I’m a recent fan of Christopher Schwarz and The Lost Art Press. The guy is a master woodworker (here’s one of his chairs), but is as much a wordsmith as he is a woodsmith; he knows woodworking and its history, and every sentence both elucidates and entertains. I especially admire his love of the vernacular and—very much complementary to that—a deep disdain for what William Morris called “makeshift,” both of which are perpetually on my mind in reference to picture frames. On those issues, today he posted a chapter that didn’t make the cut for his forthcoming book on stick chairs. “It’s flawed,” he says, “but good enough for a blog entry.” After reading it, you’ll say to yourself, as I did, “That’s going to be a damn good book.”
My only quibble is with the first sentence: “If there is one thing we can agree on, it’s probably this: Factory-made wooden chairs are the biggest hunks of garbage on the market today.” Nope, in my book that would be factory-made frames. But Schwarz actually wrote a book—well, several—so who am I to argue?
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