, a theme that has touched him throughout his life.
While at the Institution the cabinet was conserved and exhaustively documented, and included in a small vignette adjacent to the exhibit “Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution 1790-1860,” with several other tool chests and cabinets for various trades. Though the larger exhibit lasted almost 20 years (late 1986 to mid-2006), the Studley tool cabinet was included for perhaps only a third of that time, probably from about 1992-1999. No doubt seen by thousands of woodworkers there, the Internet has numerous accounts of woodworkers who were captivated by it. I spoke recently with one visitor, a woodworker, who recalls it “being displayed a long way back from the glass, and in the dark.”
During the time of the Smithsonian possession, the collection was photographed and documented, and underwent a thorough cleaning and some conservation treatment, as well as being included in the small exhibit. Meanwhile, the torrent of fan mail kept coming, becoming even more of an avalanche with the issuing of the poster, then a Fine Woodworking article, a second edition of a poster and finally a third. The maelstrom of mail led Peter to reconsider his continued ownership of the collection.
And it was one of those letters that again changed the course of the Studley tool cabinet’s history.
Enter Mister Stewart Among those letters Peter received in the late 1990s was a polite and understated letter from Mister Stewart that expressed admiration for and interest inthe tool cabinet. After subsequent correspondence and conversations, Peter decided that Mister Stewart was the right person to become the new ownerand caretaker for the treasure.
Shane Orion Wiechnik, a furniture restorer and conservator based in Sydney, Australia, along with Liz Duck-Chong, a carpenter, freelance filmmaker and teacher, recently launched a new YouTube channel called Finished., an educational series on wood finishes.
Shane has spent the last 10 years developing a better knowledge of finishes. Deep diving into history, solvents, chemistry – all of it – he says it’s easy to get confused. A decade later, he’s here to share what he’s learned in a video series on different wood finishes and techniques.
We’ve been following @finished_series on Instagram as he’s talked about the development of this project over the past year. And we immediately checked out episode 1, WOOD: It comes from trees, the day he released it.
It’s fantastic.
Having spent our entire careers learning about wood and trees, we know how easy it can be to talk about it in a way that makes your brain hurt. Shane walks a different path, presenting complex information in a highly engaging way. It’s easy conversation, beautifully presented and not at all same old/same old – we learned new things. You will too. And we can’t wait for what’s next.
The 2025 chest in Eastern white pine and some mahogany scraps – ready for work.
Last week, we sent the revised edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to the printer. It will be released in late June. The book has been updated throughout, including the section on building the chest. The new chest holds more tools and takes about half the time to build (sacrificing nothing in the process).
If you’ve ever thought about building one of these chests, I have good news. Alexander Brothers now offers a kit of wood for the chest in gorgeous and perfect Eastern white pine. Check out the details here, but everything is milled so you can get started. Price: $575. (Alternatively, they will sell you a bundle of rough lumber if you want to save money and do that work yourself.)
This pine is fantastic. I bought the pine for the new chest from Alexander Brothers (at full price – this boy doesn’t take discounts). They have access to clear and wide stock that we simply do not.
Eastern white pine is – hands down – the best wood for this chest. It is lightweight, strong and a joy to saw and plane. Highly recommended.
And because the internet sucks, I have to mention this: We don’t get any royalty, kickback or affiliate money from Alexander Brothers, a family-run business in Virginia. Like Alexander Brothers, all we care about is getting good material in the hands of people so they can build stuff.
Editor’s Note: Philippe Lafargue, along with Michele Pietryka-Pagán and Don Williams, are the folks we have to thank for “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry,” which we first published in 2013, and “With All Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture,” which we first published in 2017.
Those editions are now sold out. However, the new deluxe edition of “With All Precision Possible” is now available, and we plan to offer a deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” soon.
Philippe, Michele and Don are also working on more volumes of Roubo, with a focus on interior carpentry, garden carpentry and carriages.
Philippe Lafargue was born in the southwest region of France, in the Basque country, in a town called Biarritz.
“It’s called the little California of France,” Philippe says. “It resembles the California coast because of the cliffs, beachgoers and surfing. The weather is pretty mild all year round, and you have mountains in the background. I was lucky to be born there and raised there. I had access to the natural beauty of the environment, which was very nurturing.”
Philippe lived with his parents, grandparents and older brother in a small, one-floor house with a basement.
“I would find refuge in the basement because we were crowded in the house,” he says. “I remember the winter months when I sheltered there. The furnace was there so it was warm and I could see the rain falling but I was protected.”
In the basement was an old workbench, anchored to the wall. Philippe worked on projects on that bench, imprecise but creative work that he loved. He also spent a lot of time at his uncle’s farm.
At times, Philippe found it difficult to feel motivated in school outside of the more artistic classes. He loved hands-on classes that inspired new ways of looking at things and doing things. He connected with a teacher at school who helped him get started in airplane model making.
Early on, Philippe knew he wanted to be a cabinetmaker.
“I was fascinated with the work of a cabinetmaker,” he says. “I wanted to be a true cabinetmaker, making case furniture. I don’t know where this came from.”
He wonders if he was, in part, influenced by all the furniture, made by a local cabinetmaker, in his parents’ house.
“You could buy what you could afford at the time, so it’s not very attractive,” he says. “But it’s very well done.”
As a teen, he was set to study cabinetmaking at school, theory and practice. But three months before the course was slated to begin, academic offerings shifted regionally. Suddenly, cabinetmaking wasn’t available based on where Philippe lived, and none of the other options offered to him interested him.
“I told the staff of the school that I didn’t see cabinetmaking there so I wasn’t interested,” he said. “I started looking for an apprenticeship.”
While looking, Philippe was offered an opportunity to attend a school two hours away from his hometown.
“Life is about opportunities,” he says, “but it’s also not being afraid to take the train when it’s going full steam.”
Becoming a Cabinetmaker
Before being accepted into the school, Philippe had to complete a series of tasks and projects. Philippe wonderfully shares that experience in an essay in “With All Precision Possible.”
In short, that summer he found a cabinetmaker who agreed to take him under his wing. In addition to helping the cabinetmaker with odd jobs, he worked through his tasks and projects, the cabinetmaker serving as mentor.
For his first task, Philippe dressed up the face and edges of rough lumber, making it perfectly equal in thickness and length, with hand tools only. Next his mentor taught him how to cut dovetails and he built a jewelry box and bread basket out of mahogany and cherry, using a set of provided blueprints for reference. He also learned how to sharpen chisels and hand plane blades.
This, from his essay:
That summer was an eye-opener in many respects and it cemented my desire to work with wood in some capacity. When fall arrived, I enrolled in my new school as a cabinetmaker. The school was training young fellows like me to be ready to enter the workforce quickly and thus the training was more focused on knowledge and use of equipment than on hand skills. After a summer of working with my hands, I balked. Two weeks into the school year I was certain that this was not the path I was seeking. I asked for an audience with the school director and shared him my dilemma. I told him I wanted to work with my hands and chairmaking would work better for me. I asked to be transferred and bid farewell to cabinetmaking. It is amazing what you can do when you are very motivated and stubborn.
I began my education in chairmaking the following week and while machinery was part of the training, there were many parts of a chair that could only be accomplished by hand, and that suited me just fine. So for the next two years, I learned the art of chairmaking, “industrial style,” which also included making beds and end/pier tables. There was a pretty straightforward approach to accomplishing such tasks. Now I was able to read a set of blueprints and from it, trace all the required contours and profiles used to cut out the necessary chair parts from the lumber. Thinking back, I am still amazed that in that class, all of us could produce an armchair in 24 hours, ready for finishing.
At the end of two years I had a diploma in my pocket and some experience under my belt. Now I could return to my mentor’s workshop and turn on and use all the power tools to my heart’s content, something I had earned and did proudly. I had a great summer in the little workshop that year.
During that summer, a friend told him about the esteemed École Boulle in Paris, which has offered higher education in applied arts and artistic crafts, including cabinetmaking, marquetry and restoration work, since 1886. To enroll, Philippe first had to pass a two-day exam, which included creating a full-size set of technical drawings with accurate dimensions of a Louis XV-style chair. He was accepted.
“It was another world,” Philippe says. “You’re learning about a lot of things, all around.”
After two years at École Boulle, he worked out a deal with the director. He would come back a third year, tuition free, and help fabricate everything that came out of the design workshop.
“That was very cool because they were doing some very interesting stuff, combining not only wood but metal and plastic,” he says.
Now he was firmly planted in hands-on learning and he loved it. But the dream situation was short-lived.
Mobilier National
A couple of weeks into his third year at École Boulle, a teacher told him about chairmaking job openings at Mobilier National, that manages the furniture of the French State, such as the furnishing of ministries and embassies, its storage, its restorations, and its design, notably with the Research and Creation Workshop. It was an opportunity Philippe couldn’t pass up. So he and a friend decided to apply. But first, they had to pass an exam.
When they arrived, they were given an armchair and a stack of wood. On day one, they were tasked with drawing the chair to scale. On day two, they were tasked with using their own drawings to each build an armchair in 24 hours. They both were hired.
Philippe worked there for three years.
“It’s like the history of France in all kinds of objects,” he says. “It was incredible. I saw all the campaign traveling furniture of the Napoleon War.”
Here, for example, Philippe worked on chairs stamped by famous chairmakers of the 18th century. The “users,” often high-ranking government officials, didn’t want reproductions. They wanted original pieces, signed and perfectly restored. It was all cyclical, too. For example, a canopy bed might be used by the president of France while elected for seven years and then returned to be left in storage.
Philippe questioned the restoration work at times, ripping off nails, redoing this, fixing that.
“But there’s so much, that you don’t even consider when there will never be enough one day,” he says. “That’s the problem. You value it differently.”
After three years, Philippe realized the job came to him too young. He could envision himself as head of the section in which he worked, but he wanted more out of life.
“If you stay in a job like that young, you are going to lose everything you have to offer,” he says. “There is no room to express yourself. There’s no room to grow. It’s very limited.”
Philippe went back to South France. He felt boxed in. In France, work is quite compartmentalized and segmented, he says, to the point of being rigid. He knew if he stayed that trying anything new would be complicated.
“So in 1987, I took my bag and went to the U.S.,” he says.
An Internship at the Smithsonian
“In the U.S., I realized quickly that first I had to learn English,” he says. “And I had to think out of the box because I could not just be a chairmaker. If you’re going to be a chairmaker in the U.S., you’re only going to be a chairmaker if you make things that are exceptional. You’re going to find a clientele that wants your stuff and that’s it, but that’s going to be rare.”
Eventually he landed an interview at the Smithsonian Museum’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory (now called the Museum Conservation Institute). The job – the museum’s first wooden objects intern. At the time, Don Williams worked in the lab and Mark Williams was head of the lab.
“I remember the interview in the meeting room,” Philippe says. “I was at the end of the table. I was shaking like a leaf. I knew 200 words of English. I had a little portfolio of photographs. And all these heads of all these sections were bombarding me with questions. It was freaking me out.”
He got the internship.
In his first week, he ended up in New Orleans at a convention for conservators from around the world. His eyes were opened to how other countries view the roles of conservator, restorer and curator. In the U.S., he says, you respect the stain as much as you respect a brand-new piece.
“You respect the history because everything is telling you something,” he says. “We’re just only passing information. We are not here to change information. That’s the big difference. You restore to have something look good. In the U.S., you encapsulate this moment and pass it along. And you remember that the best is always the enemy of the good.”
One day at the Smithsonian he saw someone had left three volumes of Roubo on his desk. Don and Mark asked Philippe if he could translate them.
“I said no. I won’t. It’s impossible,” Philippe says. “I didn’t know enough English at the time and I didn’t think I would have been able to manage that at all.”
While protesting, Philippe opened up one of the volumes and found a plate that shocked him. It was an illustration of a workshop and it looked identical to his workshop in Paris.
“It was and still is exactly the same,” he says. “It’s a row of workbenches. Windows on the left, big windows, floor to ceiling. The same spacing between each bench, the same lineup. On the right you have space to have small sawhorses or your glue pot. And you have an equipment room on the other side. When I saw these pictures, I couldn’t believe it. We haven’t moved from that yet. To me, it was unbelievable.”
In the beginning, Philippe worked closely with Mark, who hired and supervised him. When Don took over as head of the lab, he and Philippe worked well together, connecting over a shared taste in music.
No longer stuck in the role of chairmaker, Philippe decided to spread his wings even more.
Tryon Palace
In 1990, Philippe found a new opportunity as a conservator at Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina. He enjoyed this work for a while, but eventually realized he was missing something.
“I was lacking communication with what I was doing because those objects, they never talk back to you,” he says. “It was a bit too quiet.”
He switched gears to technical services manager, taking care of the well-being of its collections and buildings and its day-to-day operations. He worked up to the role of deputy director, which involved more finance work and human resources, and then helped build the N.C. History Center. In 2014, he was named executive director, a role he had been filling since the 2012 death of the previous director.
During this time, Philippe realized that all of his education, hands-on experiences and exposures to new opportunities had prepared him well for such new and varied work.
“Suddenly, you have all these resources that help you find a solution,” he says. “It’s like when you are building case furniture and you have something that doesn’t work, you find a solution. There is something, a mechanism in place that – click – it goes in. If you’re in a field that’s not quite yours, you use your mechanical skills to resolve stuff. It’s in place. You have learned how to make it work. You pull on your resources. I was glad to have my training because I can visualize things in three dimensions. I can see things very quickly.”
Philippe has found his professional journey gratifying.
“I was able to start from a wooden block but it’s not a block anymore,” he says. “It becomes whatever you want it to become. But you still have this hands-on quick understanding and then up, up, up and you work with people. It just happened to be that way. Primarily, I was able to open my mind. And it’s not always easy. But you make a mistake and you start again.”
Working on Roubo
Over the years, Philippe and Don kept in touch, somewhat sporadically. One weekend, Don called Philippe and told him he had started the translation of Roubo’s books. Don once again asked Philippe for help. This time, Philippe agreed.
Don asked immediately if he’d like to be named as an author.
“I said, Don, I don’t know. Send me stuff. If you like what I do, that’s fine with me. If you don’t like what I do, don’t put me on. So that’s the way it ended up being,” Philippe says. “I had no expectations. I was just doing it to help and for the fun of reading historical documents.”
They found a rhythm. Don and Michele completed their work, then sent everything to Philippe to look at it from the perspective of someone whose native language was French and who had a breadth of knowledge in French historical craftsmanship.
The first book took a while. Philippe worked on it every night after work, for two to three hours. The second one was a lot faster – it took Philippe about six months to complete.
After the first edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” was printed, Philippe joined Don at Woodworking in America 2013 in Cincinnati for a book signing.
“I thought I was on another planet,” Philippe says. “I said, ‘What the heck is going on?’ It’s one of those feelings like you don’t know where you’ve landed. It was funny. Don gave a lecture. I bumped into people like Roy Underhill. I ended up staying with Megan [Fitzpatrick] in her house. She was trying to finish her house. Is she still? I’m sure she is, with all the work she puts in at Lost Art Press. Anyway, Don and I got to see all the beautiful furniture she’s made. That was a lot of fun. It was all very strange but it was one of those moments in life that stays always engraved. You have these beautiful vignettes in life where you cross paths with people.”
Philippe is now back in France, in Saint Nazaire, a small town of about 2,500 people. He’s 20 minutes away from Spain, surrounded by mountains and the Mediterranean Sea.
He’s working with Michele and Don on new Roubo translations.
“That team is very relaxed,” he says. “This is the type of project you don’t get ready for. You can’t work ahead of time. You just wait for it to fall in your lap and then you go.”
‘Life is to Discover Yourself’
Having spent many years living and working in France, and many years living and working in the U.S., Philippe finds the differences quite interesting.
“In the U.S., there’s this quest for success and not being afraid of it,” he says. “There is a lot more freedom available where you pursue things or dream of things.”
It’s an attitude of, Why not? Let’s try, he says.
“What I did in the U.S. professionally is impossible to do in France. You could do it in France, but only if you had the right diplomas. In the U.S., I was not judged by my diploma. I was judged by my character, by my work ethics, by all these things that we should be judged on.”
These days, Philippe had rediscovered the joy of model making (with a nod to his childhood) and he’s tapping into more creative work, creating folk art. He works in a room that is a bit less than 10 square meters, with a tabletop as a workbench. He’s content.
“I’m very curious by nature,” he says.
For example, when making a model sailboat, he also made the sail.
“I pulled out a sewing machine and I sewed the sail because the process was a mystery to me,” he says. “I’m attracted to all those things that are new to me. I have a desire to surprise myself and discover other matter.”
He’s also being mindful about sharing what he’s learned over the years.
“That is also something that is more common in the U.S. than here,” he says. “Here, people retire and are finished. A lot is lost, really. The mentality is really different. In the U.S., when I was working in the museum, we had a lot of volunteers. They don’t want to just stop and do nothing. They come and share their stuff, they participate in life. I don’t know. It’s another way of looking at things. I’m not saying one way is better than the other, but for me, I was glad to be exposed to that way of looking at things because it made me bigger, bigger in looking at things and accepting things and opening up my mind. That’s what I like.”
Living life this way has required him to make some hard choices, he says.
“I’ve learned when you go down river, it’s always easier to go with the flow,” he says. “There’s always something you’re going to be able to catch on the side of the river to make a pause. When you try to go against the current, that’s where you’re drowning and you’re missing all the opportunities.
“You can fight all the time but life is going to take you where it’s going to take you. It’s up for you to go for it, to be quick to accept and change. And you are always part of it. That’s the beauty of it. No matter what happened, you are part of it – 50 percent is your choice. The rest is to accept that you have decided to do this or not. That’s the difficult part. But life is short. Life is to be lived. Life is to discover yourself.”
