Shop Tails: The Animals Who Help Us Make Things Work

“Making something constructive out of challenging circumstances is every bit as creative as baking a loaf of sourdough bread, building a canoe or assembling a kumiko panel.” - Nancy Hiller

Fans of Nancy Hiller’s “Making Things Work” will know Nancy as a great storyteller who can write vividly of her life in full -- as a professional woodworker since her early 20s and as a creative and engaged human being. “Shop Tails: The Animals Who Help Us Make Things Work” serves as a companion volume to her earlier memoir, using the animals who have provided companionship to explore her ideas about craft and more existential subjects, including illness, parenting, heartbreak, death and love.

Throughout the book, Nancy evinces the valor involved in “making things work,” even if the challenge may be less dramatic than balancing the demands of chemotherapy and a custom cabinetry installation. The book also celebrates the joy of creativity, perseverance and connection - essential compensation for what can be a sometimes lonely and stressful livelihood - and may inspire you to consider what you consider a life well lived.

Hardcover. 368 pages. 6” x 9”. Filled with photographs (mostly of the animals profiled, but many of Nancy’s woodwork as well). The text is printed on acid-free paper in signatures, which are sewn and reinforced with fiber tape. The interior is then wrapped in hardcover boards and cotton cloth, and protected by a tear-resistant dust jacket. Like all Lost Art Press books, “Shop Tails” is produced and printed in the United States.

Pages: 368
Binding: HC
Publisher: Lost Art Press