Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
In 2007 we still had the writing bug, and decided to write another book about using natural finishes, namely, those based on clay and lime. We really wanted to make this book both a practical guide and a celebration of how these finishes are used around the world. For this we knew that as well as involving the many fine craftspeople in the UK, we also wanted to travel to North America (Adam’s homeland) and North Africa to learn and experience their arts of earthen and lime plastering. To assist us with this travel we were awarded a scholarship from the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.
This book was an amazing vehicle that took our knowledge from being practice based to really understanding the science behind how these finishes work. We wanted to go deeper with this book and tell our audience not just how to do something, but why it is done this way. The book – Using Natural Finishes – Lime and clay based plasters, renders and paints. A step-by-step guide was published in 2008, with the delightful Green Books with whom we have always enjoyed working with. We also worked again with Christian Topf of CTD on the design and illustration and as before, he helped us to produce a book that was visually stunning.
Using natural finishes is now available on KINDLE.
In 2004 we gave birth to the idea to write a book to pass on our experiences of how to build with cob. This was in response to the huge amount of enquiries that we were receiving every day through email and over the phone from people. Our book – Building with Cob – a step-by–step guide – was published in 2006 with Green Books from Totnes. It sets out how to build a whole house out of cob in a step-bystep fashion, as well as outlined some of the philosophy behind natural building. It was a reflection of our passion for building in this way, and we really wanted to share this with as many people as we could. The book was beautifully designed and illustrated by Christian Topf of CTD in Falmouth. He did an amazing job of capturing the essence of our message and information.
After the book was launched it was great to get back into the field and start to take on bigger projects – both restoration and new build. We enlisted the help of our first apprentice, Richard, and it was a huge boost to grow our team from just the two of us to three people.
Building with Cob is now available on Kindle