The Oven - part one

As my house is made of mud and I sometimes imagine that bits of it are going to collapse I thought it was a good idea to find out more about cob, how it's made and how to use it if indeed my house did start to fall down. Having a home made of clay, straw, sand and earth felt a lot safer after my Autumn trip here to spend a day learning how to make a pizza oven. Making a pizza oven was great - but seeing their cob extension was better - I've been dreaming of building an extra room on the side of our house ever since.
However - the general opinion around here seems to be that I need to start with something that requires less structural integrity - so today we started on the oven instead. We've begun by making the base - scrapping together all the bricks and rubble that we could find in the garden, using some leftover sand and lime and praying that we haven't broken any golden rules of bricklaying ( I consulted books - but none of them told you how to build a circle!) . It looks alright - it's sort of straight and the top is level. The next step is to backfill it with rubble and find some suckers who want to come and tread mud in return for the promise of a pizza - one day soon.

And btw - the base is straighter than it appears in the picture - I hope.
KS

Völuskrín

I was thinking about bones and remembered that I wanted to show you this toy that a friend bought us from Iceland. It's a reworking of a traditional Icelandic game by designer Lóa Auðunsdóttir and is made up of a set of tactile bone shapes that each represent a different animal on a farm. There is an official website here. - but I think is better explained here.
KS

Julia Lohmann Lecture 19 February 2009

MA Design presents

Artist/Designer Julia Lohmann
on Thursday 19 February 2009 at 2pm
in Seminar Room DS2 in Duke Street, Norwich

Julia Lohmann is a multidisciplinary designer. She is interested in unusual and undervalued natural and man-made materials. Lohmann probes our attitudes towards the world that sustains us. Her work is exhibited worldwide and part of major private and public collections, e.g. the MoMA, New York. She teaches at the Royal College of Art in London and is part of the MA Design team at NUCA.

Julia Lohmann will be speaking about her work, followed by a Q&A session. For more information see www.julialohmann.co.uk