“Although Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and a leading advocate of the modern movement, gave full credit to the influence that Ruskin, Morris and the British Arts and Crafts Movement had on his own development, this acknowledgement was not generally shared. For many years whilst the Modern Movement reigned supreme and concrete machines for living and working were filling our cities, Morris and the handcraftsmen were rather ridiculed as being sentimental and irrelevant, or worse, in some circles, as being detrimental to progress.”
— Alan Peters, “Cabinetmaking: The Professional Approach, Second Edition” (Linden, 2009)
Mike Siemsen at the Mike Siemsen School of Woodworking in Minnesota has agreed to put on a low-cost hand-tool immersion course in June 2016 that is based directly on the two classes I ran in 2015 for new woodworkers who are 35 and younger.
The class will run June 13-17. Attendees will camp and cook on his farm property (just like the class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking). Also good to know: Mike has bathrooms and showers. The cost is an amazingly low $450 for the week. That includes materials and the camping (bring your own tent). If you are 35 or younger, you cannot beat this week-long experience as a way to get started.
Attendees will be fixing up tools, learning about sharpening and building the same tool chest we built at the New English Workshop in Bridgwater, England, and at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I’ve given all my teaching materials to Mike, and it will essentially be the same class, only in a Minnesota accent.
Sign up quick. Here’s the link. Or send an e-mail directly to Mike to secure your place at mike@schoolofwood.com.
Mike is an outstanding woodworker, a great teacher, funny as hell and crazy generous to be doing this. He has an outstanding shop for this sort of thing and a beautiful farm for camping.
As with the other classes, we would love to have your help getting tools and/or cash donations to help outfit the students. Mike has already had offers of people volunteering to assist him during the class – and he could use a few more assistants. I’ll discuss the tools the students need in a future blog post.
Thanks to Mike for picking up the torch on this important way to give the next generation of woodworkers a fast start.
I will announce here on the blog when we get the books and when they hit the mail trucks.
Of those 500 books, only about 50 are unspoken for. So if you want one, with free domestic shipping, visit the Lost Art Press store. This book is not something we will stock on a regular basis. When Amazon gets it, everyone else in the market is done for.
Similarly, we have only about 100 letterpress “With Hammer in Hand” posters available. They are $25 with free domestic shipping. Once these are gone, they are gone. They are gorgeous. But don’t take my word for it, read it from Jameel Abraham at Benchcrafted.
One the more difficult parts of writing a book is knowing when to slam the transmission into “park” while going 80 mph.
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was supposed to have plans for five tool chests in it, including Dutch, traveling, gents and Japanese versions. But I soon realized that the additional plans would dilute the central message in the book. And the text was already longer than I wanted it to be.
The same thing is happening with “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” My sketchbook is filled with with more than a dozen new designs that I’d like to build and include with the core 13 projects. But that would delay the book a year, and I’m not sure it would do much more than just make the book thicker.
But then I ordered two full sides of unbleached rawhide today to dive into one aspect of the book that I had rejected months ago. I had a wild and beuatiful idea while looking at some drapes. Plus, I started eyeing my lumber stack to see if I had enough wood to build the refinement of my drinking table (sketch above).
I’ve promised myself (and my family) that this book will be complete by the end of the year. So I best shift into high gear.
As Part II ended Allen Gawthrop’s business had grown and he was in desparate need of a larger shop and housing for himself and his workmen. At this point he was all of 23 years old.
MARRIAGE AND HOME MAKING
By this time I not only wanted more shop room, and boarding for the workmen, but I had occasionally been visiting a young woman for whom an attachment of something more than common friendship seemed to exist, and I hoped to some day to become worthy of her undivided affection and esteem. After looking around the country for some time, I found a small lot of about five acres, not over half a mile off, on which was a small log cabin, and adjoining which was about eight or ten acres more of wood lots, all of which I found could be bought at a reasonable price: but how I was to get the necessary buildings erected, that was the question. I had no way of boarding the workmen and it seemed board could not be had in the neighborhood so the only alternative seemed to be to move into the old house temporarily until we could build a larger one. But here a new difficulty presented itself, for to expect the young lady before mentioned to leave a large comfortable home and move with me into such a cabin was rather too much. However I summoned up sufficient courage to lay my troubles before her– she evinced interest in the matter and on my giving her a description of the house and its surroundings, I found that she would rather go with me into a small house that we could call our own than to go with another family. . . I purchased the property and began preparation for building a shop. One day I accidentally discovered traces of an old dam and race where water of a small stream had been taken around and into my lot for irrigating the meadow, and I saw that by purchasing two or three acres more land of my neighbor I could have a nice little water power to utilize in our business–so I went right away to my neighbor and found him willing to sell me as much land as would give me the power together with the water right at the same price per acre that I had paid him for the other five acres I had purchased of him. This would make me a lot altogether of about sixteen acres of land with a water power on it just what I had been looking for so long. Instead of putting up a shop as intended a few days before (near the house) we dug tail race, built a shop, fixed up the dam, got some 20 feet head and put in a 16 feet overshot wheel which gave ample power for lathes, saws &c. We made good use of for nearly twenty years afterwards. . .
On the 31st day of the seventh month 1833 I entered the marriage life with Mary Ann Newlin. . . Of New Garden Township. . .on the 22 day of the eighth month following we moved into the little log cabin in which we lived four years. Although the house was small and we had a pretty large family of apprentice boys and journeymen yet we made out to live quite comfortably and in just four to a day from the time we moved into the old house, we had a new one built and moved into it and were much more able to appreciate its comfort and conveniences than if we had never lived in the old one.
With ample shop room and water power business increased and soon the great trouble was to fill the orders. . .
Gawthrop’s ad from 1846.
Our business seemed to take a change; although we continued the furniture business yet the greater portion of my time was occupied in making and putting in rams…we built a foundry to make our own iron and brass casting (in 1847) we concluded to move to Wilmington and go into the plumbing and gas fitting busines. . . and moved on the 9th of 3rd month 1854. . .
19th c. water ram.
Addenda by Gawthrop’s son Henry: Thenarratativeof my father’s life shows that he was strong in the imaginative. He was a skilled and skillful worker in wood, a hint of which is given in the desk made by him late in life, at which I am writing. He established a successful cabinet business and then following the needs of the time he changed to a metal worker. . . the narrative of his life was written in 1880 in his 70th year. He died 6th mo. 23rd 1885 and is buried at the Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery.
That concludes the autobiography of Allen Gawthrop. In a page from a 20th century family geneology I found this little note:
