The scholarship is open to “women and those who identify as female both nationally and internationally and is part of the school’s ongoing efforts to increase diversification in the craft.”
The school and woodworking community worked together, raising more than $7,000 via a raffle. Prizes included handmade furniture, equipment and a deluxe copy of “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture”. Proceeds from the raffle will fund seven week-long class scholarships.
• Name and date of the class you’d like to attend (plus two alternates if your first choice is not available)
• 100-150 word description of why you’d like to attend
If selected, your scholarship will cover the full tuition of the class and, when deemed appropriate, a small travel stipend. Apply now through January 30. Scholarships will be awarded via email between December 31 and February 28. Check out all the details here.
To learn more about the Florida School of Woodwork and its founder, Kate Swann, check out Nancy Hiller’s two-part interview series here.
After four years of honest labor, I am happy to announce you can place a pre-publication order for our newest book: “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years, 1936-1966.” This massive book (474 pages) compiles Hayward’s best columns about the craft during his tenure as editor of The Woodworker magazine in the United Kingdom.
The book is $34 and can be ordered here from our store.
Hayward’s columns cover an enormous swath of woodworking philosophy, from discussions of our insecurities about our skills to the regenerative power of time at the bench. Hayward writes from a unique perspective: He was a traditionally trained woodworker, World War I veteran, professional woodworker, draughtsman, photographer, writer and editor. He steered The Woodworker through World War II (without missing an issue) and was a comforting voice for woodworkers through the most tumultuous portion of the 20th century.
We’ve taken his best columns during the 30 years he was the editor and reprinted them in “Honest Labour” for you to enjoy and think about. Each column occupies a single spread in the book – just open the book to any page and you will find a complete column. And each is illustrated with drawings from that particular year of The Woodworker – many of the drawings from Hayward’s own hand.
“Honest Labour” is the fifth and final book in The Woodworker series, which was a multi-year, multinational project to preserve the hand tool knowledge that almost disappeared in the 20th century. “Honest Labour” is the same trim size as the other Woodworker books in the series, printed on the same paper and features the same tough binding. The only difference is the cotton cover cloth. We chose a deep scarlet instead of the green to differentiate this volume from the others.
The book is currently at the printer and should ship in early May 2020. We hope our retailers will carry this book, though we have no control (obviously) over their stock choices.
In the coming weeks we’ll publish an excerpt for those of you who are on the fence or unsure this book is worth your time and effort.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know we have been releasing a slew of stuff this week – pinch rods, linocut prints from “Good Work” and now this book. It was completely unplanned and is what happens when you run a publishing company with the “it’s done when it’s done philosophy.” Sometimes that means you have nothing. Sometimes it means you have too much.
Exekias’ signature (ΕΧΣΕΚΙΑΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕ) as potter, rotated 90° anti-clockwise, detail from a scene representing Herakles and Geryon. Side A from an Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 550–540 BC.
I have often wondered what period of time must elapse before a good craftsman becomes an outstanding one. Was he born that way, needing only the requisite skill to develop his genius? Or did he evolve stage by stage like other men, but having the courage to take his work a stage further, perhaps many more stages than other men will venture.
Yet that may only imply the virtue of persistence, not that he is outstandingly gifted. What is the secret? We can add together the small perfections which make up the quality of a first-class man but, even so, something eludes us, something in the very essence of his work which defies analysis.
There is an old Breton proverb which says: “Qui aime son métier, son métier l’aime.” It may be this puts a finger right on the spot. That there has to be love between a man and his work, something which each gives to the other, which acts and interacts upon his skill before craftsmanship becomes the superlative thing that is created beauty.
Probably many more men than we can possibly estimate, working at the handicraft they enjoy, are producing work of this kind today, to be seen by few people, but to some of those few communicating that little thrill of pleasure which only superlative work can give. When we think of the amount of wastage there has always been right down through the ages by reason of material change and decay, the destructiveness of wars, accidents, sheer stupidity and thoughtlessness, the marvel is the amount of creative beauty which must have been produced by unknown men in every age for so much to have survived into our own, infinitesimal in comparison with what has been lost.
Furniture, of its nature, cannot date back many centuries, as much, perhaps more, through neglect due to changing fashion than from the perishability of wood. But ancient records and wall paintings have yielded up a great deal of information about the furnishing of kings’ palaces and the like, and many ancient craftsmen’s masterpiece has been described in meticulous detail, which still seems to retain the sense of wonder of those who had seen the work and the proud sense of possession of the monarch who had owned it. Very occasionally, by one of the freakish chances of history, the name of the craftsman will have survived while that of his noble patron is forgotten. A strange reversal in values.
In some cases, conscious that this work of his was good, the craftsman has inscribed his name on some obscure corner, to be discovered years afterwards by men who came to admire. It is not often the craftsman inscribes a friend’s name as well as his own, yet this is what happened when, between two to three thousand years ago, a Grecian artist wrote his signature in tiny, crabbed Greek script: “Exekias made it,” on the lovely vase he had made and painted, and then in a burst of pride and affection: “Handsome Onetorides.” And so the name of his handsome friend has been passed down through the ages in somewhat unsual confirmation of Keats’ “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”
Had the maker instinct of immortality when he inscribed his friend’s name on the lovely thing he had just completed? Exekias himself was known as the finest Athenian vase painter of his day, and the vase is the famous one painted with a panel in which with consummate skill he shows the two Homeric warriors, Ajax and Achilles, seated at an improvised table playing a dice game. The two figures, painted and incised in black upon a red ground, are bearded and every line of their bodies as they bend forward shows a kind of eager intensity, but there is nothing to suggest that the handsome Onetorides was a model for either. No, the inscription seems to have come out of the fullness of the artist’s creative joy, knowing this work of his hands to be good and wishing to associate with it the name of the friend he admired. Rarely has a dedication been made with such simplicty and rarely has any dedication lasted so long.
Probably when we come to the word “dedication” we come to the crux of the whole matter. The man who is going to do outstanding work in any craft has himself to be a dedicated man. He must be sensitive to beauty wherever he sees it and in whatever form and have the instinct to turn to beautiful accomplishment the handicraft he has made his own. He has to have skill so sure and informed that it will carry him faithfully through his undertakings, enabling him to tackle new kinds of work with the confidence of experience.
But all this the really good craftsman can have. If he wants to go further still, it can only be for the love of it, something which will bring an element into his work which no school can teach, a heightened degree of skill, a suavity, a finish, which can only happen when, as the Bretons say, the work loves him back.
For the past two years I’ve been posting at Fine Woodworking’s Pro’s Corner blog. Web producer Ben Strano’s invitation to write for the blog came shortly after the publication of Making Things Work, and while I don’t know whether the content of that book prompted the invitation, I can confirm that the blog posts are closely related to it.
There’s one big difference: While serious lessons I’ve learned about making a living as a woodworker form the subjects of most of the book’s chapters, I addressed them in the context of stories drawn from real experience. The narrative is meant to be as entertaining as it is instructive. You could read the entire book without noticing the pedagogical dimension, were you so inclined.
My posts at the Pro’s Corner blog are pretty much straight-up—about as close as I want to get to putting myself in the position of a counselor at a branch of SCORE, the Senior Corps of Retired Executives. (Please note that I am not retired, and probably never will be.) Over the years, I’ve consulted a few counselors at SCORE. It’s an invaluable source of business guidance, though I’ve found that most of the counselors, and so, their advice, come from companies that are radically different from a single-person craft micro-enterprise such as mine, where profit is understood more richly than in terms of a number on a bottom line and there’s no secretary or executive assistant to whom you can delegate the stomach-wrenching tasks that every business has to deal with once in a while. My hope is that my posts will give professionals and aspiring professionals the kind of perspective, and in some cases advice, that I wish I’d been able to find.
Of course, businesses, like shops and woodworkers, vary greatly. I’m writing about what works (and doesn’t) for me, given my experience, interests, values, and capabilities. Ideally readers will expand the posts into more of a conversation in the comments.
There are other types of content in Making Things Work, among them the blasting apart of certain widespread fantasies about woodworking and woodworkers. You’ll find those addressed occasionally at the Pro’s Corner, too. I’m honored and delighted that Lost Art Press is in the process of publishing its own edition of Making Things Work; it’s on track for publication around October.
Finally, I’m always grateful for suggestions about topics. The comments section is the place to put them.
Katherine has just completed another batch of soft wax, which is available in for sale in her etsy store. Soft wax is great for the interiors of your projects. We use it on our lump hammers. And one customer really likes it on his shoes as a polish.
However you use it, don’t put it on your beard. It contains turpentine, which is an irritant.
Katherine cooks up the wax in our basement using a waterless process and puts it in heavy glass jars with metal lids. The interior of the lids are coated with a plastic to prevent any rust from forming.
And then Bean the three-legged cat swoops in to steal all the attention.
After four years of honest labor, I am happy to announce you can place a pre-publication order for our newest book: “
