The Anarchist's Design Book - Expanded Edition is an exploration of furniture forms. Forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years.

This the latest, revised Expanded Edition. Download an excerpt from this book here.

Most of the American furniture we celebrate as the pinnacle of design is overbearing, over-embellished and a monument to waste and excess.

It also represents the furniture of people you probably dislike.

These high styles of furniture took hold in North America in the 18th century and persist to this day.  Both as cult objects for collectors and as rites of passage for artisans. These are precious pieces that are auctioned, collected, reproduced and written about in exhaustive detail.

Or, to put it a slightly different way, the people who could afford this furniture also owned large farms, factories and sometimes entire towns. This is not to knock their wealth. It is a simple way of asking a question that rarely gets asked among amateur makers: why would you want to imitate the taste of your boss’s boss’s boss?

There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for almost 1,000 years that don’t get written about much. They are simple to make. They have clean lines. And they can be shockingly modern.

This book explores 11 of these forms  including a bed, dining tables, chairs, chests, desks and shelving.  And offers a deep exploration into the two construction techniques used to make these pieces that have been forgotten, neglected or rejected.

You can build an entire house full of furniture using the two methods – what we call “staked” and ”boarded” furniture. They are shockingly simple for the beginner. They don’t require a lot of tools and they produce objects that have endured centuries of hard use.

The Anarchist’s Design Book shows you the overarching patterns behind these 11 pieces. It gives you the road map for designing your own pieces.

The Book

This is the largest book Lost Art Press has published to date.

Pages are sewn for long-term durability.

8" x 10" and casebound, sheathed in thick hardback boards that are covered in cotton cloth.

Like all Lost Art Press books, this book is produced and printed entirely in the United States.

By Christopher Schwarz