Spirit of the Time

I am REALLY excited.  A little stove has been born.  Here are notes about this small hybrid masonry heater.

Wow, a lot has happened since the last time I wrote!

The most important thing that I want to share right now is this sinking realization of the importance of our work.  Of course, by work I mean to say everything that we do: our work, our play, our sleep, our dreams….

Eva and I have been spending a lot of time on communications lately…  this means lots of time on the computer: mulling through photos, organizing our website, writing emails, creating content.  Isn’t it funny that two people who are so interested in craft – in the ways that we as humans can listen closely to the plants, minerals, crystals, fibers and binders in our environment and collaborate with them to feed us, shelter us, entertain us, inspire us… Isn’t it funny that we would be spending as much time as we are on the computer.

The picture above is of a detail of a 4 horse evener bar that I found on the ground at Monte Callado.  A little description of what a “4 horse evener bar” and of Monte Callado are necessary.  When you want to do work with horses like has been done for many hundreds of years all over the world… you use eveners so that the different forces that each horse you have hitched balances mechanically and translates into a single force that drives your plow, or buggie or whatever else you’d be pulling behind the horses.

Q: What is craft?
A: Craft can mean many different things to many different people. I take it to mean something like: the making of objects that are both useful and beautiful through the dedicated transformation of materials offered to us by the natural environment.

Q: What is the Craft Program?
A: The “Craft Program” is simply a label I use to communicate a dream I have of working with other people to develop cottage industries, educational workshops, and hopefully someday a school (or schools!) dedicated to promoting craft as meaningful and viable way of life.

The Craft Program embraces the model of cottage industries as an ideal scale and form of production for individuals, families, communities and cooperatives in this rapidly changing and evolving world. The workshops of these cottage industries are either in the place where one lives or a short ways away, addressing the rising cost of transportation. The useful and beautiful objects made in these workshops can be very sophisticated in their design, manufacture and functionality but use as their primary materials those which are common and abundant locally. For example, the making of a violin involves much skill and precision but can be made with all locally available woods or the manufacture of useful clothing that is very complex in its durability and design but uses wool or other locally grown fibers as their primary material.

The emphasis on using locally available materials responds to rekindled interest in businesses that are sensitive of their environmental impact and long-term viability (even thinking seven generations ahead!). In the main stream, these principles are known as “green” or “sustainable” businesses.

photo of veronika's ceramics class by Eva

Q: What need does the craft program fulfill?
A: The need of an emerging group of people interested in alternatives to the conventional economy to have productive, meaningful, and economically rewarding work. Natural building is adequately meeting the need of such people for shelter. Organic gardening is adequately meeting the need for nourishment (with the notable exception of many basic staples, notably grain). The craft program seeks to fulfill the need for such people to train themselves in making the useful objects of daily life out of locally available materials. This need is two-fold: it includes the need and delight of making useful objects for one’s self as well as the need to engage in an activity where one is making useful things for others and thereby able to sell or trade for other things that are necessary for life. In other words, the craft program aims to address the big question of how to have a fun, successful, and sustainable livelihood that supports a rural homestead and other creative ways of living.

Q: What step in its evolution is the Craft Program in?
A: Well, there are craft programs all around the world that take many different shapes and forms so this idea is nothing new nor unique.

I was, for example, a student of ceramics and then metalsmithing at an adult education school in southern Argentina (EMETA) which is a great inspiration to me. Most courses were 6-7 months long, met once a week and were focused on teaching settlers of the area skills that would allow them to use local materials to create useful things and often times encourage the creation of businesses around these skills. Classes taught included ceramics, basket-weaving, metalsmithing, carpentry, food processing and preservation, cheese making, baking for a bakery, and many others.

The most interesting example I have found of a craft school already functioning in the US right now is the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina (see website or write address for more information). I believe that there should be many more of these schools around the United States, and that they would be important centers for hopeful change during a time of great revolution in modern American culture and society.

Since I live in Oregon, I am interested in seeing one of these craft programs evolve on the Pacific West Coast. There are certainly many craftspeople who have turned their own work spaces into schools for their specific crafts (link to examples). This is a great asset. And there are “Art and Craft Schools” on the West Coast already established in places like Oakland, Mendocino and Portland although I believe that their emphasis is quite different – having a very modernist interpretation of what art and craft is.

So this particular instance of a craft program is looking for collaborators…. People who have already thought of this idea; people interested in collaborating; people with land, tools, or expertise that are willing to share them; teachers; students and many more.

So the first step in evolving these ideas into the reality of a craft school is to begin with an “itinerant” or travelling craft school. This essentially means that the school coordinates classes and apprenticeships not in one location but in the workshops of already established craftspeoples who are making a living doing what they do best. In this way, the school can develop with time and from the ground up – developing experience, contacts, an excellent teaching team, trust and familiarity in the community – all things essential for the establishment of a truly vibrant craft school.
So if you identify with these motives, already have similar ideas under way, or are interested in collaborating or participating – please contact us.

“A Vision!” or “Towards a Pattern Language for a Craft School”
The craft school looks like a small village. It has a “village center” with indoor and outdoor communal gathering spaces, a library, an office, a showroom/store and a kitchen and dining area. The village center is noticeably punctuated by decorative and medicinal plants. Food producing gardens extend from the kitchen and dining facility and are a noticeable part of the overall ecology. While there is a centrally located tool depot and “shop” for tools used in the general maintenance and landscaping of the school/village… the main productive spaces or workshops are located in a second-tier or ring around the village center.

Workshops are organized around the crafts that they produce, ie. a ceramics workshop is designed around the activities for making ceramics, including covered clay and firewood storage, an indoor production space with lots of shelving, counters, a sink, a solar-lit throwing station, and kilns adjacent. In the spirit of cottage industries, the workshop looks and feels very much like a house, replete with flower beds outside and a tea-station inside. In fact, it is likely that there is loft within the workshop where an artisan or apprentice dedicating herself to that craft lays to rest his weary head.

This alludes to an important aspect of the functioning of the school. While the business of the school mainly happens through workshops during the summer months and during other major holidays throughout the year when participants can come for the 4 to 14-day workshops necessary for really engaging with a craft, the real life of the school is sustained by the artisans and apprentices who work in and maintain the workshops year-round, thereby instilling these spaces with that special magic associated with creation. Their work is displayed and sold in the central store which is visited by participants and visitors alike. This business is supplemented by mail ordered purchases and an annual or bi-annual craft sale.

In small clusters, on the periphery of the village, are cottages that provide personal and family space for the staff of the school.

So much of life at Cob Cottage is about process so its rare that I can share photos of finished, or at least somewhat finished projects.  Here’s a follow-up on the last post showing the sculpture that I did on the mantle of the big dining room fireplace and some photos of the finished rumford in the Ridge House.

My first ever photo with Ianto!  Here we are celebrating the inaugural curing fire.  This rumford was built mostly during the two-day “Pyromania” course that we put on at Cob Cottage Company.  I went back for another full’s day work to bring the whole shape to completion and will go back for a half day to do final shaping on the main volume.  The project has served as a great inspiration to me and left with me with many lessons.  Amongst them: 1) Believe when you’re laying your first brick, as insignificant as it may seem, that great things can happen. 2) Never underestimate the capacity of a group of people, all headed in the same direction, to create beautiful things all-of-a-sudden.  3) Engage in processes actively and be present as they evolve.  4) Materials and shapes speak to you.  Listen.  5)  There is a moment in a natural building/cob project where the object you are are making takes on a life of its own and then you are much more at its service than it is at yours’.

Another in a series of Rumfords that I have built at Cob Cottage.

After a year and a half of living and working at the Cob Cottage Company – initially as gardener and then mostly heading up maintenance and acting as lead builder, I have moved into journeyman phase.  Here are some photos of my time there – hopefully they will reflect the magic of the place!  I am so grateful to Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley for all that I learned during my time with them.

I hadn’t been back to Indonesia, where I grew up, for 9 years.  My mom’s 60th birthday was a big enough reason to finally make the big trip to re-visit the amazingly exotic and-yet-so-familiar environs of Bali, Java and Singapore.  Besides my mom’s birthday in Singapore, the hilight for me was returning to the island of Bali which has given me, almost daily, the inspiration to pursue combining art and function in a life dedicated to craft.

Besides revisiting places and friends in Bali and discovering the new ways it has evolved, my main activity was building my mom a wood-fired cook stove.  I researched traditional stoves in villages around where we live and then combined what I’ve learned about building fuel-efficient

stoves and sealing the smoke inside a chimney path to come up with a design.

I attribute much inspiration to the great information  and design provided by Richard Jussel through the MHA website.

Here are photos from the proces of building this clay cook stove…….

soil-sand ratios to find the best mortar mix

sifting volcanic sand

Rafi, my assistant, and I in the mixing pit

the base

Rafi on stone detail

creating the smoke pathway

we used fired brick for a more durable top surface and chimney…

… and lath (probably overkill) to hold the plaster and prevent expansion cracks

my mom gets in on the plaster action (plaster made with beach sand we collected)

steel fabrication team comes and we secure the stack

a wok we buy at the market makes the perfect rain hat

my mom and Ibu Kerni, our friend and guide to village life, next to finished stove

Rafi and I celebrating a finished project

a priestess’ assistant comes to help make the proper offerings for the first-fire ceremony

the first fire

fying peanuts

more photos when the rest of the building is finished!

I’m going to give on-line journalism another go.  I realized that when I created my professional site, Firespeaking, that some of the spontaneity of sharing experiences in life with friends and family was lost.  So here we go again….

I will continue to try to walk this fine balance between appreciating and using the darndest of tools that is this whole web of communications that now is not only the internet but all of the wireless webs it weaves with wireless connections and cellular phones… with the sacredness of the ground we walk on and the magic of the elemental.  It is all a part of our current reality for us to experience and make decisions that reflect our beliefs as well as personal and group processes.

So let’s kick off this new round of communication with a recent drawing I did.

The Lost Mountain Observatory is having a fall retreat this time around the sun to celebrate friendship, opportunties to work together in the future, connection through music, good food and earthworks on the surrounding land.

Amigos,

Acaba de terminar de leer un libro fascinante sobre el asunto de estufas de albañilería de alto rendimiento y pensaba tratar de compartir algunas de las conclusiones y algunos planos. El libro se llama ¨El Libro de Estufas de Albañilería: Redescubriendo la Calefacción a Leña” por David Lyle (espero que el autor no se enoja por el uso de algunos de sus dibujos! Le agradecemos). Si alguien quiere aún mas información sobre el asunto, con gusto se lo podría mandar. (Por favor, si alguien tiene ganas de corregir mis errores ortográficos bienvenido sea. Recuerden que pueden clik-ear los dibujos para verlos mas grande )

El libro cuenta del desarrollo de la estufa desde sus principios en el “descubrimiento” del uso del fuego. Por supuesto, en muchas culturas este uso es considerado un regalo y hasta en algunos un conocimiento robado de los dioses. El hombre hizo sus posos para el fuego, puso piedras alrededor para mantener y emanar ese calor mejor, y lo empezó a envolver con piedras y barro para mejor contener y aprovecharlo. Descubrió fundir hierro con las mismas llamas para hacer artefactos para el fuego y mas o menos llegó a la mezcla de calefactores y cocinas que conocemos hoy en día – algunos que son enteramente de hierro y otros que son de piedra, ladrillo, barro, etc.

Quisiera primero resumir algunas conclusiones generales que hace el libro y luego compartir algunos diseños interesantes.

El mensaje mas importante del libro es que estufas de albañilería hacen un combustión mucho mas limpio y aprovechan hasta 2 o 3 tres veces mas la leña que las estufas de hierro que hoy en día solemos ver. Entre 1/2 y 2/3 del valor calórico de la leña está en gases encerrados y líquidos volátiles. En cuanto mas alto la temperatura de la combustión, mas se queman estos compuestos. Y esto nos muestra una debilidad principal de las estufas de fundición que es que irradian el calor tan rápido que la temperatura en la cámara de combustión nunca llega a subir a temperaturas que permiten una quema mas eficiente. Por supuesto que en ambientes visitados menos frecuentes, como podría ser un taller, donde uno quiere un calor rápido, no hay nada como la santa salamandra!

Las estufas de albañilería están diseñadas para hacer quemas puntuales, uno o dos veces el día, en lugar del régimen como con las de fundición donde uno esta alimentándolas constantemente. La idea es hacer una quema rápida en la cámara que llega a temperaturas bien altas y luego transmitir ese calor de a poco. La quema tendría que ser eficaz al punto que no se tendría que poder ver humo por la chimenea, después del principio, ya que la combustión llega a quemar casi toda la materia. Dice el libro que uno tendría que evitar la tendencia de hacer quemas largas y lentas porque es menos eficiente y ensucia los conductos. Este dato me sorprendió ya que las pocas estufas rusas que conocía en El Bolsón solían ser alimentado de a poco. Parecería que el asunto de tener puertas que se sellan bien es mas importante para lo que es la retención del calor para evitar que haya un flujo de aire dentro de la chimenea que lleva el calor por la chimenea. Por eso también casi todo los modelos tienen registros que se cierren casi por completo en la salida de la chimenea.

Otro dato que me resultaba muy interesante es que el material mas usado para le mezcla tanto en la antigüedad como ahora por albañiles de estas estufas es arcilla. Al usar arcillas que son parecidas a la con lo cual están hechos los ladrillos, uno logra una dilatación bastante parejo. Queda mucho para investigar sobre el asunto de los materiales aptos y ideales para construir estufas de alto rendimiento con menor costos pero por ahora será suficiente decir que uno no tendría que limitarse a solo los ladrillos refractarios y cemento refractario. Se ve que se esta usando bastante en los EEUU un cemento refractario aquí llamado “encofrable” que permite a uno hacer losas o piezas de mampostería a medida para usos puntuales. Podría ser interesante averiguar con una fabrica como la de la Avellaneda para ver si esto sería un material con lo cual uno podría contar para usos especiales.

Varios diseños:

El sistema “Ondol” de calefacción por debajo de los pies:

Este es un sistema bien antigua de hace mas de 2-3000 años en Korea y Japón. La cocina se encuentra debajo del nivel del estar y los gases de la combustión pasan por debajo del estar. Un posible dibujo del sostén del piso visto por arriba sería:
Parece que los romanos muchos siglos después también desarrollaron un sistema parecido. También hacían que el humo se divide por pequeñas chimeneas dentro de la pared usando ladrillos huecos para sus construcciones. Uno de los asuntos muy importante para tener en cuenta con este sistema es la posibilidad de que pasen gases tóxicos al ambiente por grietas en el piso. Esto se evitaba en el oriente con una capa de papel (tipo carnicero) embebido en engrudo entre el sostén y la terminación del piso. Los romanos solían tener pisos de suficientes capas y terminados con mosaicos de manera que no había filtración de gases.

En El Bolsón, donde están muchos de mis queridos amigos, está muy difundido la estufa llamada ¨Rusa¨ que se encuentra bien explicado en un folleto del INTA (de Argentina). Pero poco información existía sobre otros modelos (de países donde también unos cuantos se deben haber cagado de frío!).

Existe, por ejemplo, la estufa finlandesa. A diferencia de la rusa que aprovecha el calor del fuego haciendo pasar al humo por recorridos horizontales, la finlandesa tiene un sistema de conductos verticales. Aqui va un dibujo bien ilustrativo:

Este diseño tiene el aspecto interesante, entre otros, de tener una chimenea interna. Al tener un tiraje vertical sobre el fuego que además es envuelto por conductos que mantienen su calor, se debe lograr una velocidad de flujo y temperatura muy interesante a dentro. Sería interesante tener un ¨bipass¨ donde termina el primer trecho vertical para cuando uno empieza el fuego.

Para alguien que estaría interesado en construir un modelo como este, sigue un plano mas detallado. Note-se que tiene un horno y una cámara para mantener comidas caliente que son opcionales y no pierden el detalle de las puertitas de limpieza que se ven en el segundo y cuarto dibujo. Este es el modelo mas sencillo y es impresionante ver hasta que complejidad se ha logrado concretar modelos de este tipo con mas de 16 conductos que van y vienen por todos lados:

Los sigiuentes dibujos son ejemplos de estufas rusas que varian de la que enseña el INTA:

El dibujo siguiente tiene algunas variaciones del ultimo dibujo y también muestra una estufa/horno rusa tradicional donde el humo pasaba por dentro del horno. Me parece que como mencioné arriba, quemaban bien fuerte y cuando ya quedaban cenizas en la cámara principal, podían limpiar el piso del horno y hornear. Me parece interesante notar la puertita que tiene estas estufas que debe facilitar tanto la limpieza de la chimenea como permitir le puesta del famoso bollito de papel y/o el aún mas famoso soplete mágico para hacer andar el tiraje.

Y el siguiente muestra una estufa rusa parecida a la del INTA pero lo incluyo porque muestra la opción de orientar el horno en manera distincta y también tiene un lindo dibujo de como se podría orientar la estufa dentro de la casa para aprovechar el calor entre varias ambientes.

Una de las cosas que empecé a investigar antes de partir del Bolsón era como modificar estufas de fundición para aprovechar mejor el calor. La opción mas sencilla es hacerle una pequeña pared de piedra y barro alrededor de parte de la estufa para mejor retener el calor que genera la estufa. Otra opción seria envolver por completo una estufa aprovechando de la buena construcción de la cámara que tiene una estufa de fundición, como una salamandra por ejemplo, y agregándola masa térmica para su retención (y subiéndole un poco las temperaturas logradas dentro de la cámara). Un desafío técnico en este caso es el de las distintas tazas de dilatación que tienen los materiales que podrían generar grietas importantes. Agustín Porro ensayó esto en su albergue nuevo y habría que ver como le está yendo. Aún otra opción, como se ven en algunos libros chilenos, es crear un sistema de conductos con la cañería de manera que emanan mas del calor antes que escape por la chimenea (la meta siendo que los gases salgan a una temperatura mínima). Esto se puede lograr agregando vueltas (con un ¨bipass¨ para el arranque) o soldando mas superficies al caño principal.

El siguiente dibujo muestra una idea muy interesante que es envolver una estufa con mampostería pero dejar que haya un espacio de aire entre la estufa y la mampostería (significando que sean estructuralmente independientes). Noten los conductos de aire. La idea es crear una corriente de convección que calienta el aire y lo hace circular por el ambiente y a su vez cargar la masa de la mampostería.

En el dibujo, se ve un intercambiador de calor (se llama asi?) hecho de fundición atrás de la estufa pero esto se podría remplazar con vueltas adicionales como tiene la rusa. Este diseño es un híbrido interesante para investigar ya que combina un calentamiento rápido del ambiente con el almacenamiento del calor. Además uno podría aprovechar del noble salamandra que tiene por allí.

Queda para otro escrito entero el asunto interesante del sistema del ¨Rocket Stove¨, o estufa roquete (o cuete?) que ahora ví en distintas aplicaciones en la llamada Escuela de Construcción Natural en el pueblo de Coquille, privincía de Oregon.

Espero que haya servido este escrito para algo y espero poder mantener el dialogo mientras vallamos descubriendo nuevas (y no tan nuevas) cosas.

Two friends of mine, Matt and Ank, have been developing this idea of Amazon consciousness for a while now.  Two years ago they had the good fortune to be in the Amazon jungles of Brazil together and from what I gather, when they refer to Amazon consciousness they are referring to a state of being in which the stimuli around you is so powerful and overwhelming that your feeling of “I” lets itself go involuntarily into the voracious rythmic pulsation of insects, weaves itself into the infinite intertwined love-holds of plants, vines, roots, soil and the life below the visible… and I imagine that the lingering humidity that soaks the body-temperature air makes the “you” feel a part of “it”…. like you are actually swimming in that dream, in that reality….. in this world.