Joining the Dots: Nature, History & Craft [Pt2] - Sally Coulthard - BS106

Jeffrey Hart: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Building Sustainability podcast with me, jeffrey Hart, every fortnight, join me as I talk to designers, builders, makers, dreamers and doers. Together we can explore the wide world of sustainability in the built environment by talking to wonderful people who are doing excellent things. Yes, welcome back. This is Episode 106 with best-selling author and columnist, sally Coulthard. If you haven't heard Episode 105 yet, then definitely go and start there. In this episode we will be talking much more about biofilia and craft. I think the first episode will really set you up on that. Reminder that there are loads of links in the show notes so you can go over and buy Sally's books, bear all through the Hive shop, which supports local bookstores as well as giving a kickback to this podcast. I think if you can, by second hand, do that, but I think Hive is the next best option if you want to buy new. Also, reminder, check out natakumcraftschoolcom for a whole load of craft courses available in 2024. I hope to see you there. That's it. We are heading straight on in to the remainder of the conversation with Sally Coulthard. I'm back at the end. Enjoy the episode.

Sally Coulthard: 1:37

Coming back to this programme, I only caught 10 minutes of it. This morning there is a Radio 4 programme about why boring buildings are bad for us. They had people who would call things like what was the job title, neuro-assetesis. They practice neuro-assetics, which is an amazing crossover between neuroscience and the aesthetics Basically how things looked affected the brain. There is loads of research that these people were doing. People who are medically trained but saying different buildings have physiological responses. It creates physiological responses in people. So much of modern architecture creates the wrong response or no response or poor responses in terms of stress and engagement and happiness and all these kinds of things. I think that's a really interesting and profound area of something to be looking at. I wrote a bit about that in Biophilia the idea that living spaces have a really profound effect on your well-being. Not just what colour wallpaper you had or whether you had a sparkly kitchen. More to things like the temperature of a building or whether it has fresh air flowing through it, or what your views were. What sounds did you hear as you were travelling through the building? Were the spaces human-sized? I love the humanisation of the building, the built environment, and the idea that we should be thinking about all those different things A relationship with water or spaces, or rhythms to do with night and day and light and dark and surprise and different emotions and stuff like that. I think there's a lot of work to be done on that.

Jeffrey Hart: 3:40

Were these neuro-scientists talking about Biophilia, or were they talking more?

Sally Coulthard: 3:48

Yeah, I think the emphasis of the programme on the surface of it was why boring buildings? They were basically saying that most modern urban buildings are tall, bland boxes made of glass, and so the emphasis was that he was trying to say that more buildings should be more fun and more engaging, and that was where his starting point was. But actually the things that he was talking about and the things that the experts he had on were talking about were things like do spaces make you feel well? Do they make you feel stressed? Do they make you feel engaged? Can you engage with the outside? Are your stress rates getting worse? And all that kind of stuff. That's essentially Biophilia. That's the core of Biophilia design, which I think I get the impression that more and more people it's becoming more commonplace, even if people aren't talking using the word Biophilia the idea that spaces should be somewhere that make us feel well, and so many spaces don't. I think about hospitals that I've stayed in, or doctors waiting rooms or schools. Most of my schools I ever went to when I went to a big state school and that was just a kind of concrete box and not somewhere that helps with concentration or making you feel calm and excited about learning or all those kinds of things, so there's some really fascinating research I was reading about Biophilia and children especially, and about how profound the effects of buildings on children are and also, in return, how play in nature is so important for children and the types of play that kids do in nature is completely different than the kind of play that a lot of kids seem to do these days, which is very directed. It's very material based. You play with toys, technology, that kind of stuff and there's a research. The research was basically saying that kids who play in nature and take more risks and they become a lot of the play is less gendered because there aren't male and female objects in the natural environment. People learn to be more eco-conscious adults if they spent a lot of time as children playing in nature. The play is often a bit more creative and freeform. You probably had the same childhood as me, which was kind of left to your own devices really, and I spent a lot of time outside just kind of messing about, and I'm really glad I did. And I worry about kids these you know who are endlessly entertained and one way that's great because they're obviously, you know, I've got three girls of different ages and they're so switched on and they're so advanced, I think, in terms of maturity than we probably were, but they don't really experience boredom or have that time to kind of make stuff up as they go along. That we probably did, which I find you know it'll be interesting to see what the outcome of that is.

Jeffrey Hart: 7:09

Yeah, definitely. I mean, do you sort of push them outside to get some of that, that sort of play space, I guess?

Sally Coulthard: 7:17

Yeah, I mean, kids are brilliant, aren't they? Because whatever you try and do, they basically do it their own way anyway. So my three girls are very, very different, and my eldest, who's now just gone to university, I think, never really. She likes the aesthetics of nature and being in nature, but she's not really interested in being outdoorsy, whereas the other two are a bit more outdoorsy. But I do wonder if sometimes it's maybe an age thing as well. When they were really little they were quite outdoorsy and spent a lot of time outside. But they're going through that stage at the moment where a lot of time is spent indoors. But we'll see. Yeah, I think they'll appreciate it when they're not here, when they're living in some London flat staring out onto a grey pavement, they'll miss it. That's what I keep telling myself, laughter.

Jeffrey Hart: 8:17

With biofilia. I mean, do you remember how you kind of were introduced to it?

Sally Coulthard: 8:24

I think I must have. I think when I actually was doing research really early on for this book, I wrote about kind of organic living and natural materials and stuff. I think I must have come across the term then. And then I think I must have come across the term at some point in my research, but it was always used as quite a esoteric, very architecturally based term. It didn't seem to have much relevance for the average person living in a semi or whatever, and so at the time I think I was introduced to it in a very early age. At that time I was in a more professional relationship with science, such as industry and sign language. At various times Out monuments is my poetry and that concept in my past I talked about science in length, about everything that surrounded me or whatever, and so At the time the whole idea for the book in my approach was A as much of the kind of decent research that was around to show that it wasn't just a kind of another feng shui or feng shui or whatever. Not that I'm I don't really know anything about feng shui, but I actually do think there's something about, there's something to the idea that a space needs to have flow. I definitely agree with that, but the actual kind of the rational, scientific explanation for me appeals because then it could make me say, right, this is actually something that we can test and replicate and therefore I don't, I'm not going to have to get through the barrier of convincing people that this is a good idea because, the science says it. Science says it's like having an extra layer of kind of trustability to it.

Jeffrey Hart: 10:17

Yes, and it can appeal to a much broader spectrum of people. Can it Like the feng shui thing? Is probably very much an alternative mindset.

Sally Coulthard: 10:26

Exactly, and I don't think it helps the people kind of set themselves in one camp or the other, because actually there's a benefit to kind of to picking and choosing lots of different elements of kind of building ideas. But but, but biofilia and there's lots of different research that wasn't necessarily started out as biofile research as such. So ideas about you know, I mean there's been loads of kind of neurological studies about color and about the effect of color on the brain or the effect of natural views on the brain. Or you know, research has been done by hospitals about the healing effect of looking out of the window onto greenery and and things. And we've known that, for I mean we've known that since medieval times, that you know this is why monasteries and medieval hospitals were built around garden physics gardens in the middle, you know, because the idea that looking upon nature and being close to it would be part of the healing process. And we now know that that's actually based in science. So to answer, the biofilia thing kind of came out of an interest to to do with trying to make A kind of unrelatable idea, something that that we could use in our homes, and it's really about it was really aimed at the domestic market. It wasn't designed for kind of architects building big office spaces. It was designed for you and me, you know, in our, in our houses. And really luckily it came out about two weeks into COVID when everyone was stuck in their house, when everyone was stuck in their houses and so it really hit. I think it was the first time that people really ever spent any concentrated amount of time in their houses thinking does this space actually, is this helping or hindering? You know how I'm feeling right now, and so there was quite a lot of interest on the back of that. I mean, it was. I wouldn't have wished those circumstances on anybody, but it was. It was strangely apt for the book that it came out at that time and obviously there's there's been a huge kind of interest in, you know, the last decade or so about indoor plants and and people you know making a big deal about sort of having having lots of indoor plants and especially kind of apartment living and and trying to make it as kind of like an urban jungle and and those kind of things. So I was trying to kind of pull all those tease all those elements together and see if I could come back with a kind of cohesive idea.

Jeffrey Hart: 12:41

So here's the thing that's I've been discussing recently. I've seen a lot of plastic plants around and the instant reaction is a plastic plant. But then I've sort of you know, the more I've learned about biofiliure, it's like well, actually, I think that's probably giving you quite a like, a good boost, but it feels very bad to be, you know, singing the praises of a plastic plant. I can have way of the noises you're making.

Sally Coulthard: 13:15

Do you know, I've gone around and I've gone around in circles, so so. So I shall confess I do have fake flowers in my house. I am guilty because I like the kind of decorative look of them, but actually I don't think they have a biofuelic effect. In the same way that I write a bit about this in biofilia that do fake materials have the same effect? So like, does wood laminate have the same effect as real timber and that kind of stuff? And I think the answer is probably no, that I think we are such sophisticated sensing humans and our ability to discern between fake and fakery and realities so good and so finely honed. But I don't think we have the same reaction to fake plants that we do to real plants, because I think there's something which more sophisticated than just vision or just I think things on a really micro level, like colour perception or scent, or the fact that fake things are often too perfect, right, and I think our brains can sense that and the imperfection is a part. Imperfection within general ideas of perfection are the essence of nature and that we can spot a fake from a mile off because often it's too perfect and doesn't quite feel right. So that's a very long-winded way of saying I don't think they're the same, I don't think. But I understand why people do it. And also sometimes just having real plants, looking after real plants, is a commitment and sometimes people kind of don't have that time. So I'm not going to be dirty about fake plants. There are worse things you can buy.

Jeffrey Hart: 15:13

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I know if you have a photo of a landscape, it's supposed to have a good biofuelic response and then patterns, using patterns around the house. A pattern isn't a flawed and a complex natural thing, it's a representation and that is also having a good biofuelic response. So it seems like it's going to do something, but, as you say, probably not the full plant.

Sally Coulthard: 15:48

Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head really that what you're talking about is probably the difference between the benefit of looking at a picture of the Alps and also actually being in the Alps and smelling the air and being the magnificence of it all, and they're not really comparable. But if you can only have the former, then have the former, because at least it's better than nothing, and you've got to be so realistic about it. I write a lot about ideal scenarios, whether it's biofilia or organic materials or pestifact. I write a lot about farming and smallholding and that kind of thing, and there's often quite a big difference between what the ideal scenario is and what people can actually afford or what they have access to. And I'm really aware of the fact that I'm writing from the middle of the North Yorkshire countryside with lots of nice fresh air and green spaces and stuff, and I'm not having to be stuck in a tiny flat in the middle of a really busy city and things. I think you've got something to be mindful of.

Jeffrey Hart: 16:53

Absolutely. If you had to pick a favourite way of introducing biofilia into a space, what would you go for?

Sally Coulthard: 17:06

Oh no, you've put me on the spot.

Jeffrey Hart: 17:11

That sounds a bit like a proper interview question, doesn't it?

Sally Coulthard: 17:14

Yeah, it really does, oh my God. Well, the thing that's kind of keeping these the forefront of my mind is that most buildings are too hot, and so, for me, fresh air that encompasses everything from clean air through to breezes, through to natural light, through to having a sense of movement of air across your skin and all those kind of things so many. I can't stand being in a hermetically sealed building. It actually makes me feel physically sick. And so many buildings are so hot as well, and if you're going to stay in a hotel, often the rooms are so hot at night time. My body just doesn't work like that. I need to be quite cold most of the time, or at least cool, and I think we keep a lot of our spaces way overheated, and ecologically that can't be a good thing either, I just think. For our immune systems and just for our general health. I think we kind of. And then it makes you not appreciate. I'll talk about something called allesizia in biofilia, which is this inherent pleasure that humans get from contrasts in temperature, so it's like they're being really really, really hot, and then the deliciousness of jumping into an ice cold pool. That pool wouldn't be as good to jump in if it was just kind of averagely warm. It was a kind of tepid day and so there's something about If you have a building at a generally cooler temperature, then you can really appreciate things like open fires or spots of heat and that kind of stuff. And I think that's for me the kind of pleasure of a living space are those, that kind of play with those temperatures and light and they're kind of uniformity, sorry, and so long as. So yes, the short answer is rooms are too hot, cool down, open a window.

Jeffrey Hart: 19:11

Brilliant. I wanted to sort of pull you back a little bit and talk to you about craft. We sort of started to get into it a little bit when we were talking about buildings and sort of the way that buildings don't really have the crafted elements anymore. Was that what brought you into writing crafted?

Sally Coulthard: 19:38

So crafted. I really enjoyed writing and it must be quite old Now it must be maybe six or seven years old and the kind of impetus to write it was the fact that I do a lot of kind of archaeological writing about the first time we did this and the first time we did that and the first time we made beer or grew, wheat or all those kind of things. And lots of different things have been found in archaeological sites that suggest, like the earliest time we ever did weaving or the other time, the earliest time we ever kind of made pots, and so I was really curious about the history, the really long history, of lots of different crafts. And what really struck me when I was writing the book was actually that so many crafts are so ancient I mean truly, truly tens of thousands of years old, and there's even now a thought amongst archaeologists that crafts were being performed by not just homo sapiens but Neanderthals as well, and the kind of you know, the ability to see a material and make something out of it and think efficiently about the material use and have an end goal in sight, and all those kind of things when you're making craft, could be something that's inherently kind of part of who we are and the idea that you kind of you know people naturally experiment materials and you know basket weaving turned into weaving wool or hemp or all that. You know, all these kind of crafts all have loads of crossover. So, yeah, that was the idea. So the Crafty Book was really a kind of an attempt for me to put all those kind of crafts in some kind of chronological order and also try and group crafts together like metalworking and textiles and paper and woodworking and all that kind of stuff, and I just I found it really really. I found it really really interesting. And you know there isn't just kind of one centre of craft in the world. You know crafts happened all over the place and sprang up at all sorts of different times and then disappeared. And then, you know, and sometimes it was interchanged between communities and crafts spread that way and you know we basically have a huge history of making things, which is really interesting.

Jeffrey Hart: 21:59

I suppose that probably you mentioned your new book. That probably bleeds quite nicely into that.

Sally Coulthard: 22:07

So definitely, and I talk about things like, you know, evidence for the first kind of timber-framed buildings, or you know the beginning of blacksmithing, or when we started, you know, I mean we split our ages up historically into what materials people were working with. You know, so like iron age, bronze age, all that kind of thing, you know that still applies even today, and I find that really interesting. And how the introduction of a new material often changed a culture entirely or meant that one culture managed to dominate another culture and would spread all over the world. And you know, and so the ability to craft stuff was often massively life-changing. So as soon as people, for instance, worked out how to make iron, that was a complete game changer, because suddenly you didn't just make weapons with it, you could make tools with it, and then you could change your farmed landscape and how much you could farm change. So you started to make more money, and with money comes power, and then power means you can suddenly get more people, and you know, and so craft is often at the heart of a lot of kind of historical, big historical events. I wrote a book about how sheep changed history, so I think it's called A Short History of the World, according to Sheep, and a lot of that was about how, when people mastered the art of wool and shearing and textiles, it was a complete game changer. So things like the you know. They think that the Vikings wouldn't have been able to conquer huge swaths of the world without the fact that they had such sophisticated, such sophisticated wool and weaving industry that then they made these massive sales with that allowed them to take these huge boats and navigate. I mean, you know, right the way across to Canada when everyone else was kind of piddling around in. You know little kind of canoes or whatever, you know coracles or whatever. And so craft is, you know, the ability to make stuff isn't just kind of fun, it's not just a nice thing to do. It's the difference between whether your culture is a winner or a loser, historically speaking anyway. So that was really interesting and yeah, I kind of worry the fact that craft has been the term craft has been so diluted with in modern times and that you know sticking bits of paper onto other bits of paper to create kind of nice collages, or you know making knitted toilet roll holders is to say, you know, for me is not craft, that's kind of that's kind of messy and that sounds like I'm being really picky, but you know it's not. It's that's just kind of playing. It's playing with materials. But for me craft is lit, is something much more refined than that and much more intelligent. There's a guiding intelligence underneath it all and skill that's passed on and you know specialized tools and all those kind of stuff, and it's something that we should really, really cherish, and I don't think we don't think we do I don't think many people really understand how important it is. You know, being a being, a being, an amazing stone mason, should be as respected as being, you know, a heart surgeon. I genuinely, you know, I genuinely think that craft, craft needs that kind of recognition of skill and and and you know you don't it takes a lifetime to become a really amazing woodcarver or a really amazing, you know, jewellery maker, and yet we don't seem to kind of give people that kind of kudos.

Jeffrey Hart: 25:41

That's really fascinating to hear. I mean, I've never really sat and thought while I'm crafting about the sort of how far back the links of that craft go, and certainly I'd never thought about basket weaving, informing fabric weaving. That's a fascinating evolution. That has just completely blown my mind a little bit.

Sally Coulthard: 26:06

Yeah, yeah. So so to take that point, so the so, so archaeologists find evidence. So as soon as you can not something right, you can make a net. And as soon as you can make a net, then you're starting to, you're starting to work with threads in 3D or fibers in 3D, and, and so what starts off as maybe like using bits of reeds or strips of bark and things to make something useful like a net or a sieve. You know you can get. Then you start to create the tighter weaves and then you start thinking, well, maybe I need something finer, but finer material. And then you know, then you start playing around with threads and and then you start to get onto animal fibers and things. And it's just, you know, they're all it's the same skills applied to different materials to get completely different, to get completely different results, which is which is fascinating.

Jeffrey Hart: 26:57

And then you know, you get the specialists hitting off in their, their individual area and unique crafts are born. That's, I feel, wholly connected.

Sally Coulthard: 27:12

Yeah, well know that. You know the idea that crafts can come and go as well. You know a craft is often, is only often, there because it fits a purpose or you know there's a need for it, and as soon as there's there's no need for it anymore, it's quite. They're quite quickly lost. I've done quite a lot of work with kind of endangered crafts and and so many crafts now you know people just don't do because we don't need them and and there's a big argument about whether you should try and keep those going or not or whether it's just a natural kind of part of the evolution of craft and whether you should bother up, but you know whether you should bother trying to kind of teach people archaic craft techniques.

Jeffrey Hart: 27:49

And where do you stand on that?

Sally Coulthard: 27:52

I think history. We learn a lot from history, and often things come around in cycles and so often we're often trying to reinvent the wheel a lot of the time, and actually it's more useful to have some kind of repository of knowledge, even if it's just written down and recorded. It doesn't necessarily mean everyone has to be practicing that craft, but it would be good to know how to do it. Should we have to call on it again? And I think that's true with lots of things you know, like plant knowledge, or you know we've lost more knowledge than I think we probably gained over the years, and and so especially kind of old building techniques and things. Now, you know, I think in the 1970s people would have probably thought what's the point of learning how to line plaster or how to, you know, be able to frame a timber-framed house? And now everybody wants to know how to do those things because they're part and parcel of a building tradition that's a new one, which is really exciting. So, yeah, what do you think?

Jeffrey Hart: 28:53

As you said, in the 70s no one thought we should keep lime plastering alive, and then it was just kept alive in a few little pockets, and now we're sort of digging into those pockets and it's being used more widely. Certainly the same with clay building sort of carbon and clay plasters. Now the health benefits of a clay plastered house is incredible and that was a material that was very much shunned and thought of as old fashioned or peasant technology or mud hut kind of analogies. So to have learning things from a book is very different to learning things from a person who can say, oh, not quite like that or the nuances that don't come across. So I do think it's very important to keep these.

Sally Coulthard: 29:49

I agree and fully enough. There was a thing I was reading about the other day. So I was writing about how when in the 1600s and early 1700s there was a big hand knitting culture in Britain and it was a way that people could make extra money between farming jobs, and it was often the women and the children who did it, but also men as well, and people knitted on their way to work and everything and they'd use these things called knitting sheaths which are like I don't know if you've seen them they look like a block of wood, often kind of beautifully carved, but you sort of took it under your arm and then you'd shove a knitting needle in the end of it and it meant you could kind of hold it whilst you were knitting. But people talked about being able to in the historically in the text people talked about being able to do one-handed knitting because you were so busy you could be literally doing something else from knitting with one hand. But no one knew how to do it because everyone now knits with two hands right. And so sort of a group of knitters got together and they were kind of practicing and working out and it took them ages to kind of work out what the technique was, and they don't even know if they've now got it right, but this is something that people across the board used to be able to do and was you know, children could do, but people kind of just didn't know how to do it anymore and it's not a particularly useful technique. But it's historically fascinating Because, you know, if you ever do anything like a historical drama or I'm always interested about what people are doing in the background in historical dramas and you know I'm like, oh, are they doing the? But is there blacksmithing? You know forge actually accurate or all that kind of you know get quite nerdy about it. But yeah, for lots of kind of historical, if you're interested in history, I think kind of getting those details right is probably important, which is why it's probably important to keep crafts alive, even the old ones.

Jeffrey Hart: 31:42

Yeah, so we've talked about sort of old crafts. Your book talks about the newer crafts. I was sort of struggling. I was thinking what on earth is a new craft? And, yeah, when did new crafts that you would consider not like the sticking bits of plastic on other bits of plastic? When are they? What sort of era are they appearing?

Sally Coulthard: 32:12

I'm trying to think what, what, what I mean, it's quite a long time ago since I read. I wrote.

Jeffrey Hart: 32:17

Sorry, I'm asking you. This is old news in the world.

Sally Coulthard: 32:20

No, no, it's fine. Yeah, no, it's probably. I mean, there's probably new tools and things that allow different processes to happen. Or you know crafts that were technically probably hand driven most of the time. You know, the advent of electricity probably changed fundamentally how people did those kind of things. Or you get, you know, you get old crafts but done in new ways, like I don't know. You know, stained glass making has changed or the way that people apply new design ideas to old crafts and that kind of thing. But I can't, yeah, I mean I struggle with the idea of kind of plastic crafting and things, because I sort of but then that's just my, that's my own prejudices about plastic as a material and the fact that there is there isn't much room for human and a human imprint on something that's formed out of plastic. It doesn't kind of move in the same way as natural materials, and but that's you know, I'm sure someone could show me something made of plastic that they made and it would, it would, it would blow my mind. So you know, I'm prepared to kind of have my mind changed about that. Yeah, but I think people are thinking of new things, new ways of doing things all the time, and that's. You know, we're constantly inventing new, new techniques and new ways of doing things. Yeah, you don't get you, don't? You don't get that many new crafts maybe. I don't think developing these days. I think you sometimes get like breakaway ideas, like where craft joins another discipline, so craft and activism, say, for instance, so the idea that you can do something political with the craft, so, like you know, you get like gorilla gardening or you know knitting, you know crochet, bombing and stuff like that. You're saying a kind of political statement which I think is brilliant. Or or linking this quite a lot of work with craft and memory and and Alzheimer's and working with old people, which is a really interesting avenue that people are exploring, and and the ability of craft to kind of jog people's memories. So, yeah, I like the crossover where where where interest where it's mixed with the sort of interesting other topics.

Jeffrey Hart: 34:34

One thing that sort of modern craft I think is really good for is community. And I sort of get the impression that probably you know, blacksmithing back back sort of when it was in its its heyday was, didn't have that community. It was just sort of a, you know, it was quite functional. And now we've got this new, you know people gather together at blacksmithing conventions or they come together and it's. It's actually sort of created this whole really positive thing for for people's mental health and and well-being.

Sally Coulthard: 35:14

I totally, I totally agree with you and that blacksmithing in the past would have been almost a career that you would have had to compete with somebody else because you know you can only have one blacksmith in a village kind of mentality. But now that you know people feel that there's some, it's a shared connection and people are happy to share techniques, ideas, possibly because there isn't that kind of competition for livelihood maybe, or just that the you know the world's, the world's a different place. I actually don't know if there was a community of blacksmiths before. There must have. There might have been a guild in medieval times, I'm not, I'm not sure. But yeah, I get. You get the impression that you know, often crafts are in the past were quite jealously guarded because they're what differentiated you from Mr Ordinary and that if you could do this really amazing craft, then that, that, that that was a status symbol but it was also potential of earning more money, so you would guard it with your life and you wouldn't kind of share secrets. You'd only pass them down to, say, a male relative or you know your own apprenticeship. So now that kind of imperative is gone, then things can be a bit more shared. I suppose I love the idea of all blacksmiths getting barely blacksmiths getting together and having a a nice shared community. That's lovely.

Jeffrey Hart: 36:35

Drinking some ale from flagons.

Sally Coulthard: 36:38

Exactly Clinking flagons. That's it, Tweaking their beards.

Jeffrey Hart: 36:47

One thing I'm interested in to do with craft is the sort of link to sustainability I find. So the last podcast was with Dave Cockruff and he was talking about, you know, linking you back to nature. He's a spoon carver and he, you know you learn the trees, you learn appreciation for nature. You kind of you want to look after that thing and I sort of in my head I think all craft must equal sustainability, because I mostly would work based. Do you think that rings true throughout other crafts?

Sally Coulthard: 37:21

I think generally yes, and I've and I've written a bit about craft and sustainability before that in it. Good craft is about understanding materials and being not wasting them, and so those two kind of principles unless you've got, unless money is no object and you can literally rip through materials like it doesn't matter. And I don't know many craft people that are like that, and usually you know if they're, if they're, if they're crafting for a livelihood, they're really careful about what they, about what they do so but you know. So those kind of two practical reasons really inform craft work to be sustainable. But there's also like a, there's a kind of artistic pleasure as well, I think, in craft of being really judicious with materials. And, and you know, if you can make a beautiful bowl from literally the smallest, you know, from the smallest block of wood, you can find that's. That's an amazing mental process as well. That's your creativity, making something. You know you're making the best of something with the least amount of materials, and so there's a kind of that's where your skill and your flair is shown as well. So craft is, I think you know craft and sustainability are, are very comfortable bedfellows and and most crafters understand the importance of being, of being careful with materials and understanding the properties of inherent properties of different materials. So you know, you pick and choose very carefully. It's just a kind of it's a level of kind of connoisseurship about materials that you just don't get when in mass production, or at least that's how I, that's how I see it.

Jeffrey Hart: 39:11

So I I was very pleased to see that Lime Plastering and Thatch were in your, your crafted book, but I'd never really considered them craft. To me they're building, I wondered where is there a line? Is it a you know? Where does one meet the other?

Sally Coulthard: 39:33

So it all comes back to what your definition of craft is. So if some, you know what. What is what is craft? And for me, craft is about using materials, usually natural materials, to produce an end product. That is it's primary purpose, is useful, is utility, not an artistic statement, but it can be beautiful if you want it to be, and that there is often a deep level of skill and gained knowledge to be able to do that thing. Someone couldn't just you couldn't just give someone off the street a big bale of hay and say I'll straw and say, right, thatch me that roof please. You couldn't do it because you could. So there's a set of skills that comes with that craft and so for me that's kind of craft. It's the skills plus the materials, plus the knowledge, plus the practical outcome, but done with finesse. And so thatching is absolutely up there for me, and most building crafts are, because not anyone can do them. They take loads of time to learn and when people are really good at them, they are really good at them. I could watch as someone line plaster for hours on end, and I've done line prostrating and I'm terrible at it, and when people are good at it, it's such a joy to watch and the end product is such a joy to touch, and same with thatching. You see beautiful bits of fatwa and you just think that's artistry. So, yes, the answer, the short answer, is yes. Lots of building trades are crafts as well, because not any old person could do them.

Jeffrey Hart: 41:21

And then so you mentioned that you're, so you've got a new book coming out soon. Remind me of the title.

Sally Coulthard: 41:32

Thank you for asking. It's a brief history of the countryside in 100 objects. So so a history of the world in 100 objects obviously came out a while ago and it was brilliant, and the idea that the objects can tell a story is a really powerful idea, and especially for someone like me who, likes, you know, my way into things is often objects. It's kind of touchy things and then and then from there you can kind of talk about ideas, right, and but it struck me that a lot of the things that were in the original book History of the World in 100 objects were about urban life. They're about, you know, great rulers, great civilizations, urban life, all these you know, big moments in history. And I'm not really massively interested in big moments in history, I'm interested in normal people and the countryside and everyday life. And also, for pretty much until only about 200 years ago, we were predominantly country dwellers, you know, we didn't live in cities, we lived in that, we lived off the land, and so our history is the history of the countryside. That's who we are as people, and and so I really wanted to kind of delve into that and and I didn't really know what my objects were going to be before. I set off with the book and I just kind of followed my nose and some of them are kind of, you know, extraordinary and they talk about, you know, they reveal the relationship that we had with wildlife and farm animals and when we started. You know farming and how we built our buildings and how we solved problems and I'm full of admiration for our ancestors how they solved all these problems without having cars, power, you know, electric power, running water, you know I mean it's true heroism but at the same time you know there's a lot of kind of warfare and disease and people being not very nice to each other in the book as well. But that's I kind of like, that I kind of like those bits too, because the kind of the gruesome bits are always the interesting the interesting bits too when you, when you kind of come to country so you know there's lots of hangings and you know plague and you know terrible diseases and things. So it's yeah, it's a real romp through through history really, and so it's been fascinating to write.

Jeffrey Hart: 43:52

Nice. Can you tell us just one, one item? I always read this question.

Sally Coulthard: 43:57

So I was. So, just off the top of my head, one of the items that's it must have been it's about roughly about 1700s is a glass bottle, bottle of medicine, and the the title on it is Lumbricus, and that means earthworm. And so the whole, that whole object speaks of a time when a earthworms were viewed as a medicine, that people used earthworms as a medicine to for lots of different things. But partly because people would watch what happened to earthworms when they, for instance, were split in two when you were, you know, when you were guarding, and they were fascinated by the fact that the earthworm seemed to survive that process, and so earthworm medicine was used for lots of things to do with wounds that people have, you know, where you wanted some kind of healing. So that was one that was interesting about the object. But then when you did more research, when I did more research into what, how people viewed soil and earthworms and the role that earthworms played in soil, it revealed a whole kind of different attitude towards soil health that people had, where Almost everything was a pest, so earthworms should be destroyed, moles should be destroyed, insects should be, everything was something that should be killed, and so there are lots of kind of Agricultural and farmers treaties from around that time that basically say you know, you have to go out and you have to find as many earthworms as you can and kill them and scald them and pour lime over them and all this kind of thing, because what you want is an is is, is is Animal-free soil or creature-free soil. And now what we know now is that obviously I've never written a book about earthworms is that they're there, you know, they're underground heroes. They're basically do all the important work of soil health. And so that object of this kind of funny earthworm medicine bottle is not doesn't just speak of kind of odd attitudes towards health and healing but also our Entire view of how we, how we viewed the soil and what we thought was good, healthy soil, and how that's changed over time. So that's just that's kind of. You know, that's kind of one example. But yeah, there are lots of kind of curious bits, of bits of kind of objects. And oh, another good one is it's a is a mummified cat or a dried cat. I'm fascinated by superstitions and and so the practice of You've and you'll be interested in this, because it's timber framed houses and a lot of timber framed houses sort pre 1800s. You often find a lot of objects builders in particular put and hide in buildings For ritual purposes, for anti superstition. So things like you know you find cats, mice, sometimes eggs, and also witches, marks and things like you know, the domestic home was somewhere that had to be protected constantly from from potentially kind of harmful forces, and so you know, home building wasn't just about Making a home and making somewhere that was protected from the elements, but it was also somewhere that had to kind of spiritually protect you as well, and so one of the things that people did was to to basically bury cats in in the wall or in in bound.

Jeffrey Hart: 47:13

So you have to find under thresholds or near windows?

Sally Coulthard: 47:16

Well, that's a really good question. So so mostly no, most of them seem to have been interred after they were dead, thank the Lord. But you do find occasionally. There's a brilliant example of, and at a museum in London, in an old One of one of the it was an old trade hall or something that got was being renovated they found a kind of one of these Burials or whatever it was. It was behind a fireplace and that they'd put a bottle, some other items and a hen and Then bricks them all in and the hen had gone on to lay a couple of eggs while it was Waiting. It's kind of dreadful fate and then killed over, obviously. But so yes, occasionally they were, they were live things, but most of time they were. I mean, I can't imagine it's probably that easy to enter a live cat because it probably a bit of a fight, yeah. But just, you know, I say find them stuffed up chimneys and and lots of different places, and so I love that kind of. I mean that's tapping into Iron Age. You know ideas about Foundation sacrifices and you know, and and when you built a building you had to kind of thank the deities and make sure it was going to be protected? No, and you know, and we're still doing that in the 1800s, and you just think that's 2000 years later. We're still doing.

Jeffrey Hart: 48:37

you know, they're still doing the same things and Human culture doesn't change that much, it seems yes, yes, well, it seemed you know, surface level we're, we're racing away, but actually we're all rooted in the same Say we've got a dead cat hidden somewhere in your house. Wouldn't be a project without dead cat. Dead cat, exactly. All right, sally, thank you so much. Brilliant to end on some dead cat chat, so a huge thanks to Sally for sparing all that time to talk with us. I had such a good time listening to the way that she described a lot of the things I feel about building and about craft and sustainability and all the intermeshing of them, but I just I don't have the words of an author. So it's really lovely to to hear those words spoken out loud by her, because they really were so in tune with with my thinking. So do go and check out Sally's books. There are links in the descriptions reminder that hive will give a little kickback to me and also give a kickback to your local Independent bookstore. So I think they are the best option for new books, obviously trying by second hand if possible. In the show notes there are links to Lee John Phillips's shed project, the carpenter oak timber frame, grand designs, thomas Heatherwick, why boring buildings are bad for us. There's a link to that gargoyle On the BBC website link to history of the world in a hundred objects. That book, that's not Sally's one, that's the one that's she's sort of playing off. Yeah, as always, a whole load of stuff to get into. If you have enjoyed this Podcast, if this was your first episode or the second hopefully then do subscribe to make sure not to miss any future episodes and do look back through the hundred or so other podcasts. And if you would like to hear more about biophilic design, there is a great episode, number 47, with Bill Browning and Katie Ryan when they talk through the biophilic design patterns really good one. If that is a new topic for you, if you get a second, please do share this episode on whatever social media you're on. That really helps. Lots more people hear it. If you want to support the podcast financially, then head to patreoncom forward slash building sustainability. You get loads more bonus audio there. I think that's that's it for me. I've been slightly croaky voiced, just incredibly entertained by Sally. I hope that you're all well and Until next time, bye, bye.