Lost Art Press LLC is a small publishing company in Fort Mitchell, Ky., 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Those quickly disappearing hand skills have been replaced by a reliance on machine work, even when it is less effective, slower or sloppier.

The founders of Lost Art Press – Lucy May, Christopher Schwarz and John Hoffman – are trying to restore the balance between hand and machine work by unearthing the lost art 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. He is now a contributing editor to that magazine. He also serves as a contributing editor to The Fine Tool Journal and has produced several DVDs in conjunction with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks on traditional skills.