Lost Art Press

When your wife can control her urge to even slightly roll her eyes when you talk about the East India Company, and your hemorrhoids are as big as baseballs, it is time to cease work on your book.

I do not like sitting on my butt for hours, days and weeks. In fact, that was the reason I never fully enjoyed being a newspaper reporter. I adore a good millworks fire (who doesn’t?), but there were weeks when I would sit on my rump, handset smashed to my ear, saying, “And how did you get that candle dislodged from your insides?”

I’ve spent every waking hour of the last month on boring minutiae that isn’t worth writing about. I have executed more than 75 hand drawings. Processed hundreds of photos, and scanned more than 200 pages of material for the appendices to “Campaign Furniture.”

It sounds like I’m whining. I’m not. I enjoy the complete control over every pixel of a book, but I also know that you don’t want to read about the Pantone swatch I chose for the duotones in a book. This is a blog about woodworking. And killing Raney Nelson.

So here is a quick update on things you might be interested in.

1. I’m on schedule. “Campaign Furniture” will be designed and to the printer by the end of January, which means it will be released in early March 2014. I am trying like heck to bring in the book at less than $32 retail, but it is a challenge. We need to use matte-finish coated paper to reproduce the color and duotone photographs, and we won’t skimp on the binding or cover.

2. We are working on a special promotional piece of hardware. We plan to offer 100 U.S.-made tri-bolts for making campaign stools at a really nice price – $12. I have installed one of these on a camp stool, and I like it more than the eye-bolt solutions I’ve been using in the past. Stay tuned.

3. Other books are moving along. Peter Galbert is finishing up the writing on his book on chairbuilding. Andrew Lunn is wrapping up his tome on saws. Don Williams is (today) entering his last edits on “Roubo on Furniture-making” before submitting it to peer review. Lots of other projects are stirring, but I don’t have updates on them to share with you.

4. We are building a new Lost Art Press web site. With the help of woodworker/codemonkey Ben Lowery, we will be launching a new web site that is simpler to use. This is a major step forward for Lost Art Press, which is taking a leap from being a tiny company to a significant one. We will still be only two guys with laptops, but we are on the verge of outsourcing a lot of things that have been filling our garages, basements and waking hours with grunt work. Customers will still deal only with us – John and Chris – but we think shipments will be delivered faster and in better boxes – with no additional charges to you. Lest you think we are turning our back on our core principles, we will be using a local and independent company founded by two guys to do our fulfillment. When John called them last, one of the owners had his mouth full of bacon.

5. I need to thank you, our customers. I know it is old hat for a business to thank its customers, but I have a more personal appeal. Thirty months ago I walked out on the best job I’ve ever had – the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine. I didn’t leave because I was unhappy. I left because I wanted to stretch things further than any sane/solvent corporation would let me. The only thing that has made Lost Art Press possible has been you. If you have bought a book from us in the last five years, your money has gone to support the crafts of woodworking, printing and publishing in the United States. Your support is also funding some incredible research that will become public in the years ahead.

So I need to get back to processing digital photos and find the unexpired tube of witch hazel cream to smear in my nether regions. You paid for that, too. Sorry to bring it up.

— Christopher Schwarz

This book is not a celebration of war any more than driving a Volkswagen or Porsche is a celebration of the Third Reich.

The plain fact of the matter is that conquest and defense are rich sources of innovation, improvisation and technological advances. The moulded plywood of Charles and Ray Eames was used by the Navy in World War II for splints and stretchers. That knowledge was turned to making moulded plywood furniture, including the iconic Eames chair.

The needs of the British Empire and its far-flung colonies created a style of furniture that was rugged, beautiful and stripped of ornament. There is little doubt in my mind that the utilitarian and plain aspects of campaign furniture represent the roots of Danish modern, Bauhaus and other 20^th-century design trends.

So I do not regret the 28 months I spent researching, building and writing this book. I think the campaign furniture style is one of the most important and overlooked furniture movements of the last 200 years.

But I do have regrets.

When I set out to build the projects for this book, I consciously set aside my aversion to exotic tropical hardwoods. When I write about a historical style, I immerse myself in it as much as possible so I can understand it from the inside. That means ignoring well-known rules about wood movement, technological advances in adhesives and (in this case) deforestation.

When I reject my modern prejudices I usually find gold. I think the past has a lot to teach us. Time and again, I’ve found that old ways of woodworking are usually smarter, more nuanced and more practical than our own.

But when it comes to selecting wood for a project, I’m not so sure. Most pieces of campaign furniture were built using mahogany, camphor, teak, padauk, oak or walnut. The exotics on this list were beyond plentiful in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. (Imagine teak being cheaper than red oak.) The supply at the time seemed almost limitless when you read the accounts of the day.

I know that we furniture makers are not the primary offenders when it comes to stripping the land of tropical hardwoods. But I also know that writing a book featuring tropical hardwoods is no small affair.

So as you are picking out the wood for your first (or next) piece of campaign furniture, consider this: walnut. American and European walnut was a common staple of the campaign furniture trade, and so it’s an appropriate and beautiful choice.

Here in the Ohio River valley, we have so much walnut that we used it to frame houses and make sash. Heck, I have a pile of walnut in my shop that is bigger than a car.

If you choose to use mahogany or another exotic, consider looking for recycled lumber. Some of the wood in this book came from a (trashed) recycled dining set I purchased from a woodworker who finally decided to lay down his tools.

That old and recycled mahogany was darker, finer and more beautiful than any other modern stick of mahogany I have laid my hands on. So finding recycled wood can actually improve your finished piece (as opposed to using old McDLT boxes to make a garden bench).

In the end, it is your choice. I encourage you to ignore every word I have just written and do your own research to make an informed choice.

I don’t want blinded readers anymore than I want to spend a single day living in a totalitarian regime. You are free to make a choice about what you build, how you build it and what materials you use to build. So make it.

— Christopher Schwarz