Postcards from Europe: France

Bonjour! Here is the second installment of my Postcards from Europe series (read here for info about the project). The second European state I decided to tackle was France. I love France, I've visited twice; once to Paris and once to the south. I want to go back a thousand more times. The glorious food is enough on it's own but coupled with the weather, beautiful fauna and copious amounts of delicious (and cheap) wine it really has taken my heart in a big way. I'm hoping to take another trip there next summer, my boyfriend is currently learning to drive so the hope is us and a few friends will trek over there.

Of course another of my major interests in France is it's fascinating textile history; from silks to linens to printed cottons, it has a long and tangled history. I constantly find prints that I love and find that they originally hail from the French, for instance the fabric of this dress.* I knew it was French in style (it reminded me so much of Provencal lavender bags). However, it turns out it definitely is French and is a fabric designed by Charles Demery who designed for the French house Souleiado (read this article for more info on him). They sold (and sell) their fabrics wholesale so it seems very likely that Susan Small used their fabrics. In recent years Cath Kidston has ripped them off in a major way, I hadn't really realised (doh) until today how similar her prints are to Southern French cottons. 

*As you might of guessed this dress is the counterpart to the other Susan Small dress. 

I took inspiration from a couple of images but mainly the below, I loved the black scarf against the Fleur print dress and the yellow flowers (I used St John's Wort because they are my birthday flower and are currently out in abundance):

Source: 1

Behind me you can glimpse a tiny bit of our newly mosaiced cob oven (thanks ma!)

I've also begun a mural in the garden, so I'll put together a little post on it all soon.

My mum has also been working hard on her 14 countries, a few of you asked me to share hers too so here they are:

Romania (Penny MacBeth, 2016)

Spain (Penny MacBeth, 2016)

I'll be back very soon with another postcard from Europe, until then Au Revoir! 

Outfit Details

Provencal 1970s Susan Small dress - Ebay

Printed cotton shirt - Celia Birtwell for Uniqlo

Black shawl - Zara 

Straw hat - Topshop

X

Cob Oven Building

This is a slight diversion from my usual posts. Some of you may have seen on Instagram that I've spent the weekend building a cob oven! I've been fascinated by cob for a quite a while, I bought the book Shelter (all Lloyd Kahn's books are great!) as a teenager and it's been a method I've wanted to try ever since. It's a very ancient method of cooking, in Mexico it was called a Horno and used for cooking Adobe bread, made with honey. In Hungary it was called a Kemence and is shaped like the instrument of the same name.  I  love to cook and loved the idea of being able to do so outside (partly inspired by this amazing place). I really do love to spend time outside, even when it's raining! I think it's probably as a result of a childhood spent making mud pies (or choc chow as I called it) and dens. Anyway when I moved in to my new home I suddenly realised I could build a cob oven in my back yard! By some miracle like happening the same week that I had this thought I saw a poster for a cob oven building workshop at Camp Kernow in my local health shop. It was meant to be! My mum and I went on the one day course in May and learnt SO much. It was incredibly hard graft, we helped construct an oven that would cater for 40 children, but it was great fun.

Our yard conveniently already had a structure on which we could site the oven (this saved us a lot of work!) To begin with we levelled our plinth out with builders sand and layed out 18 firebricks (these are what keep the oven hot). We then chalked a circle in the centre (this marks the inside of the oven) and made sure that everything was level.

Next we worked out the height of the inside and exterior and marked it on a pole. We held the pole in place whilst building a sand former using damp builders sand. We used the chalk markings (we changed the size slightly from the first picture!) and the markings on the pole to get the shape. We did have quite a lot of trouble as it kept collapsing because our sand wasn't wet enough, we got there in the end though.

We then covered the sand former with 3 layers of wet newspaper, we mixed ours with little pva to help it stick (you can also use wallpaper paste). It's pretty tricky this stage as the newspaper has a tendency to fall off.

 Next up was the first layer of cob! We used a mixture of Clay that we sourced from the bank above our mosaic and subsoil from B&Q. The mix is supposed to be 80% subsoil/aggregate and 20% clay and some water to get the correct consistency, it shouldn't be too wet or too dry. We mixed ours on a large tarpaulin but you could do it straight on the floor!  It's a pretty messy job so I got my wellies on for this bit. It's also very tiring (I think people usually spend a lot more time on cob ovens and have more than two people constructing it hah!) After mixing each batch I made sausage shapes and my mum built them around the sand former. This layer should be around 3 inches thick (although this will vary with the size of your oven). My mum kept spritzing it with water as she went and making sure there were no cracks or holes.

Once the first layer was finished we scored it with a knife to create a key for the next layer. We covered it with a tarpaulin. The next day we began the second layer. This is pretty much the same as the first but you add straw to the cob mix (it helps strengthen it and add insulation) and make it slightly thicker (4"). 

Having finished the second layer we removed the pole and stopped the hole with a clay sausage.

We just have to wait for it to dry and then we can cut the door and render it! 

As you can see it's been a lot of work, I definitely wouldn't approach this task lightly but the results are well worth it. I can't wait to try cooking in it.

If you'd like to read more about cob have a look at these books:

Building with Cob: A Step by Step Guide by Adam Weismann & Katy Bryce

Shelter by Lloyd Kahn 

Homework by Lloyd Kahn

Tiny Homes by Lloyd Kahn

The Cob Builders Handbook by Becky Bee

Also have a look at these sites:

The Cob Oven Project

Earth Ovens

X