• Hewn & Hammered forums

    Our redesign is still a few months away, but we’re slowly introducing new features which we hope will make the site more useful and interesting to you. Chief among those changes is a new forum where you can ask questions and hopefully get advice  on a variety of old-house and design issues.

    Up at the top of this window, on the left hand side, you’ll see a small text link to the forum. Go ahead and click there and post a sample question, show off a recent project, for example, or plans for your dream house, or ask our other readers for advice or feedback. Right now the forums do not require any kind of registration, but if we’re overrun with spam we might require you to register.

  • Greene & Greene properties: a map

    So, I’ve created a map – using social-mapping tool Platial – of all the existing Greene & Greene properties I’ve been able to find record of. I’ll also be adding a new layer of no-longer-standing Greene & Greene projects, but that’s a few weeks off.Take a look, and let me know if you like this style of map and if the tool is easy to use; if so, I’ll revive our Craftsman Home Registry (above) using this, so you can all add your own homes.

  • for sale: real estate update, May 2007

    A few homes that struck me as I was browsing new (to me) search engine Oodle, which lets you look at classifieds at almost every major newspaper in the US (and plenty of not-so-major papers):

  • Rest & Restoration: Volunteer Vacations at Historic Sites in Need of Some TLC

    Jamie Donahoe at the Heritage Conservation Network sends us the following note on their hands-on building conservation workshops. A number of photographs from recent workshops are available in a special Flickr set. Thanks, Jamie!

    If you had driven by the Francis Mill in Waynesville, North Carolina in July 2003, you might have stopped to take a photo of the picturesque but dilapidated structure nestled in Francis Cove. If you were to pass by the mill this summer, you would see a structure that’s neat and square, strong and weathertight. The difference: volunteers who joined a series of summertime hands-on building conservation workshops organized by Heritage Conservation Network in partnership with the Francis Mill Preservation Society.

    HCN, a Boulder, Colorado-based non-profit dedicated to the conservation of the world’s architectural heritage, specializes in recruiting volunteers to assist with hands-on preservation projects in association with local preservation partners. Volunteers spend a week or more at the site, working under the guidance of a technical expert.

    Back in 2003, with the mill in danger of imminent collapse, Tanna Timbes, great granddaughter of the man who built it and founder of the FMPS, contacted HCN and asked for assistance in saving it. Over the course of three workshops at Francis Mill, a total of 48 volunteers contributed more than 3,700 hours of labor, and that made all the difference.

    HCN volunteers are not necessarily experienced preservationists, with only half having experience in the field. Instruction and supervision are provided by the technical expert leading the hands-on work, and participants – of all ages – quickly find themselves replastering walls,
    documenting decorative paintings, shaping adobe bricks, chiseling mortises and tenons, or chipping out old cement mortar to replace it with lime mortar. The focus is on the use of traditional techniques and materials – the prescription for keeping historic buildings sound for many generations to use and appreciate.

    HCN has organized workshops at more than a dozen historic sites in the past four years. In Oplotnica, Slovenia, last year, volunteers worked painstakingly to discover the original decorative paint scheme of a 17th century chapel. The workshop, led by one of Slovenia’s foremost conservators, brought nationwide attention not only to the project but also to the need to safeguard Slovenia’s cultural heritage.

    HCN will return to Slovenia in 2008, when volunteers will help restore the oldest known vintner’s cottage in the Šmarško-Virštanj wine district; it dates to the 16th century and is in poor condition, much like the Francis Mill was four years ago.

    Volunteer opportunities this year include work at a Queen Anne style parsonage in Jonesboro, Illinois; the Old West town of Virginia City, Montana; and colonial and traditional buildings in Ghana. All still have space available and can also accommodate groups looking for a meaningful way to volunteer. Information about these and other opportunities to help build a future for the past can be found on HCN’s website or by calling HCN at +1 303 444 0128.

  • Tokyo’s Nihon Mingeikan & Mingei’s relationship to Arts & Crafts

    Japan’s Daily Yomiuri includes an English-language edition, and a recent issue includes a short article by Robert Reed on Tokyo’s Nihon Mingeikan, a small museum celebrating Mingei crafts and the life and work of Soetsu Yanagi, the founder of the Mingei movement. Mingei is sometimes associated with the Arts & Crafts movement by art historians who note both its chronological proximity to European A&C and its similar philosophical underpinnings (the recent International Arts & Crafts show, which originated at the Victoria & Albert and was at San Francisco’s De Young Museum in the middle of 2006, included a model room based on Mingei crafts and made a strong case for that movement’s inclusion as part of the ‘International Arts & Crafts’ milieu).

    From the museum’s website:

    Located
    in Tokyo, the Mingeikan Museum is housed in a beautiful traditional
    Japanese building completed in 1936. Founded in the same year, the
    Mingeikan has over 17,000 items in its collection made by anonymous crafts people mainly from Japan, but also from China, Korea, England, Africa, and elsewhere.

    Yanagi Soetsu
    (1889-1961), the first director and founder of the Museum, coined the
    term Mingei (folk art) in 1926 to refer to common crafts that had been
    brushed aside by the industrial revolution. Yanagi and his lifelong companions,
    the potters Bernard Leach, Hamada Shoji, and Kawai Kanjiro, sought to
    counteract the desire for cheap mass-produced products by pointing to
    the works of ordinary crafts people that spoke to the spiritual and
    practical needs of life. The Mingei Movement is responsible for keeping alive many traditions.

  • Architectural Salvage V: Turning Trash Into Treasure

    Warehouse222

    From Kaleena Cote at Yankee magazine comes this article on everyone's favorite weekend pastime, bargain-hunting at architectural salvage yards:

    Home salvage yards are like garage sales. Once you find that hidden treasure, the whole trip becomes worthwhile. For more than two decades, homeowners have searched for treasure at Vermont Salvage, an architectural Warehouse For Lease that has stores in White River Junction, Vermont, and Manchester, New Hampshire. Doors, windows, appliances – items that have outlived the houses and buildings they used to grace – fill each warehouse, much of it tagged with bargain prices.

    Bargains are what I’m after on a damp and dreary February afternoon as I drive up to the half-brick, half-concrete Vermont
    Salvage store in Manchester. Old toilets, tubs, and trash lie out in the yard, as well as a few abandoned vehicles and an old rusting trailer, while a few red spray-painted squiggles splatter the sides of the building. The place looks as if it needs to be salvaged itself.

    But inside, it’s easy to see why people enjoy searching through the rows of different colored doors, walking past the pastel pink and yellow toilets, and toying with the little trinkets ranging from outlet faces to small brass hooks for hanging clothes. The place has character, and the employees there are eager to please. They're not the in-your-face “buy this now” types of salesmen; they let the customers browse freely. At the same time, they're willing to help and offer suggestions. Just ask.

    Read the full article and see pictures at Yankee magazine’s site. They’ve also compiled a good list of New England salvage firms and shops, which follows the article.