Now that spoon carving has supplanted pen turning as the latest woodworking craze (and it’s about time), you might enjoy this article from The Woodworker magazine, which was likely written and illustrated by Charles H. Hayward.
Hayward had excellent contacts among British museums, especially the Victoria and Albert Museum. So the magazine is peppered with his drawings of early work, including this collection of interesting wooden spoons.
I’ve not been bitten by the spoon-carving bug, likely because of a psychic scar.
During my first few months at Popular Woodworking in 1996, one of the other editors was carving Celtic love spoons; I decided I would like to learn to make one, too. After half a day of work on my love spoon, I showed it to him to get some feedback and tips.
“Oh wow,” he said, holding my spoon. “I really am a good carver. Your spoon sucks. You’re fired.”
He gave the spoon back to me and walked away. I threw my spoon in the garbage.
You can download the one-page article in pdf format using the link below.
I’m building a dovetailed campaign trunk from start to finish – including all the hardware – and talking about a wide variety of hand-tool topics, everything from sharpening to hand joinery to not bleeding on the wood.
The seminar is Saturday and Sunday at Francis Parker School, 6501 Linda Vista Rd. San Diego, CA 92111. The seminar starts at 8 a.m. Saturday. You can still register here online.
All attendees receive a copy of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (signed in thumb blood) and the book’s companion DVD.
While scanning more than 350 old magazines edited by Charles Hayward, we kept running into articles that were made us pause because they were so interesting, yet we didn’t have a place for them in our forthcoming book.
We clipped them anyway, and I’ll be posting many of them here for you to enjoy.
Today is an article from the fantastic series called “The Old School,” which ran in The Woodworker between the wars. Each “Old School” column was a first-person account of work in a hand-tool shop at a different trade. This particular column was on making coffins.
You can download a pdf of the article using the link below.
Also, reader Jeff Hanes sent me this link to a film by craftsman Jeremy Broun about Hayward’s influence on him as a craftsman and illustrator. It is well worth watching.
Tomorrow I am off to San Diego to teach a two-day seminar at the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association. I have take the smart extremely stupid step of packing all of my tools and the wood for my project in my checked luggage. Along with my undies and minty floss.
Well, it couldn’t be worse than my performance in Detroit!
You can download the geometry animations discussed in “By Hand & Eye” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. Simply visit Jim Tolpin’s YouTube channel. Scroll down and you’ll see all the animations there.
While I’m the public face of Lost Art Press, this company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for a network of independent woodworkers, writers, editors, designers, indexers, researchers and proofreaders. Every book we publish is vetted by a team of people – some paid and some volunteers – who clean and refine our authors’ work.
Our network of assistants has gotten large enough that I am compelled to offer the following people the official title of “contributing editor.”
Before I list these people, I have to call out John Hoffman, who owns half of Lost Art Press. Without him, we wouldn’t have a new website, we wouldn’t have a smooth accounting system and we wouldn’t be able to ship books as efficiently as we do. John’s labor is the thankless donkey work that keeps this business going. He’s also been expanding his efforts this year into the editorial realm, which we’ll be discussing in the coming months.
But whether you know John or not, this business would not exist without him. And it’s important for me to mention that at every opportunity.
So here are the Lost Art Press contributing editors, in no particular order:
Suzanne Ellison. While we call her the “saucy indexer,” Suzanne is more than a writer of indices. She provides proofing, endless research and nudges (she is currently nudging me into Danish Modern). For example, when I started researching campaign furniture, Suzanne started her own independent investigation into the style. Without her help, I think my book would still be in the works. She also is willing to endless do-gooder donkey work: Right now she is transcribing the entire “The Naked Woodworker” DVD for customers who are deaf. She is doing this for no money (though I’ve promised her a dinner and wine).
We hope to have Suzanne write a book for us on Gillows of Lancaster, one of the most important and under-appreciated furniture makers of Great Britain.
Jeff Burks. Jeff’s research is fantastic. He finds images, articles and references that elude me and other people who plumb the history of the craft. His research on patents is impressive. And he has compiled some amazing original-source material on topics that needs to be published.
He has a sharp eye when it comes to woodworking imagery – paintings, drawings and sculpture in particular.
He also goes on hiatus at times. He’s a professional woodworker and sometimes his work becomes all-consuming. So for those of you who ask: “What happened to Jeff Burks?” My answer is: I don’t know. Let’s hope he’ll come back soon and return to posting regularly on the Lost Art Press blog.
Megan Fitzpatrick. Since we started this company, Megan has edited every one of our books. Some of them she edited for free – to help improve the product. On other books, such as Roy Underhill’s forthcoming novel, she has done more work than anyone besides the author. She even sneaks into the backend of our blog at times and fixes typos.
Though she technically works for a competing publishing house, we have found a way to make that relationship work. I promise not to publish any books on plunge routers; she vows to never publish translations of ancient French texts. All good.
Linda Watts. Though Linda is a book designer, she also has the sharp eye of an editor. Whenever she completes a design, she also gives us a list of errors and typos she finds. Linda has been in the woodworking publishing field longer than anyone in my circle of friends – she started at Shopsmith and designed its magazine “Hands On!” when I was in high school. My relationship with Linda is the longest (and best) that I’ve ever had with a designer.
There are lots of other people who helps us out on individual projects, but the four people above are involved in some way with almost everything we do. They are the reason that a lot of our books are interesting, fun to read and beautiful to behold.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. In a future post I’ll discuss the Lost Art Press mules – people who are the arms and legs of this company. These are the people who help move mountains of books or scan piles of pages.