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From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

Photo courtesy David C. Now that we’re running the Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program once per year, each term is a pretty big deal. This time, we have more students than ever before working their way through the eight-week program, and it has been a blast. Joshua and I are always blown away by the thoughtful observations, humility, and camaraderie that are showcased when our students get to work. Photo courtesy Michael G. The Apprenticeship Program is now in its 5th term, a milestone hard to imagine when it first launched a few years ago. We’d been seriously missing in-person classes but at the same time recognized the shortcomings of those kinds of singular events. In short, you save up...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

In 1925, the troubled young American artist hit the road in search of a new start. Born Everard Jean Hinrichs, the son of German immigrants, he suffered a lengthy series of struggles and setbacks that led to his decision to head west and explore the country his family had adopted. Ostensibly borrowing the family’s neglected Model T, Hinrichs fashioned counterfeit license plates and left all he knew in New York City. Trained in painting and lettering, and inspired by the boundless vistas of the Hudson River School movement of romantic landscape art, he planned to work his way across America as a freelance sign painter while learning the moods and history of the land. Hinrichs’ ancestry and ability to letter...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

(This post was inspired by a conversation had recently while hewing a timber.) When Henry David Thoreau built his little cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, he borrowed an axe and started chopping down standing pines at the end of March. By mid-April, Thoreau, a woodworker with average competence and limited experience, had hewn his timbers, cut the joinery, and made ready for the raising. And in his words, “I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it.” Thoreau was endlessly distractible, pursuing clouds and ants and loons in the pond, so one can imagine his workdays being less than rigidly scheduled. And yet, the pines became 6x6 posts, studs, and rafters in just...