The Mysterious Package Company sends story experiences through the mail. Sign up, and you or your chosen recipient gets a sequence of unexplained mailings. Inside: objects that tell a story, from documents and newspaper clippings through medium-sized statuary and significant physical props. There’s a little of a sense of the magic trick about all this, too — they even describe the stages of their presentation in terms of “The Pledge”, “The Turn”, and “The Prestige”.

Having occasionally made much less ambitious, much less polished physical props to go with my games, I’m both jealous and a bit in awe of the talent going into their work. (I’ve seen a few props that they sent to a friend, but I’ve not signed up or tried a full experience myself.)

The Mysterious Package Company are now kickstarting a larger-than-usual experience called The Century Beast, a Lovecraft-meets-Vikings story about which the pitch…

Anyone who has ever visited a historic home or living history village has probably seen a fireplace fitted out with a cooking crane, perhaps with pots hanging from hooks or a trammel, but long before there were cooking cranes there was the humble lug-pole.

The lug-pole was a freshly-cut pole of green wood, sometimes called a back-bar, suspended between two ledges high up in the chimney from which hung chains, pots, kettles, and other utensils needed for meal preparation. 

A lug is a handle or projection used as a hold or support.  The chimney-side was called a lug prior to the 18^th century, thus the pole that was suspended from side to side high in the chimney was a lug-pole. 

The English sometimes called them a gallow-balke, and the hooks that hung from the pole a gallow-crooke.  These terms are also found on early estate inventories in New England. 

I’ve been making folding camp furniture.  The stools are sometime called “pea-pickers”.  They were somewhat difficult to figure out without a plan but some photos of others and experience making other furniture helped.

They’re not as easy to make as I thought they would be.  The holes must be very precise and dowels tight-fitting.  If everything isn’t square and precisely cut, the stool just doesn’t work.

This is their beauty.  They fold flat and have an integrated handle.  They can be made just about any size and out of any straight lumber.  My first one is made from scraps from around the workshop.  These later ones are from premium pine.

Seventeen pieces, twelve holes.  Stick ’em together.  Sit.  Mine are sturdy enough to use as a step stool, with some caution due to the narrow width.

A table of similar construction.  The top is about 22 x 46″.  I made…