What the Hell am I Doing Here?
I’m Christopher Schwarz – friends call me Chris. I’m a furniture maker, writer and toolmaker living in an old German barroom in Covington, Ky. For the last 25 years, I’ve written books, magazine articles and too many blog entries about hand-tool woodworking and running our publishing company, Lost Art Press.
I started writing this substack in 2022 while writing a book with the same name as this blog. Each entry documented some small step in the process. Rough drafts. Early designs. Rabbit holes galore on anything from the edge geometry on a race knife to the spells encrypted on Hungarian shepherd’s coffers. Plus beauty tips.
With the book “American Peasant” complete (download it for free here), this substack became a full-on experiment in woodworking journalism and a challenge to the idea that high-style furniture is the best furniture.
Why Subscribe?
Cocaine parties, mostly. Plus two to three posts a week. Unfiltered stuff you won’t find in corporate mags or websites fueled by advertising, sponsorships and affiliate links. I hate that stuff.
Most woodworking journalism is as dry as a popcorn fart. It’s either Tab A into Slot B stuff, or solemn sermons on the craft as a means to self-actualization. F&^% that. Making good furniture is hard. It drains you. It makes you wonder why you ever took up the tools in the first place and didn’t become a lawyer like your father told you to.
But the craft can change your life. Plus the lives of the people who use your stuff.
If you want to see how I do it, how we somehow make it all work – and you don’t mind stories about hallucinogens and possums – you might like “The American Peasant.”
Anything Else?
Subscribing to “The American Peasant” helps improve woodworking journalism. Your subscription fee goes to Lost Art Press and funds the future research and publishing efforts of our authors. We’ve done dozens of important, money-burning projects, everything from the first English-language translation of A.J. Roubo’s “l’Art du menuisier” to ethnographic studies of pre-industrial Estonian woodworking culture to “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”
We will do anything to help traditional woodworking skills survive. Your subscription adds to our reach. Please and thank you.
— Chris
