This great little video has been making the rounds recently. It’s a mini feature about Jeremy Atkinson and apprentice JoJo Wood. Atkinson is the only living clog maker still practicing his craft in England, and he’s passing on his knowledge to apprentice JoJo Wood. (JoJo is a talented wood carver in her own right.)
As the temperature rises, so do our activity levels. Summertime can be hysterically busy as we juggle all of the projects and work commitments that we’ve taken on. This year is no exception. We’re at the brink of several exciting things here… but I digress. I know I’m being vague, but I’ll have more to say about all of that soon.
During our downtime at home, the newly released The Art of Natural Building has been inspiring lots of conversation. This new book release is a much improved second edition to the original published way back in 2001. The 2015 edition is a major and well-organized overhaul, containing a diverse spread of essays and articles about natural building materials and techniques, building history, best practices, and personal stories.
Traditional Japanese interior with natural plaster finish
Today, I present you with two websites that shed a bright light on the magic of traditional building and natural plasters of Japan. Japan has a long history of the use of natural clay and lime plasters in construction. Thankfully, there still exists a wealth of knowledge of these traditional finishes, and skilled craftspeople are keeping the practices and recipes alive.
Kyle Holzhueter is an American-born builder, consultant, researcher and educator specializing in natural building techniques, including straw bale building and clay and lime plasters. He has taken up full-time residence in Japan, where he’s been formally trained in traditional plastering. His websites are a treasure trove with some incredible building documentation, including the recipes, mixing, and application of some of the most interesting and refined natural plasters I have ever seen.
Embodied energy is a term that often comes up when discussing the benefits of building with natural materials over synthetic, manufactured, or more conventional building components. It’s an important concept — embodied energy is “the sum of all the energy required to produce any goods or services, considered as if that energy was incorporated or ’embodied’ in the product itself.”
Attempting to actually calculate or understand the full implications of embodied energy is a mighty challenge, however, and honestly a bit befuddling, since it’s going to be completely different depending on your location. However, this table from The Natural Building Companion book is an excellent reference — not the end-all be-all of data necessarily, but an excellent case example comparing the differences in embodied energy between natural materials like straw, sand, and timber to concrete, paint, fiberglass insulation, and others.
We’ve got some giveaways coming up… can you guess what?
I’m very pleased to announce that The Year of Mud will be having a few very sweet giveaways in the near future. If you’re a fan of Japanese woodworking and history, we’ll be giving away a couple of items that will be right up your alley. No details yet, just a little teaser for you… including this photo hint above.
Keep on coming back, and sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop of things. Yea!
Bill Coperthwaite’s yurt home in Maine
“The main thrust of my work is not simple living, not yurt design, not social change, although each of these is important and receives large blocks of my time. But they are not central. My central concern is encouragement – encouraging people to seek, experiment, to plan, to create, and to dream. If enough people do this we will find a better way.”
This is a quote from Bill Coperthwaite, whose book A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity I have just recently finished reading. The book is, for lack of a more creative word, an interesting one, sprinkled full of a life’s worth of knowledge and insights, yet strangely lacking in what I thought would be the obvious subject — living a handmade lifestyle. The book is both idiosyncratic and universal, simple yet dense, and encouraging yet only pointing in a general direction.
As I enter a new phase in life with the goal of obtaining raw land to create my own slice of homesteading delight, my appetite for books and stories about permaculture, especially of a more personal account is ever greater. This is a fortunate time, as the number of books over the past decade have only been increasing as people have had more time to take permaculture principles to the field, garden, and home with new results to share. Landowners and prospective owners should consider themselves lucky to not have to go in quite as blind as before with books like Paradise Lot, by Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates.
Actually, in this case a landowner could mean anyone with even a tiny backyard to their name, as this dynamic duo have created an unbelievable patch of perennial goodness on a mere 1/10th of an acre. Their experiment and book are a testament to the idea that even supremely ravaged land in suburban deserts can be transformed into thriving ecosystems, providing an abundance of soil, food, habitat, and ultimately reward.
The next time I feel desperate about the state of affairs in the world, I should turn to this book for a quick and thorough pick-me-up. Which is ironic, I guess, because the real theme of the book (as you might guess from its title) is death. Death and dying are usually not a welcome topic of conversation.
However, Gene Everlasting is an evocative opportunity to step into the well-worn shoes of our favorite contrary farmer/writer Gene Logsdon and consider what it’s like to have lived 80 years on this crazy green earth, possibly waiting for death around the corner, questioning immortality, but discovering what it means to savor life in all of its colorful moments, big or small, happy or sad.
This post (I hope) is not encouraging materialism, although it may seem mighty close. I just got my free copy of the newest (to me) Dictum tools catalog. Dictum (formerly Dick Fine Tools) is based in Germany, where they offer the topmost of the top of the line woodworking (and gardening, leather working) tools in the world. That sounds like a bold claim, but I think it’s true. It’s full of the best Japanese, German, & American wares. Their catalog is very finely made to boot, with beautiful photos, and a wealth of information about each category of tools.
Why am I writing about this… well, the catalog is free, and I encourage anyone curious to go ahead and get a copy (by mail, or by PDF). Sometimes, it’s helpful to know what quality means and looks like. I have no doubt the stuff in here is top notch, most of it exceedingly so that it easily surpasses my budget. Maybe this is a stretch, but I think it’s educational, too. The range of items they offer is big, and some things I have frankly never seen anywhere else. There are profiles interspersed of individual toolmakers, so you get a sense of who is making the knives, saws, where they live, etc. I especially like that.
I am a firm believer that you shouldn’t waste your time with inferior tools (because time and energy are ultimately our greatest asset), and the refined craft of tool making is unfortunately going by the wayside. This is a way to keep those ideas alive.
Wille Sundqvist working away
Here’s just a quick update on the Taunton Press reprint of Wille Sundqvist’s Swedish Carving Techniques — it’s now for sale through their website. Ragweed Forge also has copies for sale for slightly less than MSRP — check it here.
As a side note, I love the above picture of Wille Sundqvist at work — the man is now in his upper 80s, but it doesn’t look like he’s stopping anytime soon.
Finally, a great quote from Bill Coperthwaite, another great individual worth mentioning at a later date: “I want to live in a world where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things.”
About The Year of Mud
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
