Amazing. "Two years later, the monks agreed to an even larger project, commissioning Mr. Jackson to handwrite and illustrate the whole Old and New Testaments at a cost of $4.5 million (underwritten by profits from the sale of printed versions of the handwritten Bible and by the generosity of donors ranging from a Boy Scout troop to the Target Corporation). The project would require that Mr. Jackson collaborate with a team of several calligraphers, to whom he would teach a script that he had developed just for this purpose. And a commission of monks would have to approve each of … Continue reading The Bible in Longhand

seems to be this series, Tales from the Green Valley, which is as yet UNAVAILABLE in U.S. formats.  Or maybe it is – I’m not really a media geek – yet.  I want to see this! How do you gauge gas mark 7 when you’re using a 17th century bread oven?                  Why did people 400 years ago save up their urine to help with the laundry?                    Why did farmers in Britain traditionally plough with oxen and not horses? These are just some of the questions five historians … Continue reading Much better than Colonial House…

The previous post reminded me of something that I recently read in A Primer on Sustainable Building, which I’m reading for work. There’s a famous story told by the late epistemologist Gregory Bateson about New Colleg in Oxford, England.  The Great Hall had been built in the early 1600s with oak beams forty feet long and two feet thick.  Three hundred fifty years later, when they developed dry rot, a committee was formed to find replacement trees.  They searched but couldn’t find any (to fit the job).  A young don joined the committee and said, "Why don’t we ask the … Continue reading Tudor Planning

All right, so I can’t suppress the architect tendency.  Check this out, from Treehugger.com: Tudor houses, built at the time of Henry VIII, are more energy efficient than homes of today. According to a new study by British Gas, tudor properties with their solid construction and stout oak beams, leaked 10 cubic metres of warm air an hour vs. 15.1 for suburban mock-Tudors built in 1960. The houses were constructed for the rich and were the work of skilled artisans. They used wattle and daub, an early form of plastering, which was inserted wet, but forms an almost airtight barrier … Continue reading Tudor Efficiency