Thursday 26 March 2009

A Great Book

I found this book in Castlemaine Library the other week and am still savouring my way through it. So far I have learned how to cut peat, do dry-stone walling, make hurdles and ladders, dig a well and what a bodger is...
"The Forgotten Arts and Crafts" is by John Seymour, full of wonderful illustrations (by him?) and great old photos of people with their craft. Or art. It was originally published in the 1980s as two separate volumes - "The Forgotten Arts" and "Forgotten Household Crafts".
I would love a copy, but there doesn't appear to be one available in any second hand book shops in Australia. Maybe I should just see Patrick at the Library and ask him to put it aside for me when they next have a clean-out of old books...

P.S. If you want to know what a bodger is here is a link to a most very comprehensive description. You could probably become a bodger after reading this!

3 comments:

Clare said...

7 hours later - couldn't sleep - here I am again! I love the John Seymour books. He's published some lovely ones about self- sufficiency. Invaluable when you've got 7 acres!

Lindi said...

so what is a bodger?

Anonymous said...

My work in the UK took me to the Shetland Isles and I often felt that I'd been whisked back in time when I regularly saw women walking down the fields, with huge baskets of peat on their backs.

GG