Earlywood: Living with 'The Joiner and Cabinet Maker'

Publisher’s note: It’s Saturday again! Welcome to Earlywood, a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes it originally appeared in a magazine article. Or in a book. Or in this case, a 2010 blog post. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. We hope you enjoy it.

“The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” was one of the first books Lost Art Press published. I began working on it in January 2009. I first posted about it on the Lost Art Press blog in August of that year, and it began shipping in November.

I hesitated to write this particular blog entry, which appeared on the Lost Art Press blog 14 years ago. It seemed self-serving. By then, I thought, all the people who visited the blog had made a decision. They had bought “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” or they hadn’t.

I wasn’t trying to change anyone’s mind about the book. I really didn’t care either way if they bought it. In fact, if anyone wanted to borrow my copy…