The Reading Warehouse

What do you get when an accomplished woodworker and senior editor of Fine Woodworking magazine sets himself the challenge of designing and building one box a week for a solid year? You get 52 Boxes in 52 Weeks, a book dedicated to making relatively simple--yet gracefully elegant--boxes that woodworkers of all skill levels will be eager to build.

Readers will begin by learning the fundamental box-making techniques that are applicable to almost every box in the book:

• how to match grain at corners
• how to cut miters
• how to make tops and bottoms
• how to finish a box with shellac, sometimes highlighted with milk paint ( a major trend in finishing right now).

Following that, Kenney reveals some universal design principles that can be used as guidance as readers develop their own design aesthetic. And then, of course, the book transitions to the 52 boxes themselves.

Matt Kenney has been making things from wood his entire life. About 15 years ago, when he was a poor and recently married graduate student with plans for a philosophy professorship, he began to make furniture. He was still bumbling along when a generous professional furniture maker in Camden, S.C., (Joe Mazurek) took him into his shop and taught him to cut dovetails, make doors, and hammer veneer. For the last six years, Kenney has been an editor at Fine Woodworking. He lives in Watertown, Connecticut.