sketch/proposal for the Expedition Cabinet I have nothing against Fine Furniture, except that I typically favor the opposite. Give me a scavenged roadside pie safe over a Biedermeier sideboard any day. It’s not that I’m into ‘outsider art’ per se, or even collecting antiques, or that I find comfort in reverse snobbery. It’s just that […]
Tag Archives: vernacular
Introducing Pappy
Pappy likes to repair things, preferably without spending money, using things diligently saved and gleaned, collected in coffee cans and baby food jars. Pappy is a uniquely American archetype, a perennially frugal character forged by hardship, perseverance and optimism. We all hopefully still have a little bit of Pappy in us. ????? ????? Between projects […]
Watersheds and Bioregions
The Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River, map 6/15, Army Corps of Engineers, 1944, Harold Fisk, chief cartographer Documenting the seasonal cycles over the past few months (see my Week in Bloom postings) has me thinking a lot about bioregions and watersheds as the most appropriate scale for human interaction with the natural world […]
Pacific Coast Practical
Gems like this fence abound along this stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Maybe it was made by a frugal rancher short on time but long on material, making a higher fence from salvaged short boards to keep the deer out. Or maybe it’s a remnant of the sixties, a hippy-chic statement of ‘togetherness’ favoring […]
Market Stool
Traditional menusiers of West Africa will travel great distances on foot to find naturally bent crooks from trees or rootstock grubbed from the marigot. From these, they fashion two things primarily, similar in form but close to opposite in function. Hoes are the main products, usually with a hand-forged iron blade, but occasionally with a […]
River Delta Genius
Though in decline in practice across the world, the patterns of seasonal subsistance still capture the imagination, evidenced in this image from the Sacramento River Delta, culled from the archives of the Department of Fish and Game. I’m interested in reviving this scale of self-sufficiency. * _uacct = “UA-4252294-1”; urchinTracker();
Outbuildings of West Sonoma
My favorite buildings around here tend to be ruins, left to dissolve back into the land from which they sprung, not unlike orchard tree prunings or rusted jalopies in a culvert. There appears to be a consensus among local commercial farmers to not repair or maintain buildings once their function has been rendered obsolete by […]