When I set out to write, “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” my intent was to create a “pattern book” of vernacular furniture. The book didn’t turn out that way, which is sometimes how it goes. But during the research, Suzanne Ellison turned up a little book that fulfilled my original … | Continue reading
Chris is getting ready for his talks at Colonial Williamsburg’s Working Wood in the 18th Century conference (Jan. 25-28), and had all (some?) of the books he’s discussing arrayed across several benches. So we grabbed the microphones and a camera, and recorded a little bit about e … | Continue reading
It’s time for our (almost) weekly Open Wire, where you can pose your woodworking questions in the comments section below and we’ll do our best to answer them. Note that there may be a lag between your asking and our answering. Chris has a class starting Monday and a trip to Colon … | Continue reading
We just received our first printing of “Backwoods Chairmakers” by Andrew D. Glenn. If you placed a pre-publication order, Gabe and Mark are packing up your book now. If you would like to purchase a copy, you can visit our online store. (If you aren’t sure if you ordered the book, … | Continue reading
Especially during seasons of life when the days feel impossibly full, there is something quite captivating with the notion of some overnight magic that makes the next day just a bit easier. As such, our week improved greatly when Randall Wilkins suggested a new product offering a … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from “The Belligerent Finisher,” by John Porritt. After walking you step by step through creating a believable aged finish, the book includes a gallery of just some of John’s gorgeous work. I think the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” has th … | Continue reading
Work on my next book, “The American Peasant,” has slowed my chairmaking a bit, but it hasn’t stopped me. I have six more chairs in the works right now. Today I am offering this low-slung comb-back in ash. This chair is completely set up for lounging, and is about as comfortable a … | Continue reading
Two quick promotional notes: 1) We have lump hammers back in stock in our store (with no dings, unlike my well-used one shown above). 2) European readers can take advantage of our reluctant sale (to reduce a metric ton – possibly more than a metric ton – of inventory) on “The Ana … | Continue reading
Chris and I have been experimenting with linseed oil paint for about a year now, since he started working on his next book, “The American Peasant,” and we’ve both painted a lot of wooden stuff with it – from large flat surfaces on chests to fiddly roundish bits on stick chairs to … | Continue reading
The final project for Chris’s next book, “The American Peasant,” is done, dusted, painted and hung on the wall – the coat and mug rack shown above. (The coat is the Lost Art Press Chore Coat, made in Cincinnati; the Lost Art Press Coffee Mugs are handmade for us in Minnesota.) So … | Continue reading
We are temporarily lowering the price of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” to $37 (down from $52) in a sincere effort to clear out a huge section of our second floor devoted to warehousing this title. This is not a junk title – “The Anarchist’s Design Book” is our second best-selling … | Continue reading
Now you can brand almost any garment with Lost Art Press using our iron-on applique. All you need is a household clothes iron, plus a cotton or cotton/poly sweatshirt or shirt. The applique letters are vinyl with a soft “flocked” coating, so they are nice and fuzzy, and they reca … | Continue reading
I’m always a bit surprised by what sells well each year. I look at our sales every morning, track inventory and try to figure out our next step. But rarely do I step back and look at the big sales picture. Except for today. Here are the 10 best selling Lost Art Press/Crucible pro … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years.” When we started on The Woodworker project more than a decade ago we didn’t intend to publish “Honest Labour.” The series was going to have four books that covered handwork: Vol. 1: Tools; Vol. 2: Techn … | Continue reading
All my books that you buy through Lost Art Press will be signed by me through 2024. It takes a few hours of my time each week, but we are thrilled we can offer this small personal touch now that we have our fulfillment center up and running in Covington, Kentucky. We also will of … | Continue reading
I have been stuck in a little too deep on peasant furniture and have forgotten to announce this: I am presenting at Colonial Williamsburg’s 26th annual “Working Wood in the 18th Century” conference Jan. 25-28. This year’s theme is “By the Book,” and it will focus on the relation … | Continue reading
Sorry it’s been awhile since my last library post – I’ll try to finish up the not-yet-covered cubbies in the next month to six weeks (I believe there are still three or four to go). This week, I had to get out the stepladder and stand on my tippy toes to reach the top left... | Continue reading
I’m writing this on Friday night. There’s a small chance Megan and I will not survive to see a new day. We ate dinner at Purple Poulet, and the food there is so rich and delicious that our hearts might simply stop. But if we do live, we are happy to answer your woodworking questi … | Continue reading
Please forward this to any budding author in your life. It’s the last week of December, so our inbox is filling up with queries – people who want to write a book and would like us to publish it. We don’t accept unsolicited queries (it’s right here on our “About Us” page where it … | Continue reading
I love using Cold-Bend Hardwood for the bent parts of my stick chairs. During the last 10 years I have basically a 0 percent failure rate with the stuff (the only failure was my fault – more on that in a bit). When I steam-bend arms, I typically lose about one-third of my bends. … | Continue reading
Lost Art Press Editor Megan Fitzpatrick has been featured on The Queue – the American Craft Council’s column on noteworthy artisans and artists. Check out the feature here. Congrats Megan on some long-overdue recognition. — Christopher Schwarz | Continue reading
I keep telling myself that modern spade bits are not great, but they’re OK. But I am lying to myself. Anytime I use a NOS (New Old Stock) Irwin spade I am shocked by how good the old ones are compared to the modern stuff. During the last few chairmaking classes I taught, the mode … | Continue reading
The following is Excerpted from “Honest Labour,” a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while the legendary Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). This book is be the fifth and final volume in our series from The Woodworker. And here’s hoping that, if you want to … | Continue reading
Andy Glenn’s long-awaited book, “Backwoods Chairmakers,” is just about complete at the press in Tennessee. We should get the books sometime between Thursday and Jan. 4 (barring weather or other delays). If you order the book before midnight on Sunday, Dec. 31, you will receive fr … | Continue reading
Good tidings and joy! Today begins the Twelve Days of Tooltide and a new song for all woodworkers. This song will lift you from post-holiday doldrums and carry you, all bright and shining, into the first week of the new year. As with the making of dovetails, dowels for a stick c … | Continue reading
Between 1995 and 2001, chairmaker John Brown and Drew Langsner carried on extensive correspondence about JB’s classes at Country Workshops. In addition to discussing flights and fees, the two men wrote a lot about how they viewed the craft and the world today. During our research … | Continue reading
If this were corporate America, I would have been fired either today or on the Tuesday after Christmas (let him have a nice holiday with his family before we can him). Lost Art Press shrank about 6 percent in 2023 across the board – that’s sales, revenue, numbers of orders and vi … | Continue reading
With family things happening here this weekend, the storefront doors will not be open until around 11:30 a.m., and we will close at 4 p.m. – just in case anyone is planning a visit for a last-minute woodworking gift (and you might instead consider a Lost Art Press gift certificat … | Continue reading
The hardest thing we do here is apparel. No matter what we offer, people want it in a different color, style, size range or material. About 90 percent of items returned by customers are apparel, typically when a garment doesn’t fit like the buyer hoped. Rather than just dump our … | Continue reading
Right after breakfast, Amelia helped Amos, her grandfather, bring in enough firewood to last for several days. Snow was expected in a day or two and he wanted to be prepared. Amelia loaded baskets into her grandfather’s old garden wagon and helped him unload and stack the wood in … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from Jögge Sundqvist’s “Karvsnitt: Carving, Pattern & Color in the Slöjd Tradition.” This gorgeous book (we can say that without being braggadocious because we replicated the design from the Swedish original) teaches you techniques for cutting triangle … | Continue reading
Katherine managed to make another batch of wax this week. I’m guessing she has some vet bills to pay because Bean now has a younger brother. Meet Billy! He has a bobtail, and he pretty much purrs with happiness every moment he’s awake. He also likes to wrestle – and so does Bean … | Continue reading
Eleanor Rose has a tasty batch of cast brass apron hooks available – or at least she did 30 seconds ago! If you’re interested, send her a DM via her Instagram. | Continue reading
Concurrent with making more Piggly No Wiggly glue and packing Anarchist Square Kits, I’ll be hosting Open Wire this week all by my lonesome – at least that’s the plan. But because Chris just can’t help himself, he’ll probably chime in from time to time, even though he’s supposed … | Continue reading
We’re done tinkering with the LostArtPress.com website, and we still don’t have annoying pop-up and vibrating windows that urge you to join a newsletter or to save 10 percent on your first order or whatever. Merchants use those irritating windows because they work. But we decided … | Continue reading
More than 10 years ago, Chris wrote about his visit to the Sampson-White Joiner Shop in Duxbury, Mass. Yesterday, the Secretary of the Interior designated the site as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) (hat tip to Timothy Babalis for this news). This historic shop, which, accordi … | Continue reading
In 1978, Drew Langsner released his book “Country Woodcraft” to the world, and it sparked a movement – still expanding today – of hand-tool woodworkers who make things with mostly green wood. The 304 pages of “Country Woodcraft” showed you how to split wood from the forest and sh … | Continue reading
For those of you who got the super-pointy cutters with your Crucible Engraving Tool (and a few who didn’t…really – we’re talking an almost-zero-radius-intersection V is the problem) who requested new cutters: They are now on the way. I had to await delivery of padded envelopes, t … | Continue reading
I’m a long-time fan of the Mississippi-made Delta 14” cast-iron band saw – and its better clones. But not everyone has the space for one of these saws. Or they don’t have the eggs to buy a used one that will surely need some restoration. For the last couple months, I have been us … | Continue reading
We just added our latest batch of 250 Anarchist Square Kits to the store. We have been boxing these suckers up for days now, and we will be boxing them up tomorrow and Monday to meet the USPS deadline for getting stuff in the mail so it arrives before Dec. 25th. The kits are grea … | Continue reading
It’s time for our weekly(ish) Open Wire, hosted this week by me and Chris (mostly Chris…he’s faster at answering and gets up earlier than do I, plus he knows a lot more than do I about what seem to be the favorite topics: chairs and chair-shaped objects – but do ask him about his … | Continue reading
Monday is the last day that items ordered from Lost Art Press will be certain to arrive before Christmas. After Monday, the chance that the package will make it in time will decrease day by day. So now is the time to order that Letterpress “By Hammer & Hand” Poster (we have only … | Continue reading
We just listed 140 more Anarchist Square Kits in our store this evening. This is a fun afternoon project for a budding or experienced woodworker. The joinery and decorative details are all cut – you just have to tidy it up and assemble it. We published a 14-minute video on how we … | Continue reading
Order “Cricket Tables” by 11:59 p.m. tonight EDT (Dec. 4, 2023) to get the free pdf of the book at checkout. Derek Jones’s book is about the three-legged cricket table, where it came from, what the different variants are and construction details. And the search for the history of … | Continue reading
Last week, Jerome Bias led a woodworking class of six black woodworkers as they built a six-board chest by hand in our workshop. It was one of the more memorable and enjoyable classes here at our storefront. In addition to woodworking, every day of class was filled with explorati … | Continue reading
We’ve had have about 100 people at our storefront so far today for our Open Day. So we aren’t physically or mentally able to answer Open Wire questions. Sorry! We’ll be back next Saturday with Open Wire. — Christopher Schwarz | Continue reading
Today is the last day you can purchase any of our Lost Art Press videos for 50 percent off. The sale ends at midnight Dec. 2. You can see all our videos here. All our videos were made by working woodworkers. We’ve been making these videos for years with basic equipment. This sale … | Continue reading
First, if you are in the area tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 2), I hope you can stop by our shop at 837 Willard St. for our Open Day. We do this only twice a year, and it’s a great way to catch up with other woodworkers and snag some bargains on blemished or discontinued products (basi … | Continue reading