LATEST NEWS

January 2008.......This year we hope to run a few more courses ....The Yurt making course has proved popular, with students coming as far afield as Spain. The course runs one weekend a month until the end of March . There are more details on the Courses page ; the plan is to run another in the autumn but these dates as well as dates for the bowmaking, basketmaking and bushcraft courses will be posted shortly.

Students steambending a yurt wheel on the course in January 08

The course started well at the weekend with six students braving grim weather and gales to learn how to build their own yurt . We started off looking at the structure and various designs of these versatile structures before assembling the pile of trellis and poles into a 12ft yurt. It gave everyone an idea of what's involved and how simple these tents are to put up and down. After a walk in the woods in the valley where we looked at different tree species that would be suitable, we sat down to lunch .

The afternoon was where the real practical work started as everyone got to grips with drawknives and shaving brakes and a start was made on the blanks for the wheel fellies.The day finished off with a short film about traditional ger making in Mongolia.

That evening, the pub was an excellent refuge from the bleak weather outside and prepared people for the wild night in the yurt to come.

It was hard to tell whether the bleary eyes in the morning were due to the gale blown night or the extra pint of Doom Ale the night before for yurting in January on Bodmin Moor is not for the fainthearted. However by the end of the second day all but one of the wheels were steamed , with no casualties, and everyone went their separate ways enthusiastically prepared to carry on at home, before we come together for the next session in February.

In November 2007 I was invited by Saffia Farr to exhibit a yurt at her book launch in Bristol. It was an excellent evening attended by the Kyrgyz Ambassadors wife, several Kyrgyz craft stands and about 200 enthusastic friends, family and others interested in all things Kyrgyz.

Saffia had spent 3 years in the Kyrgyz republic with her husband Mathew, bringing up their two very young children in the challenging surroundings of Bishkek. Her book "Revolution Baby" is a very interesting and entertaining account of her life there.

16ft Kyrgyz style yurt at Saffia Farr's booklaunch , Bristol

 

Old news

..... This year(2007) we made a camera obscura out of one of our smaller 12 ft yurts. The lens is mounted on the top of the wheel and can be tilted and swung through 360 degrees. The round 5 ft diameter table can be raised, lowered and tilted, giving every opportunity for children and adults to explore a play with the focus of the image. Despite the sophistication of modern cameras the quality of light in a camera obscura which is almost completely black inside with only a luminous moving colour image in the centre of the room makes them a truly extraordinary experience.

More information about the camera obscura will be going up on the web site in the next few weeks. As far as I am aware it is only the second truly mobile camera obscura in the country (assembled in an hour and a half and dismantled in less.) It can be booked for events, festivals, parties, and school workshops where we can run pinhole camera making courses. Places on the Pinhole camera making course with the camera obscura at the Bamboozle event in Porthleven in June 2007 can be booked through the Bamboozle web site. More details to follow.

 

 

Recently back from a visit to Mongolia where the temperature frequently fell below minus 25, it seems warm here, and despite boot sucking mud and rain driving into the workshop, our local weather presents nothing like the challenges the Mongolian people and their animals endure each year. In a country where the only running water I saw in a month came through a tap, and where livestock depends entirely on very limited snowfall for their water, I am thankful, now I am back, for the wet and bluster of our Cornish winters. While I was out there it was very good to meet with some of the ger makers again, but just a cautionary note if you're thinking of buying authentic Mongolian gers, the quality of the wood, canvas, felt, craftmanship, painting and carving are very variable.

Some of the pictures from the latest visit will be included on the gallery page.

The workshop here is still busy, booked up with orders until April. The hemp yurt (above picture) went over to France in the autumn, to sit on a specially made hempcrete deck. More information about this beautiful material and its long term suitability for yurt covers will be posted on the site in the next month or so, but it looks good so far, about £5 pmetre more expensive than cotton canvas, but organic and gm. free.

The season for the holiday yurts starts in April and enquiries are coming in daily. We picked up the new Coromandel wood burning water heater this week, which heats water for the holiday bath room. Made from stainless steel it not only looks beautiful but keeps the water rust free. The faintly orange water of last year, promising but failing a fake tan if you wash with it, will now be a thing of the past. The old stove is now the new steamer in the workshop.

We have started coppicing again in the ash plantation nearby. It looks as though this will be the last year in this rotation and much of the wood is overgrown now and damaged by canker. It may provide for a few smaller yurts but the larger material will be used to add to our own range of yurts. There may be some poles next year but I suspect it will be a year or two before we can start cutting again. In the meantime our local ash will come sawn from Anton Coaker and Tino at Rawnsley Woodland Products.

As for the woods here, in February we start coppicing the trees damaged by squirrels last year. We will then start a poison free campaign to keep the little blighters at bay and prevent the same thing happening again. This could be a lifelong project and a taste for squirrel meat an advantage.

 

 

Older News

It was a busy summer(2005) with yurts going out in all directions; Land Heritage have just taken delivery of their 16fter. The London Wetland Centre has a beautiful 21fter made in collaboration with Alan at Albion Canvas. Our first yurt covered in specially proofed organic hemp canvas from Hemp Union will soon be going over to France. And still more to do.

The yurt holidays have been generating a lot of interest with bookings through the summer. With Cornwall bustling with people at this time of year staying here in a yurt high above the hurly burly is proving to be a popular retreat for people looking for a different Cornish experience.

We haven’t done many shows this year giving Womad a miss for the first time in over 8 years. We did go to the Roadford Woodfair in July, which was busy with the highest number of visitors ever and woodland makers and shakers from all over the country represented. Yurtworks demonstrated yurt wheel steaming and bending and won a first prize  for the Land Heritage Yurt.

Yurt hire has been steady with recent jobs including a story telling tent at Mevagissey, a hen party tent down at Padstow with beautiful views over the estuary and a childrens’ party tent for apple bobbing and puppet making.

So busy have we been in the workshop at the top of he hill I overlooked the unfolding havoc in our woods in the valley. For years the squirrel population has been content to scratch away at the mature sycamore and beech that surround the new plantation. This year though the sap in the 10yr old chestnut trees must have reached optimum sweetness and in less than three weeks they have worked their way through the young trees leaving a trail of mutilated trunks and dying trees. It is a demoralising sight but if we coppice some of the damaged trees in the autumn I am hopeful that new growth will flourish next spring.