Today I reviewed a big batch of Crucible dividers for quality control problems and sent them on to our warehouse in Indiana. Barring some delivery stupidity (it happens), they should go on sale on Saturday.
These dividers are the most complex tool we make and are difficult to manufacture, especially considering the $110 price tag. If they were $300, we could lavish a couple hours of polishing and tuning on each tool and still come out in the black. But that’s not what we’re about.
Instead, these tools are manufactured – like our books. Yes, there is a lot of handwork, hand-assembly and tuning involved in these tools. But a lot of the skill to make them is in programming the robots and ensuring the processes are foolproof so that even I can assemble them – even though I’m not a skilled machinist. And so far, I’ve assembled quite a few of them.
Because I’m not a fan of hype, I’ve tried to downplay these dividers quite a bit (maybe too much). They aren’t like an infill plane or a blacksmith-made fretsaw. But when I pick up our dividers and use them – as I have every day for the last six months – I am tickled by their presence. Despite the fact that my personal dividers aren’t cosmetically perfect, I carry them around all day like a nice pen. I hold them when I’m thinking or on the stupid phone.
I open them and shut them over and over, and think about the mechanism inside. It looks so simple, but the angles and tolerances have almost broken my head a few times. But still they make me think. And now that we have the mechanism (almost) perfected, we’ve been designing other tools that use it.
(EDIT: When I say “almost” perfect, I mean that we are improving the hinge to make the assembly process easier. Right now we have to do a couple extra steps to get the hinge working perfectly. Nothing leaves our hands that isn’t 100 percent functional and meets our standards for fit and finish.)
Books have authors, but there is always a team of people behind them that makes the thing look good and read well. Tools are the same way. And so I will continue to call out the people who have made this tool really work: Craig Jackson at Machine Time and Josh Cook, a mechanical designer. Thanks guys.
So look for the dividers on Saturday. And if we sell out, know that we now are making hundreds more. Our goal is that everyone who wants one can get one.
During the last four years, I’ve lost four members of my immediate family (mom, dad, stepfather, sister), most of them suddenly and unexpectedly. And if I’ve learned one thing from the experience, it’s this: Tell people who are important to you how you feel about them. Today. Don’t wait for a nice evening on the back porch.
As many of you know, Nancy Hiller is battling pancreatic cancer. Her treatment has its ups and (deep) downs. And while I am counting on her to be one of the long-term survivors of this horrible disease, I also didn’t want her to ever leave this earth without know how important she has been to me as a person, woodworker, writer and supremely ethical being.
I’m not alone. Kara Gebhart Uhl spent the last couple weeks talking to some of the people in and out of Nancy’s orbit. And below is what they had to say.
If you’ve read her books, been a student in one of her classes or been a customer of hers, you know that this only scratches the surface of a most impressive and lovely person.
C.H. Becksvoort, furniture maker, designer, author, contributing editor to Fine Woodworking magazine
I first heard of Nancy back in 2004 or 2005. I think it was a kitchen cabinet design article in Fine Woodworking magazine. She stayed on my radar for several more years and wrote a few more articles, as well as a series of pieces for Pro’s Corner. In 2017, her book “Making Things Work”really caught my attention. Here was a kindred spirit who made her living from woodworking, without a rich partner or a trust fund. And she did it in a male-dominated field. The book was amazing, in that she debunked the common woodworking images of curly shavings, satisfying smells and days of crafting hand-cut dovetails. Instead, she revealed what it was really like to run a day-to-day business: difficult customers, insurance payments, bookkeeping and tax hassles, and time management. She’s paid her dues.
Not only that, but Nancy is a wonderful, gifted and generous human being. And a good friend.
***
Laura Mays, woodworker, designer, educator, director of The Krenov School
When I first came across nrhillerdesign.com a handful of years ago, I was genuinely confused; was this a group of people? A workshop or a company? Were they designers or historians or cabinetmakers? It never occurred to me that I was seeing the prodigious output of just one person, and I navigated away, bemused.
It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I read “Making Things Work” [some of which takes place in England], and I started to understand the fullness, the depth and breadth of Nancy. But before understanding came a lot of laughing, deep out-loud belly laughs, that are rare for me in adulthood. It was the descriptions of the miserable weather/plumbing/dampness/general decrepitude seen through the eyes of an affectionate outsider that really got me. I had grown up at a similar time on the adjacent island of Ireland, where similar conditions prevailed, and I had gone through a somewhat parallel trajectory of abandoning academia and a professional career for woodworking. I resonated.
So when Deirdre Visser, Phoebe Kuo and I embarked on interviewing women woodworkers for a project, called at that time “Making a Seat at the Table,” I knew this would be a tremendous opportunity to meet Nancy in person. This long-limbed woman with a huge laugh welcomed us into her house in Bloomington, rearranging her pets, making us comfortable, with a constant stream of talk that moved quickly, seamlessly, between the profane, the intellectual, the moral, the practical. It involved swear words and Latin quotes; it revealed someone who reflected on her life while also enthusiastically pouring herself into it.
This, I think, is one of Nancy’s greatest gifts to woodworking and the world: to bring together morality and material, to examine what it is to do good work, in both an ethical and craft sense. This of course is the primary idea at the core of the Arts & Crafts movement, and it is no surprise that she has studied and written about that period extensively. There is a direct line of thought between them and her, between their concerns of labor and value and honesty and meaning, and hers. But where they, at least in my rather flippant understanding, appear to be a bunch of middle-class men who dropped out of London society and moved to the Cotswolds, she is the 21st-century self-employed woman version, working out how to make a living from her work in the context of Ikea and supply chains and gig work, and all the other pressures and intricacies of late capitalism “Me Too” globalization.
Nancy’s book about English Arts & Crafts furniture is an exemplar of how she brings together the material and the mundane: not only is a beautifully written study of the ethics at the core of the movement and short biographies of some of the key thinkers, it is equally a how-to, or a how-done, on the actual making of several pieces of furniture. While this combination might, I suppose, reduce the book’s academic gravitas on the one hand, and on the other, be off-putting to someone who just wants the woodworking content, for me, it is exactly this juxtaposition that makes Nancy important. “No ideas but in things,” and vice versa.
In article after article in Fine Woodworking magazine and elsewhere, Nancy pores over how to make a living, make a life, making things. She parses, for example, the relative merits, ethical and otherwise, of different pricing structures with an honesty and a depth of detail that is refreshing, like having a window thrown open on what can be murky and hidden. She doesn’t shy away from the annoyingness, the hard work, the nitty-gritty, but she always brings it back to what it means to live a good life, to be fair and just to oneself and to others. There is no one whose moral compass I trust better than Nancy Hiller’s.
***
Nancy with her dog William.
Charles Bickford, carpenter, writer, photographer and former senior editor of Fine Homebuilding magazine
It’s hard enough for anyone, at any time, to run a one-person cabinetshop. It’s a whole hat rack full of jobs rolled into one – getting clients, keeping clients, managing clients, design, building, finishing, maintaining the shop, keeping track of expenses – that usually doesn’t leave much time in the day for anything else. Somehow, Nancy Hiller has managed to run a successful shop by herself for the last 30 years or so (a feat worth celebrating in itself), while at the same time, she has written five books, countless magazine articles and blog posts, in addition to leading the occasional furniture class.
And while other craftspeople might consider writing just another means to marketing their goods, it seems like Nancy has spent as much time writing as she has building. (I suspect she’s fast on the keyboard, but that’s just a guess.) As she has pointed out, she’s not writing for the money, of which there is precious little anyway in the writing game. That’s a shame in itself, because she’s as good a writer as she is a furniture builder, and by now should be wealthy as Croesus.
She writes to inspire and advise the community of shop rats, both the professionals and the part-timers, that are her audience. Where else would they go for advice on the potential pitfalls and obstacles of running your own shop? How to stay creative, or how to deal with customers? Or info on the proportions of a sideboard, Johnny Grey, Arts & Crafts design or (who knew?) Hoosier cabinets. Or how to train and keep a hop-a-long canine shop foreman named Joey? Who else does this? Through her hard work and by example, she raises the bar for everyone else, and continues to weave the strands that make the woodworking community stronger, more aware, more connected and more informed.
She still makes great furniture, too. And don’t you forget it.
Being in our 60s, Nancy and I have been involved in the woodworking world for about the same amount of time. But it wasn’t until four years ago that my friend and colleague, Chris Becksvoort, started to mention her. He suggested that I get to know her. He felt it would be beneficial for me to hear her stories. He would always say “she has really been in the trenches.” One might question why I did not know of Nancy since she had been published for a while. Well, the answer is after going through a challenging professional experience in 1994 that lasted a decade, my self-confidence was so shaken that I chose to go underground, making my woodworking world small and self-contained.
Fast forward to 2018 when I ordered Nancy’s book “Making Things Work.” I was so taken by her writing style, her wonderful sense of humor, and her honesty. I devoured the book and then read it again. I share so many of her experiences, especially being a woman in a non-traditional field trying to make woodworking my career. Nancy’s down-to-earth approach put us all in a level playing field – no more hierarchical attitudes that I had grown accustomed to. Quality work is quality work no matter how one chooses to express that.
I have read so much of Nancy’s work since my initial introduction to her. Her example evokes confidence in others, promotes support rather than judgement, encourages us to share successes as well as hardships and to remain vulnerable to the whole journey. Whether we make historic pieces, carve beautiful wooden critters, make contemporary furniture, create beautiful kitchens, conserve other’s work or make wooden barrels, we are the lucky ones who have found common ground through her. I will be forever be grateful to have found Nancy. Her bright light helped guide me back to myself and the places I have honored before.
***
Nancy and her great smile.Nancy teaching at a cabinetmaking class at the former Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking, 2008.
What a lucky day it was when I first saw some of Nancy Hiller’s beautiful cabinetry in the pages of the Sept/Oct 2005 edition of Fine Woodworking magazine! Little did I know that reading that article and subsequently contacting Nancy would result in a long-time professional association and a warm friendship that hasn’t diminished over time and distance. I invited Nancy to teach a cabinet-building class at my former* school, her first such experience, and I was pleased that she accepted the offer. After seeing her in action, I invited Nancy back many times, and she developed a following with many students who continued to sign up for classes she taught.
It was clear from the first class day that Nancy had not only the technical skills necessary to teach, but more importantly she had the people skills that made the students feel comfortable with taking on new information and new skills. Nancy has a great smile and a frequent laugh. Her affirming ways with class participants inspired confidence and motivation even when technical problems arose. I specifically remember Nancy splayed out on the floor helping a student to problem solve a difficulty with hanging the door of a cabinet. The tone of the interaction went from frustration to laughter right away.
I have so enjoyed seeing Nancy’s prodigious skills gain recognition and accolades over the years. Yeah Nancy! Since our first encounter in 2005, Nancy continues to shine brightly through her writing (books, blogs and periodicals), her teaching and her design talents. She has an uncanny nose for sniffing out talent and originality in the work and stories of others. Her articles and interviews are fun to read as she describes the makers and their settings and work.
Nancy’s own work blends the integrity of good design with the joy of creating cabinetry and furniture that reflect the unique settings in which those pieces are placed, and the practical ways that the pieces are to be used. I learned those things from Nancy first-hand as she helped us design a completely new kitchen in our former residence, a 100-year-old log home. The outcome of that effort is a comfortable, functional and aesthetically pleasing kitchen where friends and family gathered. What a gift!
Nancy is a people-connector for certain. Above and beyond woodworking, that is her gift. I’m so glad that our paths have crossed and zigzagged in so many interesting ways.
*The former Kelly Mehler of Woodworking is now owned by Berea College and operates as The Woodworking School at Pine Croft.
***
Nancy and her great laugh.Nancy and Johnny Grey, 2019.
Johnny Grey, kitchen designer, author, educator, founder of Johnny Grey Studios
I have a soft spot for workers of wood. Nancy is in that mould but unusual in straddling the practical life of a carpenter with great skill in writing both academic and lifestyle books. Though in correspondence with her for many years, I only met her when she and her husband, Mark, came to stay with us in England not long before lockdown. Our family took warmly to them – a mutual love of dogs and the gift of a fine bottle of bourbon playing a role – and the visit was over all too quickly.
Nancy’s journey starts, I think, with her mother’s can-do attitude, a way of life of making things that she luckily passed on to her daughter. It happens that I share some early experiences with Nancy. Like me (and many of us), she took pleasure as a child in rearranging the furniture in her living room and bedroom. We both also started out on our careers, coincidentally, by restoring an 18th-century pine dresser, a halfway house to making something new. A similar dresser is pictured in Kara Uhl’s charmingly interesting blog profile of Nancy.
I first came across Nancy when she was writing “The Hoosier Cabinet in Kitchen History” (2009, note to publisher: please reprint). This was the book I was looking for without realising. It serves as a justification for an ambitious and slightly crazy idea of mine: making kitchens with real furniture along with coining the phrase ‘the Unfitted Kitchen’. In Nancy’s vision, kitchen furniture was both an organising principle and a space for creativity, fun and efficiency. Hoosier, a company from Indiana, built functional cabinetry for cooking and storage but also developed their own quirky and witty marketing. They used catchphrases and slogans such as, ‘A kitchen without a cabinet is like a farm without a plow’ and ‘Saving work is saving youthfulness.’ These were fun, modern responses to domestic workloads, and by 1920 the Hoosier Manufacturing Company had sold 2,000,000 cabinets.
Nancy’s analysis in the book relates the wit and energy from this period of kitchen history to fresh thinking in our time. She explores current kitchen culture, including gender roles, and questions the nature of a ‘residential’ kitchen. One answer to that comes from our recent response to lockdown, as we now regularly acknowledge the kitchen as a hybrid space that all the family occupies and use as an office, homework zone and place to play. Nancy generously includes some of my ideas on this sort of thing in her chapter on the Hoosier legacy. She includes quotes from Christopher Alexander in “A Pattern Language” on the ‘self-selecting features’ of a friendly home, and celebrates the concept of the kitchen as a living room that has, ideally, evolved well beyond the cramped little workplace for hard-pressed women that it admittedly still is in many cultures.
Nancy breaks through glass ceilings without making a fuss. I find it extraordinary that there are not more female cabinetmakers in the U.S. (it’s 7.5 percent, according to Zippia), although she tells me that there has been a growth in women working in the U.S. construction sector. In the U.K. it’s a worse story. Statistics are hard to come by. The number of craft courses at the tertiary education level has dropped by 46 percent due to the government’s education reforms.
I see Nancy as a designer-maker ambassador, a timeless figure who embodies the craftsmanship and the emotional and ecological benefits of the handmade. We need more voices like hers in the world of construction, design and the kitchen industry, but don’t hold your breath.
I noticed Nancy’s work before I noticed her. She had a piece in Fine Woodworking magazine when I was at Popular Woodworking magazine, and I remember thinking that it was a fine example of Art & Crafts work… and we were always looking for good Arts & Crafts (and Shaker) for Popular Woodworking. Then I noticed it was by a woman. I think it’s fair to say I started stalking Nancy. I read everything of hers I could get my hands on (she’d written a couple of books at that point, and articles for Fine Woodworking, Fine Homebuilding and Old House Journal). There just weren’t that many other woodworkers who were women, doing the kind of work I liked, who were featured in major magazines. I didn’t know her, but I loved her from afar for showing me what was possible (and because she’s a darn fine writer).
Nancy is an excellent person to emulate in work and in life. She is obviously a talented furniture maker and designer – but she is also hilarious, incredibly generous on every front, and kind to pesky editors and small animals. I am honored to now call her my friend, and to love her from close up.
***
Nancy during a photoshoot in 2017. (She’s just pretending to be mad.)
In 1988 my career took an interesting turn when I was offered the opportunity to switch from running restaurants, hotels and country clubs on the west coast to selling hardwood lumber on behalf of Paxton Lumber in Cincinnati. That is a story, but this story is about Nancy Hiller. Knowing absolutely nothing about hardwood lumber, I was assigned to a sales territory that included all southern Ohio, southern Indiana and Kentucky. I would introduce myself to my inherited and prospective customers as a service-oriented salesman with no experience in hardwood who needed their help in understanding the processes of cabinetmaking, flooring, furniture manufacturing and custom millwork. In return for teaching me about their craft, I would be sure that they received the quality lumber they needed, when they needed it. My customers were happy to show me their craft and I made sure that I delivered on my promises. My territory grew quickly. Bloomington, Ind., was in my territory and there were quite a few small woodworking companies of all sorts there, so I spent a good deal of time there building relationships.
In my work there I came across a small high-end cabinetmaking shop in Nashville, Ind., run by Nancy Hiller, the only female cabinetmaker I had yet encountered. The shop was small, only Nancy and her husband. I made sure to visit them when I was in the area and was awed by Nancy’s spectacular work. She said that she learned cabinetmaking in England, which I found to be extremely interesting. She stood out to me instantly as being at the top of her field, overshadowing the work of every other cabinetmaker in my vast territory.
I enjoyed our visits and I made sure that my service and the quality of the lumber I shipped to the shop matched the respect I had for her as a person and as a fine woodworker. Our visits were always enjoyable, and I learned about how a fine craftsperson worked. I was her salesman for about six or seven years, then I wound up working with another company and we regrettably lost touch. In 1996, I started to work with the Frank Miller Lumber Co., in Indiana, covering the U.S. west and all of Canada. I found out after a few years there that Nancy bought some quartersawn white oak from their outlet store. Since my territory was nowhere near Bloomington, Ind., I passed my greetings to her through her salesman.
Around 2010, I started traveling the country lecturing on the quarter-sawing process, the core business of Frank Miller Lumber. I found myself as speaker at a traditional building conference in Baltimore. I went to the room where the speakers were to drop their materials and when I turned around, I saw Nancy. It had been almost 20 years since I last saw her, and she immediately recognized me and gave me a hug. It was a brief but happy reunion and when I told her that I was working with Frank Miller Lumber, she said that they were favorite lumber supplier. She was very pleased that I worked for them. I said I was giving a talk the next morning and she was crestfallen that she would miss my talk, since she had to leave that night after her talk. Shortly after our chance meeting she gave a great talk about the evolution of the American kitchen. As she opened her remarks, she told her audience that her “favorite lumber salesman from her favorite lumber supplier” was in the audience. She gave them my name and told them to all come to my talk the next morning. It was very kind of her since my talk was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. on Saturday and I had low expectations for attendance. I was pleasantly surprised to see many members of her audience in my audience the next morning. That was a great kindness that I will never forget.
Several years later I took a film crew with me to Bloomington to interview Nancy and document her building a Voysey chair with Frank Miller’s quartersawn white oak. She was an inspirational subject and a generous host to me and the crew, even providing us lunch.
I have read all her books and have learned much from them, but by far my favorite is “Making Things Work: Tales from a Cabinetmaker’s Life,” which chronicles her amazing professional journey starting in England, where she dropped out of Cambridge and set herself on the harrowing journey to become the fine wood craftsperson she is today. It is an inspiring story of tenacity, strength and perseverance – the qualities she is teaching us as today as she faces her current health challenges. Nancy brings beauty to the world through her art and is a stellar human. The world is a better place because she is in it.
I would not be making a living as a cabinetmaker today if it were not for Nancy Hiller. Nancy took me on as her assistant in 2004. At the time, her shop was newly built and somewhat unfinished. It was home to two insane dogs, Wilhelm von Wundt and Winnie, who became my workday companions, and a cat or two depending on the year. Nancy’s shop was a relatively small workspace for two people, so when there wasn’t an interesting NPR story on WFIU or a machine blasting, we would regale each other with absurd stories and silly jokes. I’ve always been able to make Nancy laugh hard – in her signature hyena way – and take great pleasure in seeing her keel over from one of my inappropriate jokes.
When I was offered the job as her assistant, I was thrilled to be working alongside a craftsperson who was trained in England and had an impressive portfolio of work. I knew it was a great opportunity to hone my craft alongside such a skilled practitioner. But I didn’t know all the other things that I would learn along the way.
Working with Nancy provided me with invaluable lessons in historic preservation, the history of furniture design, building relationships with homes as if they were people, etymology, grammar and, of course, myriad woodworking techniques. She also modeled how to run a woodworking business with integrity.
It became clear to me early on that Nancy has a deep ethical core. While she can wax eloquent on the philosophy of ethics, she lives out her principles daily. I witnessed Nancy’s integrity in her treating clients with fairness and respect, building things the right way (even when it was less profitable), and always having her employee’s back – when the work ran dry, when clients behaved badly and when dark clouds rolled in.
It has been an honor to have had the opportunity to work alongside Nancy and be able to call her my mentor. It has been even better to maintain a relationship with her and call her my friend.
***
Anissa Kapsales and Nancy.
Anissa Kapsales, furniture maker and editor at Fine Woodworking.
If you know anything about Nancy Hiller you know that her contributions, her commitment and her place in the woodworking community are legendary. For decades she has plugged away in a calling where it is difficult to succeed professionally. She has written countless articles showing how to make gorgeous pieces of furniture. She has written books about designing and woodworking and life. She’s a woodworking social media icon. She has taught and lectured around the country. She has blogged about the realities, joys, trials and every other aspect of the woodworking life you can imagine. Through her LAP blog “Little Acorns: Profiles by Nancy Hiller,”Nancy has introduced us to each other. She has a remarkable knack for seeking out the fascinating aspects of people’s lives and writing eloquently about them. This I attribute to the person Nancy is. She doesn’t simply interview her subjects with a series of questions, rather she just talks with them. She enjoys the conversation and gets to know them. She listens. She’s naturally curious, interested and sincere.
Nancy has paved the way for aspiring woodworkers, authors, women in woodworking and designers. And now she is illuminating a dark path for anybody who struggles, so … all of us. In the same strong, determined and steady way that she moved through her career, Nancy is confronting her pancreatic cancer diagnosis, thinking creatively, managing one obstacle at a time, learning, teaching, advocating. I am in awe.
All that said, I must tell you that I was intimidated by Nancy when I started out as an editor. At least I was, for a blip, way back in 2006. Fresh out of the nurturing cocoon that is the Krenov School, I had just started at Fine Woodworking magazine and was assigned to work on an article with Nancy. “Arts & Crafts Wall Shelf” would be my first (mostly) solo assignment, and I would be traveling to Nancy’s shop, with Mike Pekovich shadowing me to make sure I didn’t completely screw it up.
Prior to the shoot, Nancy and I had worked together on the months-long process via phone calls and emails getting her manuscript turned into a shot list. I had called to introduce myself, tell her the proposal was accepted and get things rolling. The instant we got on the phone for the first time it was clear I was out of my intellectual league and every other league I cared about. She was talented, educated, articulate and could woodwork circles around most pros. She could write quite well, had ridiculous design skills and was clearly going to be on top of her deadlines. And I was a nervous newbie editor/photographer. Every speck of intimidation was coming from within me, and had nothing to do with what Nancy was putting out. But intimidated I was, nonetheless.
When I arrived for the shoot, Nancy was all those amazing things. Even more, she was kind, thoughtful, very well prepared, humble, professional, accommodating, funny and had an ease about her that started things off on the right foot. We made our way through that shoot and article and today, more than 15 years later, we’ve done so many more together. I think we’re a pretty darn good team! I often wonder if I had been paired with a different author on that first shoot if I would have made it past the first year in a job with a steep learning curve.
What began with me feeling intimidated has transformed into something great. I admire Nancy for her life and woodworking wisdom, her sense of humor, her empathy, her sage advice, the breadth of knowledge she has on so many topics, her incredible talent as a designer and maker, her fortitude in the face of all things.
Nancy, I am far better because I know you. You have what is probably the best freaking laugh and smile on the planet. It is my pleasure to capture it every time we shoot together! With all my love, I am proud to call you my friend.
Whenever I write, whether it’s a blog post, article, book or simple email to a friend, I’m thinking about what readers may make of my words – not only my words in a literal sense (especially when I use a term of art, a foreign name or a four-letter expression that starts with the letter F), but the points I aim to convey. As someone who was fortunate to have teachers who were strict about standards and liberal with criticism, I internalized the most challenging critiques that came my way, a practice that has served me well. Over the years I’ve augmented those critiques with thought-provoking comments from others, among them the kind of uncharitable characters who read everything with an arched brow and think they know the author’s mind better than she knows herself. (Really…just spare me.)
As the publication of “Shop Tails” nears,* I thought it would be helpful to answer a few questions from my inner dragonAva Hunting-Badcocke as a heads-up to those who may be interested in buying the book.
Dido, a kitten I adopted from a salvage yard.
I just saw that you identified your medical diagnosis as “adenoma of the pancreas” in one of your early chapters. Don’t you even know that the name of your disease is adenocarcinoma, not to be confused with the rarer form of pancreatic cancer, the neuroendocrine variety that killed Steve Jobs? How can you expect anyone to grant you a shred of credibility after reading that appalling mistake?
I make my share of mistakes. I cannot tell you how many times I read the manuscript, not to mention how many articles in medical journals I have read about pancreatic adenocarcinoma. And still I missed this poop pile while cleaning the yard. So now I’m covered in it. We will forewarn readers with a note on the ordering page.
Joey and Tony in the early daysof Tony’s regime.
Most publishers look for consistency in a manuscript – consistency in voice and chapter length, as well as spelling and punctuation. Your manuscript reads more like a lorry packed with the assorted contents of a shuttered Oxfam shop that’s spilt its load all across the motorway, leaving a trail of tacky Beatles portraits on velour, melamine ashtrays with burnt spots, hand-knitted Shetland jumpers, crotchless knickers and worn plimsolls with missing laces. The first few animal stories read as though they were written by a child. The rest are what we expect from you. Some of the chapters are 30 pages long, while others are only four – or in one case, two! What is that, even? How can a chapter be two pages long? I can’t believe that your publisher agreed to invest in this farce. — Miss Ava Hunting-Badcocke, 1973
Consistency may be overrated. I wrote the first few chapters from the perspective I recall as a child, when I lived with the animals in question: Sidney and Phoebe (both dogs), Binky (a mouse), then David (a guinea pig). One pre-publication reader described these chapters as “sweet.” The sweetness vanishes with “Oscar”; he was my first dog as an adult, so the narrative voice reverts to that of the adult who wrote the first two introductory chapters.
My goal is to convey important information and entertaining stories, and sometimes introduce a reader to new perspectives on familiar subjects. I’m writing about real life, and at least in my experience, real life is more like the contents of that overturned lorry than the polished near-perfection of your sitting room-turned-security–checkpoint-homework-checking station, with your line of girls and Gaston, your farting pug.**
My husband, Mark, with Henny.
I thought this was a book about animals and woodworking, but the first two chapters read like someone’s private cancer journal.
By the time Lost Art Press sent me a contract to publish this book, I’d been writing the stories about individual animals for about 15 years. My relationships with non-human animals have brought me comfort and joy (and the occasional heartbreak). They have also taught me important lessons about life and my relationships with my fellow human animals. What precipitated the contract was my diagnosis in November 2020, so as I began to work on the book as a project for publication, my mind went naturally to the circumstances that had prompted the opportunity.
When Christopher Schwarz was designing the book, I told him it would be fine with me if he wanted to excise the first two chapters, or parts thereof. I worried that there might be too much introspection and blow-by-blow accounting of what was going on in my head. He replied that he wanted to leave them in because they show how my mind works and add richness to the stories that follow. You can just skip those chapters and go straight to the animal tales if you’re so inclined. There will not be a test.
Edie’s puppy Poika looking like a sheared lamb.
I see you’re trying to con us into believing that blurb from “Edith Sarra of Harvard and Indiana University” is legit. We know the two of you are friends, and we’re here to out you.
No one is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Edie is one of my dearest friends. We met in 2006, by which time I’d been hearing for years from my friend Ben Sturbaum that I just had to meet this woman who lives in his favorite house in the world because we would love each other. And love her I do. However, I didn’t ask her for what publishers call a “comment”; that blurb is an excerpt from a personal note she sent to me after she had read the manuscript of “Shop Tails” a few times. She’d been interested in the project for as long as she had known of it, because she, too, is a serious lover of animals (especially dogs, but don’t tell anyone). My friend Edie has delivered some world-class withering comments, sometimes by saying nothing, so I trust her not to be giving me an easier time than she would give most other people. She implicitly affirmed this by granting us permission to quote her remarks as a blurb for the book.
William reading the comics.
So, Lost Art Press gave you a contract because you had cancer?
Pardon me while I wipe the tears of laughter out of my eyes. I know… I’m not supposed to be laughing, right? Because I have an incurable life-threatening illness. But why go on living at all if I can’t keep laughing?
Seriously, though, I get your point. When I sent my pitch to Chris and told him that writing this book could provide the motivation I needed in order to face chemotherapy, I added that I was simply stating the truth, not inviting a pity party or being emotionally manipulative. Or something like that. I trusted that he would get where I was coming from, because he is a straight shooter. I was relieved that his response included something along the lines of Lost Art Press does not engage in pity publishing. So, yeah, no.
The following is excerpted from “Mechanic’s Companion,” by Peter Nicholson. It is one of the foundational English-language texts in woodworking and the building trades. First published in 1812, “Mechanic’s Companion” is an invaluable and thorough treatment of techniques, with 40 plates that provide an excellent and detailed look at the tools of the time, along with a straightforward chapter on the geometry instruction necessary to the building trades.
If you work with hand tools, you will find useful primary-source information on how to use the tools at the bench. That’s because Nicholson – unlike other technical writers of the time – was a trained cabinetmaker, who later became an architect, prolific author and teacher. So he writes (and writes well) with the authority of experience and clarity on all things carpentry and joinery. For the other trades covered – bricklaying, masonry, slating, plastering, painting, smithing and turning – he relies on masters for solid information and relays it in easy-to-understand prose.
PLATE VII. Fig. 1 the axe used in chopping timber by a reciprocal circular motion, generally in a vertical plane, and with the cutting edge in that plane. Fig. 2 the adze used also in chopping timber by a reciprocal motion, generally in a vertical plane, but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the plane, and thereby forming a horizontal surface. Fig. 3 the socket chisel used in mortising; it must be observed, that the socket chisel is not always the breadth of the mortise, but generally less, particularly when the mortise is very wide. Fig. 4 mortise and tenon guage. Fig. 5 the carpenters’ square. Fig. 6 the plumb rule. Fig. 7 the level. Fig. 8 the auger. Fig. 9 a hook pin for drawboring. Fig. 10 the crow.
§ 1. CARPENTRY in civil architecture, is the art of employing timber in the construction of buildings. The first operation of dividing a piece of timber into scantlings, or boards, by means of the pit saw, belongs to sawing, and is previous to any thing done in carpentry.
§ 2. The tools employed by the carpenter are a, ripping saw, a hand saw, an axe, an adze, a socket chisel, a firmer chisel, a ripping chisel, an augur, a gimlet, a hammer, a mallet, a pair of pincers, and sometimes planes, but as these are not necessarily used, they are described under the head of joinery, to which they are absolutely necessary.
§ 3 OF SAWS. A saw is a thin plate of steel, indented on the edge, so as to form a series of wedges, with acute angles, and for the conveniency of handling, a perforated piece of wood is fixed to one end, by means of which the utmost power of the workman may be exerted in using it.
Saws have various names, according to their use. It is obvious in order that the saw should clear its way in the wood, that the plate should decrease in thickness from the cutting edge towards the back, and for this purpose also, besides this additional thickness, most saws have their teeth bent towards the alternate sides of the plate, this must always be the case where the plate is broad: in very narrow plates the cutting edge is made thicker than usual. Such saws as are not intended to cut into the wood their whole breadth, have strong iron or brass backs, in order to stiffen them, and keep them from buckling or bending ; both external and internal angles of the teeth of saws are made to contain sixty degrees, and the magnitude of the teeth is proportioned to the size of the saw, and accommodated to its use.
Some saws are used for dividing the wood in the direction of the fibre, and to any extent of distance exceeding the breadth of the plate, at pleasure; others are only employed in cutting in a direction perpendicular to the fibres, to any breadth or thickness; the former case requires the front edges of their teeth to stand almost perpendicular to the line passing through their angles, in order to cut through, or make a way through in less time than if set backwards, which is better adapted to the latter case: for otherwise, the points of the teeth would run so deep into the wood, as to prevent the workmen from pushing the saw forward without breaking it. The saws commonly used by the carpenter, are the ripping saw, and the hand saw; which are particularly described under the head of joinery, as well as other saws used in that branch.
§4. THE AXE Is an edged tool, having a long wooden handle, for reducing timber to a given form or surface, by paring away slices of unequal thickness ; is used by a reciprocal motion in the arc of a circle, generally in a vertical plane, forming the surface always in the same plane, and has therefore its cutting edge in a longitudinal plane, passing through the handle ; the slices cut away are called chips, the operation is called chopping, and the surface reduced to its form is said to be chopped ; but among woodmen the operation is called hewing.
§ 5. THE ADZE Is also an edge tool with a long wooden handle for reducing timber to a given form of surface, by paring away thin slices of unequal thickness, by a reciprocal motion in the arc of a circle, and in a vertical plane ; but its cutting edge is perpendicular to a longitudinal plane passing through the handle. It forms a much more regular and smooth surface than the axe. The operation is also called chopping. The use of the adze is to chop and pare wood in a horizontal position.
§ 6. THE SOCKET CHISEL Is used for cutting excavations ; the lower part is a prismoid, the sides of which taper in a small degree upwards, and the edges considerably downwards: one side consists of steel and the other of iron : the under end is ground into the form of a wedge, forming the basil on the iron side, and the cutting edge on the lower end of the steel face, From the upper end of the prismoidal part rises the frustum of a hollow cone, increasing in diameter upwards ; the cavity or socket contains a handle of wood of the same conic form : the axis of the handle, the hollow cone, and the middle line of the frustrum are all in the same straight line. The socket chisel, most commonly used, is about an inch and quarter or an inch and a half broad. It is chiefly used in mortising, and is the same in carpentry, as what the mortise chisel is in joinery.
§ 7. THE FIRMER CHISEL ls formed in the lower part similar to the socket chisel ; but each of the edges above the prismoidal part falls into an equal concavity, and diminishes upwards, until the substance of the metal between the concave narrow surfaces, becomes equal in thickness to the substance of the metal between the other two sides, produced in a straight line, meet a protuberance projecting equally on each side: the upper part of the protuberance is all at, or straight surface, from the middle of which rises a pyramid, to which is fastened a piece of wood in the form of a frustrum of a pyramid, tapering downwards; this piece of wood is called the handle : the middle line of the handle, of the pyramids of the concave, and of the prismoidal parts, are all in the same straight line.
§ 8. THE RIPPING CHISEL ls only an old socket chisel used in cutting holes in walls for inserting plugs, and for separating wood that has been nailed together, &c.
§ 9. THE GIMLET Is a piece of steel of a cylindric form, having a transverse handle at the upper end, and at the other end a worm or screw; and a cylindric cavity called the cup above the screw ; forming in its transverse section, a crescent. Its use is to bore small holes; the screw draws it forward in the wood, in the act of boring, while it is turned round by the handle ; the angle formed by the exterior and interior cylinders, cuts the fibres across, and the cup contains the core of wood so cut: the gimlet is turned round by the application of the fingers, on alternate sides of the wooden lever at the top.
§10. THE AUGER Is the largest of all boring tools, it has a wooden handle at the upper end at right angles, to a long shaft of iron and steel ; at the lower end is a worm or screw of a conic form, for entering the wood ; so far it is similar in construction to the gimlet: the lower part of the shaft, axis, or spindle is steel, and is of a prismoidal form, to a certain distance, from the end upwards. The edges are nearly parallel, and the sides taper in a small degree upwards; the part of the shaft above the prismoid is arbitrary; but it is obvious, that in order to pass the bore freely, its transverse dimensions must be less than the lower part. The worm has its axis in the same straight line with the axis of the shaft. The lower end is hollow, or cut into a cavity on one side of the cone, and forms a projecting edge on the narrow surface of the prism called the tooth, which is brought to a cutting edge.
The part of the lower end on the other side of the cone projects before the face of the prismoidal part in the form of a wedge, the line of concourse of the two sides of the wedge forming a cutting edge. The vertex of the cope is the greatest extremity of the lower end ; the cutting edge of the tooth is something higher or nearer to the handle, and the cutting edge of the wedge-like part stilI nearer to the handle. Any point being given as the centre of a cylindric hole on the surface of a piece of timber, the vertex of the conic screw is placed in that point; then keeping the middle line of the shaft perpendicular to, or at the inclination to be given to the surface of the timber; turn the auger round with both hands, the screw will draw it downwards into the wood, and when it has got a certain depth, the tooth will begin to cut a portion of the cylindric surface of the hole: when the part of the cylindric surface is cut half round the circumference, or perhaps a little more, the projecting wedge-like part will begin to cut out the bottom, and the core will rise in the form of a spiral shaving, by continuing to turn the handle. This construction of the auger is of very late invention, and is certainly a great improvement.
The lower part of the old form of the auger is a semi-cylinder on the outside, and the inside a less portion of a larger cylinder, the bottom of the cutting part is formed like a nose-bit : before this auger can be entered in the wood, a cavity must be first made with a gouge.
§11. THE GAUGE Is made out of a solid piece of wood notched with an internal right angle, or consisting of two narrow planes perpendicular to each other; one of these straight surfaces forms a shoulder, the other surface has two iron teeth placed in a perpendicular to the intersection of the two surfaces, so distant from one another as to contain the thickness of the tenon, or breadth of the mortise, and the tooth next to the shoulder so far distant from the intersection, as the tenon is distant from the face. When you gauge, press the shoulder close to the wood, and the other surface of the gauge which contains the teeth, close to the other surface of the wood to be gauged; then draw and pull it backwards and forwards and the iron teeth will scratch the wood so as to make a sharp incision or cut. When carpenters have occasion to alter their gauge for other work, they either file away the old teeth and put in new ones; or, if the distance between the old ones will answer, they cut away a parallel slice from the shoulder, or put a new piece on before it.
§12. THE LEVEL Consists of a long rule, straight on one edge, about 10 or 12 feet in length, and another piece fixed to the other edge of the rule, perpendicular to, and in the middle of the length, and the sides of this piece in the same plane as the sides of the rule ; this last piece having a straight line on one side perpendicular to the straight edge of the rule. The standing piece is generally mortised into the other, and firmly braced on each side, in order to secure it from accidents, and has its upper end kerfed in three places, one through the perpendicular line, and one on each side. The straight edge of the transverse piece has a hole or notch cut out on the under side equal on each side of the perpendicular lines. A plummet is suspended by a string from the middle kerf at the top of the standing piece, so that when hanging at length, the bottom of the plummet may not reach to the straight edge, but vibrate freely in the hole or notch. When the straight edge of the level is applied to two distant points, and the two sides placed vertically, the plummet hanging freely, and coinciding with the straight line on the standing piece, then these two points are level: but if not, let us suppose that one of the points is at the given height, the other point must be lowered or heightened according as the case may require; and the level applied each time, until the thread is brought to a coincidence with the perpendicular line. By two points, is meant two surfaces of contact, as two blocks of wood or chips, or the upper edges of two distant beams.
The use of the level in carpentry, is to lay the upper edges of joists in naked flooring horizontal, by first levelling two beams as remote from each other as the length of the level will allow ; the plummet may then be taken off, and the level may be used as a straight edge. In the levelling of joists, it is best to make two remote joists level first in themselves, that is, each throughout its own length, then the two level with each other; after this, bring one end of the intermediate joists straight with the two levelled ones, then the other end of the joists in the same manner, then try the straight edge longitudinally on each intermediate joist, and such as are found to be hollow, must be furred up straight.
§ 13. TO ADJUST THE LEVEL. Place it in its vertical situation upon two pins or blocks of wood then, if the plummet be hanging freely, and settle upon the line on the standing piece, or if not, one end being raised, or the other end lowered, to make it do so, turn the level end for end, and if the plummet fall upon the line, the level is just ; but if not, the bottom edge must be shot straight, and as much taken off the one end as you may think necessary; then trying the level first one way and then the other as before, and if a coincidence takes place between the thread and the line, the level is adjusted; but if not, the operation must be repeated till it come true.
§ 14. THE PLUMB RULE ls a prismatical piece of wood, with a line drawn down the middle of one of the· sides, parallel to the two adjacent arrises on the same face. Its use is to try the vertical position of posts, or other work perpendicular to the horizon, by means of a plummet suspended from the upper end of the rule, and a notch cut out at the foot, in order to allow room for the plummet to vibrate freely.
In order to put up a post perpendicular to the horizon, place the bottom of the post in its situation, and the sides as nearly vertical as the eye may direct; if the post stands insulated, it must be fixed in this position with temporary braces, at least from two adjoining sides; but if very heavy, from all the four sides; then try the plumb rule upon one side, and if the thread coincides with the line, that side of the post is already plumb, but if not, the top must be moved forwards or backwards, accordingly as it leans or hangs, as much as appears to be wanted, by previously moving the front and rear braces, and fixing them anew, while the other two remain, to stay the other sides : apply the plumb rule again as before, and if there be a coincidence between the line and the plummet thread, then that face is perpendicular, but if not, the several similar operations must be repeated till found to be so. Proceed in the same manner with the other two parallel sides of the post, until they are made plumb, and by this means the post will be set in a true vertical position.
§15. THE HAMMER Consists of a piece of steel, through which passes a wooden handle perpendicularly; the steel is flat at one end, or in a small degree convex. The use of the hammer is for driving nails into wood by percussive force. The other end of the hammer, that is not used for driving nails, is sometimes made with claws, and sometimes with a rounded edge, like a semicylinder. The claws are for laying fast hold of the head of a nail, to be drawn out of a piece of wood; for this purpose the back of the hammer is rounded, so that the hammer, in the act of drawing the nail, may not penetrate with its other extremity into the wood; and this also lessens the distance of the force to be overcome from the fulcrum, and consequently increases the power employed. When the hammer is used, place the back of it upon the wood, and the claws so as to have the nail fast between them, lay hold of the handle and pull the contrary way to that side of it on which the nail is; then, if the force be sufficient, the nail will be drawn out of the wood, and the nail thus drawn will come out almost straight. Some people, instead of pulling the handle of the hammer the contrary way to the side on which the nail is on, (and thereby making it describe a circle in a plane, perpendicular to the surface of the wood, and through the longitudinal direction of the head,) turn the hammer sideways : the nails easier drawn by this way, but then the surface of the wood is more injured, as well as the nail, which is frequently so much bent as not to be of any more use. Claw hammers are chiefly used in the country; and those with their other extremity rounded like a cylinder, are used in town for clinching and rivetting. In driving a nail, when the hammer comes in contact with the head of the nail, if the striking surface is not perpendicular to the shank of the nail, the nail will not be driven into the wood, or only in a small degree, but will be bent sideways towards an oblique angle, and will thus frequently break the nail, unless it be well entered, and so strong as to resist the force acting thus obliquely. The reader must here observe, that no force can act with its full effect upon another, unless in a line perpendicular to the surface of contact.
§ 16. THE MALLET Is similar in its construction to the hammer, but the head is a thick block of wood, of a structure in form of the frustum of a pyramid, the side of this frustum tending to some point in the handle continued. It is used for mortising and driving pins into wood. The object is struck by the narrow sides of the mallet.
§ 17. THE BEETLE OR MAUL Is a large mallet to knock the corners of framed work, and to set it in its proper position, and is sometimes used for driving short piles into the ground, where it would be unnecessary to use greater power. The handle is about three feet in length, and for these heavy purposes both hands are employed. This is more used in the country than in London, where they use a sledge hammer for the same purpose.
§ 18. THE CROW Is a large bar of iron, used as a lever to lift up the ends of heavy timber, in order to lay another piece of timber, or a roller, under it. One end of the crow has claws.
§ 19. THE TEN FOOT ROD Is a rod about an inch square, divided in its length into feet and inches, for the purpose of setting out work. The method of raising a perpendicular by a ten foot rod, is described in the Practical Geometry, page 25. Prob. III. Instead of a ten foot rod, some use two five foot rods for the same purpose.
§ 20. HOOK PIN Is a conical piece of iron, with a hooked head, declining upwards in the form of a wedge. The top is flat, for the purpose of driving it down; and the shoulder which rises from the cone, stands perpendicular to the axis, and is used for driving it out of a hole, when it is fixed fast. The hook pins are the same in carpentry, as what the draw bore pins are in joinery, viz. they are employed after the tenons have been entered in the mortise and bored, as shall be presently shown, in drawing the shoulders of the tenons home to their abutments in the mortise cheeks : when there are several mortises and tenons in the same frame, as many hook pins are employed. The method of boring, and using the hook pins, is thus: bore a hole first through the mortise cheeks, not very distant from the abutments; enter the tenon, and force it home to its shoulders as near as you can ; mark the tenon by the hole, and draw the tenon out of the mortise. Then pierce a hole through the tenon, about one third of its diameter nearer to the shoulder, and enter the tenon again, bringing the shoulder as near to its abutment as possible; drive in the hook pin with considerable force; the convex circumference will bear upon alternate sides of the mortise and tenon, viz. upon the farther side of the hole of the tenon, and upon the nearest side of the mortise from the joint ; the shoulder of the tenon being brought home to its abutment, the hook pin may be drawn out of the hole; for this purpose there is a hole through the upper part of it, by which it is sometimes drawn out with another hook pin; but if driven in very fast, it will require the assistance of a hammer to strike it upon the shoulder upwards, and two or three smart blows will soon loosen it ; when drawn out, enter the pin, and drive it home with force, or till it be sufficiently through and fast, so as not to be driven farther without breaking.
§ 21. THE CARPENTER’S SQUARE Is a square of which both stock and blade consists of an iron plate of one piece ; it is in size and construction thus : one leg is eighteen inches in length, numbered from the exterior angle, the bottom of the figures are adjacent to the interior edge of the square, and consequently their tops to the exterior edge: the other leg is twelve inches in length, and numbered from the extremity towards the angle ; the figures are read from the internal angle, as in the other side ; each of the legs arc about an inch broad. This implement is not only used as a square, but it is also used as a level, and likewise as a rule : its application as a square and as a rule is so easy as not to require any example : but its use as a level, in taking angles, may be thus illustrated; suppose it were required to take the angle which the heel of a rafter makes with the back, apply the end of the short leg of the square to the heel point of the rafter, and the edge of the square, level across the plate, extend a line from the ridge to the heel point, and where this line cuts the perpendicular leg of the square, mark the inches, and this will show how far it deviates from the square in twelve inches.
Art Deco inspiration. “I love Art Deco design,” writes JoJo Wood. “I have always had a great fondness for it — one of the many reasons I love visiting the States: such inspiring architecture. When Sean & I got married we made our own wedding rings out of old silver spoon handles, with Art Deco designs on them. My Art Deco spoons started with inspiration taken from our wedding rings, and have evolved from there… I take a lot of pictures of cool buildings, amongst other things, to translate into spoon designs.”
In the late 1990s, when JoJo Wood was just a few years old, her parents moved from the county of Essex, northeast of London, to Edale in the Peak District of Derbyshire, between the industrial cities of Sheffield and Manchester. A tiny village in a remote corner of north-central England, Edale attracted hikers, especially during late summer and fall, when its hills were cloaked in purple heather. Many of these visitors also turned out to be interested in another local offering: spoon carving courses taught by JoJo’s parents, Robin and Nicola. When JoJo was about 13, the family moved from a stone cottage “in the middle of nowhere – the last house on the Pennine Way” – to the village center, where they taught their craft in the village hall. “Rob would do all the axing and rough carving, and then Nic would finish them. She has a design background and eye for aesthetics.”
They often roped their daughter into helping. JoJo can’t recall exactly when she started using a knife, but she knows it was when she was “definitely very young. I had quite a short attention span,” she continues, “so I never really made objects. It was mostly swords and spears to fight my brother with.” (That’s her younger brother, Ollie, now 24.) People would come for the courses and stay in the village, carving spoons during the day, then tack on a couple of days to go walking in the hills.
Start them young. Nicola showing JoJo how to work at a shavehorse.
A quick study. JoJo at the shavehorse, working on her own.
Robin’s teaching wasn’t limited to the village hall in Edale. He taught in other parts of England, as well as internationally, and always tried to take the family with him when he traveled. That’s how JoJo came to meet famed Swedish woodcarver Wille Sundqvist, whom many consider one of the fathers of green woodworking, when she was just 8 or 9. While she appreciates the honor of having met Wille in person, she admits that as a kid, “all the talk about knives got boring.” Still, when their hosts brought out knives as gifts for her and her brother, she accepted hers graciously and says “That was my first knife of my own.”
JoJo and Ollie with Wille Sundqvist.
Fast forward a few years. “Every teen-ager goes through a stage where everything their parents do is the least cool and they want nothing to do with it.” So she explored other things. JoJo took the GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) at 16, then went to what Brits call college – usually what’s known as technical or community college in the States – in Chesterfield to study art. “I struggled a lot with my mental health,” she says, acknowledging a challenge faced by many at the transition to adulthood. As a result, she didn’t get far before dropping out. The following year she tried A-level studies (roughly equivalent to junior and senior high in the States) but dropped out at the start of her second year due to depression and anxiety.
“I was later, in my early 20s, diagnosed as autistic,” she explains. “That probably has a lot to do with my struggling…. This undiagnosed autism made me not fit in very well. It helps me be kinder to myself about some things, because I really struggle in a lot of situations. I remind myself that it’s not my fault; it’s just the way my brain works.”
At 18 or 19 she dropped out the second time. “I spent time in my depression hole,” she continues. While JoJo was growing up, her mother attended graduate school, where she earned a doctorate designing multimedia resources for teaching craft skills. She always spoke about how great it was to go back to university as a mature student. Thanks to her mother’s perspective, JoJo understood that she could return to the world of formal education someday if she needed a qualification. “That was a different opinion,” she says, from the prevailing assumption that anyone who did not complete a degree straight after high school was something of a failure. “It’s kind of sad that that’s how everybody viewed me when I didn’t go to university.”
Weaving a chair seat at Mike Abbott’s, here with “Danish cord,” a paper-based material, in a wavy twill pattern adapted for chair seats from the world of weaving. “I spent a lot of time seat-weaving during my time at Mike’s, and adapted quite a few patterns,” writes JoJo. The chair is a Mike Abbott-designed “lath-back.”
She spent a summer assisting Mike Abbott, who teaches chairmaking in Herefordshire, southwest of Birmingham. “You’d spend a week living in the woods, cooking on wood fires, sitting around the campfire, and you’d make a chair. Assistants help with projects, make tea, and so on. There I spent more time doing woodworking and also my first big teaching, although informally.” After helping people to make chairs and understand how wood “works,” she showed them how to carve spoons in the evenings.
When her dad was organizing the first Spoonfest with his friend Barn, she found herself once again roped in to help. She’d carved a few spoons by that time but “nothing that seriously.” One of her jobs was to put together the festival T-shirt, which had to list the instructors. “They’re all men,” she noted. It struck her as odd – those who’d attended her parents’ courses were fairly evenly mixed by gender. But there didn’t seem to be any women carving spoons professionally at that time, she says. “So…in a fit of feminist stubbornness, [I] decided that by the following year I would be good enough to teach.”
New and improved instructor line-up.
She spent the year practicing, and sure enough, was teaching that following year, 2013. “I was hooked,” she says. “Couldn’t put it down.”
If it seems a stretch to go from a remote village in the countryside of northern England to teaching internationally, all without the benefit of conventional higher education, JoJo’s trajectory is a little easier to comprehend when you go beyond her parents’ example and how they immersed their daughter in craft from her earliest years to consider the passionate interest and ambition her father demonstrated in researching and reviving a branch of woodcraft that might otherwise have been lost to history. Google Robin Wood and you’ll find he has “MBE” (Member of the Order of the British Empire) appended to his name, a great public honor recognizing his contributions to the survival of traditional British craft. For much of his life, Robin has made a living by turning bowls. No ordinary bowls, these; Robin revived the craft of pole-lathe turning last practiced by George Lailey six decades earlier. After Lailey died in 1958, his workshop was moved to the Museum of English Rural Life. Robin studied Lailey’s lathe and tools and reverse-engineered them, in effect teaching himself from scratch. He took his foot-powered lathe with him to craft fairs to demonstrate the process. The power of such an example, as well as the opportunities Robin shared with his family, should not be underestimated.
Going farther afield
Forage your material, in this case birch bark for a canoe.
JoJo at work on the canoe.
Robin and JoJo enjoy the fruits of their labor.
JoJo stayed in Herefordshire during her early 20s. By that point she was teaching internationally; one year she taught courses in England, France, Germany and Sweden, in addition to the United States, where she was one of the instructors at the first Greenwood Fest in Plymouth, Mass. She’d visited the States a couple of years before with her dad; they spent a few weeks with Jarrod Dahl in Wisconsin, building a birch bark canoe, an experience she describes as “amazing! Really cool.” They also traveled to a spoon gathering in Milan, a tiny town “in the middle-of-nowhere Minnesota and to Northhouse, where Robin taught a course. Peter Follansbee took that course. “In the evenings we did spoon carving,” JoJo goes on. “Peter’s spoon carving background is from the Swedish bent-branch world; at Northhouse, he was carving from a straight piece of wood. “I probably said something fairly unflattering – I can show you a better way to do that.” Instead of being insulted, he was impressed, she says. “We got on great.” So when he was organizing Greenwood Fest, he invited her to teach spoon carving.
Faceted backs of spoons.
The spoon carving world is quite a small one, JoJo says, though it’s getting bigger. “Everybody seems to know everybody. We were all on Facebook and Instagram, posting about our various things.”
“I’ve been very lucky. I grew up around amazing craftspeople and have been lucky to get to know everybody. A lot of the woodworking community is dominated by old men. When people are looking to book some people to change the demographics a bit, I bring the age significantly down. And I don’t have a beard, which is a change,” she laughs – “ticking two boxes at once!”
JoJo in instructor mode with a student named Julie, before “Spoon Day” in 2019.
Pathcarvers: enhancing mental health through making
With her partner, Sean, she operates Pathcarvers in Birmingham, where she moved in 2017. Pathcarvers teaches woodcarving as a way to help people with mental and physical health challenges – “a tool for positive social change.” Through Pathcarvers, they set up events that give people access to craft. “The act of making is intrinsically human,” JoJo points out. “A lot of people don’t have creative outlets that can really help. Jobs are becoming more screen-oriented. People get home and put the telly on or Netflix because we’re so tired. Making is something that can be beneficial in so many ways.”
They work with groups as well as individuals, bringing together people from diverse backgrounds. “You sit down and do some carving. It helps you talk about things. You have to concentrate on that sharp thing in your hand because you don’t want to hurt yourself. It gives you space to quiet your brain down.”
When she was teaching elsewhere, she says, she’d notice that there always came a point where “everybody goes silent because they’re so focused on what they’re doing. The world disappears. At the end of the course, they’ve got this thing in their hands that they’ve made. They can go away and use that in their kitchen and be reminded of this experience. So many people never get to experience that. They don’t even know it’s an option. Pathcarvers is about making this as accessible as we can, and making it affordable. With craft courses there are endless [opportunities] to go away in the woods, but there’s not that much in the cities. [Thanks to Pathcarvers], people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to do it can do it.”
They are a social enterprise (known in the United States as a non-profit). Until now, they’ve been self-funded. Course fees have made it possible for them to subsidize training for those who can’t pay. After woodworker, author and lawyerKieran Binnie took his life in April 2021, Christopher Schwarz, Megan Fitzpatrick and Rachel Moss (Kieran’s spouse) wanted to do something to memorialize him and create a positive legacy. “He’d brought so much to so many people in his life,” JoJo comments, “and we wanted to continue that. Kieran lived in Birmingham, too. It seemed a good fit. He, too, thought about community.” Chris and Megan put her and Sean in touch with Rachel Moss, Kieran’s wife. “It’s been really amazing, the amount of support,” JoJo says of the contributions brought in following a post about Pathcarvers and the Kieran Binnie Memorial Fund for Craft. The fund will enable them to do more work free of charge, and to work with other organizations to help people with their mental health.
