Author:bill
While I’m catching up on Germany and the Slovakia blogs, I thought I’d post these photos of ovens built during workshops in Ireland by our German friend, Frank Andresen. A clay builder for many years, I wrote a short piece about him in our accounts of Denmark, where he came to visit us. Anyhow, the ovens he is currently building are kind of fun. For an easy and quick oven base, he is using truck tires filled with whatever is […]
My account of our Europe trip got temporarily shanghaied due to our recent trip to New Mexico. We were there for the annual Santa Clara Pueblo Feast Day where our 18 year old son Benito was part of the dances and ceremonies. For us it meant cleaning and preparing of food for the all day event. Following Feast Day we spent almost two weeks doing the finish plaster on Athena’s mother’s new adobe house along with Benito, his girlfriend Ariela, […]
Our workshop in France had an additional workshop within our workshop. Two Moroccan/French masons were there to teach “tadelakt,†a method of burnishing or polishing lime plaster and then sealing it with black olive oil soap. We had brief exposure to it some years ago from a young guy who had studied it in Morocco. Since then, we’ve collected numerous accounts of how it is done and as one would expect, those accounts differed enough to make our French opportunity […]
While in France we had a few days before and after the workshop and I thought I would share some images with you from places that we visited. France seemed to have a certain magic for making light, mood and place come together for an irresistible photograph. However, none of that mattered unless there was an opportunity to stop the car easily and to make a photograph possible. One thing was for certain, none of the following images were taken […]
For the sake of ease and recent memory, I’m going to leave our travels through Germany and Slovakia for later, instead I’d like to talk about France. It was our last workshop and therefore it is still very fresh in our minds. The workshop in France took place at the straw bale home of Coralie and Andre’ de Bouter, in the village of Champmillon, France. The nearest city of any size is Angouleme, the surrounding area is considered to be […]