the Cupboard Book is done
now available thru Lost Art Press
The cupboard book is done and now available from our great friends at Lost Art Press. If you’ve read my blog for a while, you might remember me working on these - two versions of a particularly elaborate 1680s joined cupboard.
To get right to the book, you can skip this post & go to LAP’s site - https://lostartpress.com/products/17th-century-essex-county-cupboard
One stipulation the first customer had was that the project be “well documented.” I told him that I’ve kept a tripod and camera in my shop since about 1989 - when I first began studying joinery along with Jennie Alexander. So I shot hundreds and hundreds of photographs as I was working. Wrote many blog posts, many of you were there for those. And Anissa Kapsales from Fine Woodworking came along and we did an article about some of the work - they were kind enough to put my cupboard (& my photograph) on the cover.
In addition to the photos, I shot a lot of videos too. The book takes you through the whole process of making the cupboard(s), starting with the log. The video series, one of my vimeo-on-demand offerings, is different. I couldn’t possibly shoot the whole process - I didn’t have the time, resources or space to pull that off. But I got a bunch of stuff captured and have edited about 10-12 videos showing different aspects of the build, ranging from the applied turnings and the carved drawer front to the more oddball work of shaping the upper case stiles and joinery for the lower case’s overhanging framework. Those videos are also for sale, I think of them as complimentary to the book. I still have a couple more to sift through and edit, so I’ll add to this collection soon. The link is here - https://vimeo.com/ondemand/504407
Here’s one of the videos as a sample. Most are around 30-45 minutes, this one came in shorter, fitting the pintle hinge on the door.
Paid subscribers can access a 15% off discount code at the end of the post, below the paywall. Now for the blog post itself.
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I didn’t set out to be a writer. When I was six, I wanted to be Bill Russell. Turns out the world already had one and there was never going to be another.
Same outcome for some of my other intended occupations - Andrew Wyeth was already taken, etc. Along the way I became a woodworker, but my principal cohort/teacher/mentor lived 400 miles away - Jennie Alexander.
And she & our circumstances propelled us to write down a lot of what we were doing back & forth in the US mail. So I became a writer of sorts. Not the “It was a dark and stormy night” kind of writer. Very specifically writing about woodworking. And a small slice of that pie to boot.
My first book took 20 years, Make a Joint Stool from a Tree, with Alexander. Part of the reason it took so long is that she & I would argue about it repeatedly, to the point where I’d drop out & leave it to her. Then her health took a turn and I was back on board to help make it happen. While we were wrapping that book up, I was starting in on my joinery book, Joiner’s Work. That one was a look at how I make some of the “standard” fare of a 17th century New England joiner, mostly carved boxes and chests and variations thereof. But while writing that book, I dropped out of my long-held museum career, so it was interrupted a few times. There’s at least 3, maybe 4, different shop setups in that book. I finished it after building my own shop here at home.
