Founded in 2007, Lost Art Press is a small Midwestern publishing company that seeks to help the modern woodworker learn traditional hand-tool skills. Since World War II, traditional and effective hand skills have disappeared from the home, professional and school woodshops in North America. Those quickly disappearing hand skills have been replaced by a reliance on machine work, even when it is les
s effective, slower or sloppier. The founders of Lost Art Press – Christopher Schwarz and John Hoffman – are trying to restore the balance between hand and machine work by unearthing the so-called "lost arts" of hand skills and explaining how they can be integrated with the machinery in the modern shop to help produce furniture that is crisp, well-proportioned, stout and quickly made. Christopher Schwarz is the former editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, where he worked between 1996 and 2011. Chris lives in Northern Kentucky. John Hoffman is an enthusiastic home woodworker and lives outside Indianapolis. We pride ourselves on being a company that you can trust. We will never sell or share your personal information with anyone else. We do not accept gifts of free tools from manufacturers or catalogers. When we recommend a tool – in our books or on our blog – we have paid full retail for it.
