The Hand-Sculpted House : A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage

"The Hand-Sculpted House inspired me to learn and do more and transformed how I saw homes and building in general."-Mother Earth News"If you follow it word for word you will build yourself a house no matter who you are."-Builder Paul Dillon, quoted in The Irish TimesAre you ready for the Cob Cottage?This is a building method so old and so simple that it has been all but forgotten in the rush to synthetics.A cob cottage, however, might be the ultimate expression of ecological design, a structure so attuned to its surroundings that its creators refer to it as “an ecstatic house.”The authors build a house the way others create a natural garden.They use the oldest, most available materials imaginable-earth, clay, sand, straw, and water-and blend them to redefine the future (and past) of building.Cob (the word comes from an Old English root, meaning “lump”) is a mixture of non-toxic, recyclable, and often free materials. Building with cob requires no forms, no cement, and no machinery of an