We'll see you at Long's Park this weekend!

It's almost Labor Day weekend, folks, and you know what that means- it's Long's Park Art & Craft Festival time! We've been in a whirlwind of putting finishing touches on pieces, wrapping furniture, and loading trailers in preparation for our departure to Lancaster tomorrow morning. The festival will be running rain-or-shine this weekend Friday-Sunday and we will be there, fully-loaded with a diverse selection of Lohr Woodworking Studio furniture.

For the past two weeks, we have been selecting which pieces would take the trip with us to Long's Park. You'll be happy to know that we have a wide array of live edge pieces mixed with our traditional refined Arts & Crafts style furniture. The Lohr Woodworking Studio booth will be filled with tables, cabinets, tables, desks, lawn chairs, and more. See my previous post for some details on the two new desks we'll be showing for the first time this weekend! All the pieces were crafted by one, or all, of us and are all original designs. And, bonus, I will be
proudly debuting and representing my "Apprentice's Corner" filled with Larissa-crafted things.

Anyway, because we make things from wood, they are, by nature, prone to dings and dents. To avoid harming any of the furniture as we pile, stack, and cram them into trucks and trailers, each individual (of the 36!!) piece is wrapped in a blanket(s) and banded. After all the objects dismantled and wrapped, a huge game of Tetris began.

Our heaviest, biggest pieces include two live edge walnut desks, a cherry table sofa, and the famous, single-slab, English oak burl "Resurrection" dining table. Needless to say, there is no way we were moving and accurately placing those guys into the trailer without some assistance from physics. The first stage was loading all of these guys onto a cart with wheels; Lesson learned: Big, heavy things on wheels are much easier to move around. Then, with a little ramp action leading up into the trailer, we used a block-and-tackle (hooked to the floor at the front of the trailer and to the cart) to pull that sucker up and in with [relative] ease. And physics wins again.

Come by, dine on some delicious local food, sip on some beer (or wine if you're feeling fancy), listen to some live music, and admire 200 artists & craftsmen from around the country. Seriously though, what makes better holiday presents than one-of-a-kind pieces from a once-a-year festival? Plan ahead, kids! We hope to see you there, enjoy the last remaining days of summer in an ideal Labor Day weekend environment!

Spring in the Showroom

As spring has allowed for at least a moment or two of sunlight, I was able to finally capture some shots of the Lohr Woodworking Studio showroom. If you have perused our new website, you have seen that the showroom is open for visits upon request/reservation so we wanted to give the world a peak into what we have in stock upstairs.

On the second floor of the barn, in what was once Jeff's first woodshop on the property, there is a showroom of the finished pieces for sale. The pieces up for grabs include, but are not limited to: a cherry table sofa and morris chair, a ghost (spalted) maple and walnut coffee table, a set of dining room chairs, a walnut and oak cabinet, Jeff's original arts & crafts style floor and table-top lamps, and even a few live edge tables! All of these pieces are handmade by Jeff and/or Rob and are awaiting visitors. I can post photographs all over but nothing compares to coming in to sit on, feel, and see close up the details of this furniture. We encourage people to turn the pieces upside-down, open drawers and doors, and ask questions about the joinery. These pieces are meant to be used as much as they are meant to be admired!

Now that the harshness of winter seems to have subsided, the showroom is already getting visitors. After 15 years, last weekend Barbara decided it was time to swing by Lohr Woodworking and see what had developed since her last visit.

Barbara has a deep-rooted respect and admiration of arts and crafts style furniture as she is, and has been, actively involved with the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms. The museum "is the centerpiece of Gustav Stickley’s early 20th century country estate" and "is one of the most significant landmarks of the American Arts and Crafts movement."  She has been been president of Craftsman Farms Foundation (which runs the Stickley Museum) for three years, serves on multiple Committees, Chairs the Executive and Development Committees, and still has found time to volunteer her services as a docent. Needless to say, she knows a thing or two about the history, purpose, and design elements of the Arts & Crafts movement and thus style that Jeff incorporates into his own custom furniture.

Up in the showroom, only a few furniture pieces made from the English brown oak burl log that came from the Alnwick Castle (one of the filming sites for the Harry Potter films) remain unclaimed. These highly figured and unique burl slabs were cut from an entirely-burl oak log brought over from the UK and most of it's pieces have found their place in client homes around the nation. Two of the tables that we still have are in the form of live edge side tables and a third in the form of a live edge cocktail table. After Barbara's visit this weekend, only two of the tables remain in the showroom. We are happy, as always, to see a piece of furniture find a new home and sincerely hope that Barbara enjoys her first Lohr Woodworking table for years to come!

In JD Lohr School of Woodworking news, we have added a Lohr Woodworking Community forum to our school website. All alumni or registered students our course(s) are encouraged to join the group and start up the conversation! We aim to provide a resource for our beloved woodworking students to chat, share, ask, and brag before and after they visit us for class(es).

Woodcraft Magazine comes to visit!

What an exciting week it has been here at the shop! Woodcraft Magazine was here making the Lohr Woodworking staff feel like a bit more like rock stars for two days.

Jim, the Editor-in-Chief at Woodcraft Magazine, contacted Jeff in April to inquire about his Lohr-design Morris Chairs. What he proposed was a a cover project in which the designer and builder would get a short bio and a full article detailing the "how to" steps to building the chair. The plans for the chair would be shared with readers and used beyond just the article in the form of downloads, paper plans, and so on. They would come to our shop and photograph the steps, tools, and techniques as he constructed one of his chairs and it's ottoman.


Jeff was willing to share his design and plans with the world so, he accepted the Woodcraft Magazine article offer but, he requested that his second-in-command, Rob, take the reigns as front man/producer. Rob had been doing an impressive amount of preparation, planning, organizing (and, of course, wardrobe selection) in the weeks leading to this one so, I have been anxious to see it all unfold; And, unfold it did!

Tuesday morning, the shop was graced with the presence of Jim (the Editor-in-Chief) and Chad (the Art Director) from Woodcraft. In charge of the article photography was Donna Chiarelli and her assistant, Tom. What a tremendous team they formed! They were here for two days and managed to fully document a chair construction that takes around 100 hours to complete. Everyone had such a pleasant attitude and the shop was filled with structure, professionalism, genuine interest, and even some jokes and smiles to add to the ambiance. It was incredibly impressive to watch all five cooks in the kitchen working so harmoniously to exchange ideas and tactics to best encompass the visual and written process for readers.

The idea was to capture the "mysteries or more challenging steps of the process" in photograph form so that readers could have a clearer idea of what to do on their own. Rob worked closely with Jim to create a photo script to encapsulate the chair creation process.

From what I saw, Rob was a natural magazine article star. Being surrounded by lights and cameras seemed to be second nature as he showed the magazine world how to make a killer Morris Chair one step at a time.

Eoin was kind enough to snap all these photos of the photo shoots that took place on Monday and Tuesday but, to learn how to make a JD Lohr Morris Chair and see the front angle of the cover photo (as well as the Morris Chair in it's entirety), you'll need to invest in September's issue of Woodcraft Magazine!

The staff of Lohr Woodworking thank Woodcraft Magazine, Jim, Chad, Donna, and Tom for their hard word and such a wonderful opportunity. As I mentioned, this week was enormously enjoyable and appreciated. We are a small operation here but, Jeff and Rob's work is astounding so we are always grateful to those who acknowledge and share the beauty of the furniture.

Make sure to keep an eye out for Rob's magazine cover debut in a couple of months! And, bonus, learn how to make a Lohr Morris Chair for yourself!