Cob: "Ianto says..."

[Mark Piepkorn]

At 10:48 PM 1/30/2003, Amanda Peck wrote:
>... IANTO SAYS ...


         I laugh every time she does that.

         Don't get me wrong -- I like Ianto, even when he sometimes gets 
overbearing and paternal... like an overbearing, paternal elf-man. He's a 
funny guy, and his heart's in the right place, and he's married to a really 
wonderful person, Linda. The contribution they've made together to natural 
building is incalculable; though if it hadn't been them, I think it would 
have been someone else. Michael Smith is no slouch, either. I've never had 
the pleasure of meeting Becky Bee, but I've heard good things. I do know 
Kiko Denzer.

         But it's still really funny when Amanda does that "Ianto says" thing.

         Most excellent of all about Ianto is the outspoken hardline 
deconsumerism jag he's been on for a good while now.

*

         When The Hand-Sculpted House came out a few months ago, Chelsea 
Green sent me a review copy. From the subsequent review:

         "The first exhilarating hundred-plus pages of the book gush up 
with the sort of ardor that inspires singing, dancing, and ecstatic visions 
(and thence, proselytizing). There's a lot of wonderful stuff in here, 
steeped in the spirit of a gentle, often giddy, anarchy -- the same sort of 
wholesome energy and joy shared by initiates of strawbale, timber framing, 
straw-clay, earthbags, and all. It's not just a cob thing: it's a natural 
building thing. And, like nature, this kind of passion is all over the map: 
sometimes inspiring and delightful, sometimes downright breathtaking... and 
sometimes perplexing and capricious.
         "The factual and subjective come together in Part 1. Tricky, 
perhaps, but this is the part harboring the most and best reasons to dive 
in. It's easy, and really fun, to allow yourself to get swept up, to follow 
the sizzle. Go for it! Then re-read it later, with your most cheerfully 
cynical and intelligently skeptical thinking cap on... which, as far as 
natural building books go, is a good idea as a rule."


         What I didn't write about were things like where the book 
instructs to not destroy something nice, like a stream, by building next to 
it -- but then two pages later recommends building tight up against a tree 
or... running water.

         I didn't mention how it proves the cold-weather appropriateness of 
cob by citing that Cottage Grove, Oregon, has winter weather with 
"temperatures that dropped several times to 0F, and snowfalls up to 
eighteen inches" (including an impressive-looking chart that's completely 
out of context, rendering it as good as worthless) -- but then fifty pages 
later, another anecdote relates that the outside January temperature on one 
chilly day was a positively balmy 64F -- and a couple pages after that, 
it's revealed that "frozen ground is almost unknown here."

         I didn't ruminate on the Heart House being heated with just one 
cord of wood over the winter, despite not being all that impressed with the 
preceding composite description of their winter wonderland -- or fact that 
the cord of wood (which is a solid pile of cut logs measuring, in feet, 
4x4x8) was actually heating only 120 "round" feet (which is the same 
footprint as a 10'x12' shed).

         I didn't delve into the twice-made comparison that the Heart House 
was a $500 project, versus the suggested near-impossibility of building a 
wood-frame house for less than $30,000 -- though I suspect I could build a 
120-round-foot stick-frame house without running water or toilet facilities 
for something quite less than $30,000.

         I didn't point out that the Heart House doesn't have running water 
or toilet facilities.

         I went nowhere near the notion that the sky is 360 moons around.

         I didn't comment on the fact that the Wallasey Solar School relies 
on well-insulated mass, and not just mass.


         These things and more were the sorts of things behind my statement 
to "re-read it later, with your most cheerfully cynical and intelligently 
skeptical thinking cap on... which, as far as natural building books go, is 
a good idea as a rule." They were things I consider significant oversights, 
misleads, even flaws... but I just couldn't bring myself to point them out 
to potential cob neophytes -- because I felt there was a greater good at 
work because of the many, many other important ideas involved. I'm still 
not sure if I did a disservice to the readers of that review or not.

         I do wish there'd been a bit more cohesion, and frankly expected 
the book to be a bit more "grounded." I think Becky Bee's is an excellent 
mixture of straight-ahead sensibility and moving inspiration. And her hot 
tub book is a hoot.

*

         Having said these things now, I do feel better. Thing is, I still 
strongly believe that anybody serious about cob really must read The 
Hand-Sculpted House. And Becky Bee's. And Michael Smith's earlier one, 
because there's things in that older volume that aren't in this one. And 
the unusual Natural Builder series by Steve Berlant ( 
http://www.thenaturalbuilder.com ). And from there, move on to the more 
arcane literature...