How to build a pottery studio

An excellent piece by Somerset-based ceramicist Kara Leigh Ford who makes tableware, mugs, teapots, teaspoons and kitchenware as well as larger art pieces from her 3m x 4m garden studio, pictured above, just outside Bath. She also writes an excellent blog on her site (which is really impressive, well worth a look at) called The Shed Diaries in which she extensively and helpfully - including budget - outlines how she built her garden office in 2018 in a post called How I built my pottery studio. 

"My new studio has been a total game-changer," she says. "It’s an absolute joy to work in. I have the space to work efficiently, I am not on top of myself. I also now run intimate pottery workshops and one to one teaching. It took far more hard work, money and if I am honest stress than we could have imagined - maybe we just made a meal out of it but if you asked me is it worth it - a thousand million times YES! I love it so so much!"

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Sylvascope

Not an actual garden office, more of a viewing platform, but Sylvascope by Sebastian Cox (on show now until July 14 as part of the Harewood Biennial which concentrates on the concept of craft as a radical act) is a beauty of a shedlike atmosphere. Here's what Sebastian says in a statement about the build which is made from the wood of trees cut down on the same site:

"It is a nest-like space where people can watch the transition of woodland during management. We celebrate the felling, and all the brambles and new vegetation that comes with it.

We are planting trees at a rate not seen before in history. The area of woodland in Britain is now back at the level it was in the 14th Century. Despite this, biodiversity within woodlands is declining. How do we save our woodland wildlife? It seems not necessarily by planting more trees - we need to manage our woodland.

We often think a healthy woodland is one that looks pleasing - with tall trees and a welcoming, leaf littered woodland floor, easy to navigate with no brambles or undergrowth. But this kind of woodland is not favourable to most of our woodland wildlife. When we fell some trees in a woodland, and let light in to the woodland floor, other plants, and with them insects, mammals and birds, can thrive. It seems cutting trees can be more useful than just planting them. Only 41% of Britain’s woodlands are managed, so management should be an equal priority to planting.

From our elevated look-out we will help paint a picture of how woodlands need to look over the next few decades in order to save nature within them."

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

 

Home Office Module Cubed inspired by Minecraft

The new HOM3 or Home Office Module Cubed comes from London-based JaK Studio (model and broadcaster Jodie Kidd is among its happy clients as she reveals in The Times). It's designed to be modular so you can adjust the size of your garden office accordingly. Extra features include acoustic lining and pull-down beds. Each model is made from sustainable timber sourced from Bosnian and for every sale JaK Studio makes a contribution to offset its environmental impact.

It also has an interesting inspiration as studio director Jacob Low reveals: "During lockdown, our team became fascinated by the principles of games such as Minecraft which allow people to transform and customize their environments, and we began experimenting with the idea of customizable, modular micro-architecture. HOM3 transports what we found in the gaming world to the physical space, offering a really unique design solution for modern living." 

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

 

Unusual thatched shepherd's hut garden office

Here's a kind of shepherd's hut you don't often see, probably built around 1914 and fully restored, it's being marketed by estate agents Winkworth as "a unique office space". Features include a thatched roof, full insulation, new boiler for water, bespoke fitted furniture (with seating that can be converted into a bed), kitchen with space for undercounter fridge, shower room, and 13amp electric connection. It's on with Winkworth for offers over £35,000 and currently residing in Thurton, Norwich.

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Jane's Folly

This is one of my favourite entries in this year's Shed of the Year competition. It's owned, conceived, and partially built by writer, editor, and artist Jane Dorner who lives in Greater London. 

"My friend Simon is an architect," she says, "and I said to him that what I really wanted was a folly, something with Gothic windows and fancy castellations. As we are both collectors of interesting stuff, he proposed making it into an exhibition space with a Cabinet of Curiosities. My garden already had Gothic elements to it, including a hornbeam arch that my late husband created."

Here are a couple of construction photos below and you can see more at Jane's website here.

"It was a particular thrill for me to draw up a life-size version of my own cat for the weathervane," says Jane. "And Simon and I cut and constructed the ‘mock’ stained glass together."

Below, two pictures of the inside taken with a 360 camera.

Below, an example of Jane's paintings of the Greek winds that go round the eight sides of the lantern in cartouches that Simon made for her. 

If you like it too, you can vote for it at the Shed of the Year site if it makes the shortlist and look out for an article about it in a future issue of the Folly Fellowship's magazine.

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  Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of                     contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of 

  which do not require planning

Is this the most thermally efficient garden office in the UK?

The Spaces Group (which takes in Garden Spaces and Annexe Spaces) is unveiling its new SEE upgrade package at Garden Designs Live later this week.

"We are always looking to offer our discerning customers the very latest in technological advances in materials, improvements in thermal efficiency, and the associated reduction in energy consumption," says the company's director Roger Hedges. "As standard, our structures are all compliant with thermal requirements for new build homes but we always aim to surpass these requirements to create structures that will keep our customers’ energy bills as low as absolutely possible. 

"We are now launching our new SEE (Super Energy Efficient) upgrade package to increase the thermal performance of our buildings to an unprecedented level. To the SIP core we are adding an additional layer of multi-layer ‘space age’ foil sheets [pictured above] in the floor, walls and ceiling, that will further improve the thermal performance and keep the overall size of the structure almost the same as with our standard rooms, so there is no compromise to be made in lost space. We are also offering an uplift to high performance glazing. 

"So in total as part of the SEE package, we can realise improvement in overall thermal performance of up to 30%, and this can have a significant impact on the energy used to heat or cool your building in both summer and winter. If you add to this the highly efficient climate control system, and some additional fenestration blind coverings the improvements can be even more significant. We are confident enough to make the bold statement that we can supply ‘The most thermally efficient garden rooms available in the UK today’."

You can take a look yourself at GDL where the company is offering this upgrade on a ‘cost only’ basis to all new customers who visits their stand F7, right next to the Grand Theatre. 

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William Cowper's summerhouse

A gloriousy sunny photo of poet William Cowper's summerhouse 'sulking room' with added tulips to raise your spirits this Sunday. See it in all its glory at The Cowper and Newton Museum in Olney.

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Properties with garden offices for sale

A nice roundup by Rightmove of eight properties with garden offices currently on the market. The one above is a thatched brick home office on with Pendefords in the village of Bramerton (not far from Norwich) which comes with a two-bedroom thatched cottage dating back to 1650, all at a guide price of £400,000. Here's what they say about the shedworking space.

"The former garage has been converted into a multi-purpose studio, which has scope for a variety of different uses depending on your requirements. This thatched building is insulated, double glazed, has a loft space and plumbing, and is divided into two rooms. The current owner uses the larger room as a gym and laundry room, with a cloakroom to the rear – however the space could easily revert back to its previous use as a home office or be altered to provide additional guest accommodation, with relevant planning consent."

 

 

The others are in Cambridge, Glastonbury, London, East Grinstead, Coalville in Leicestershire, and Basingstoke, all on for a range of prices.

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Welcome to your new teak garden room from Moonalabs. Unparalleled quality at an affordable price.

Craning a shepherd's hut into position

If Plankbridge can't wheel one of their lovely shepherds' huts into place, they will crane it in. Here's a before and after example of their latest build, delivered to its new home in the New Forest.

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

Garden office prototype

A cleverly-fitted garden studio in London designed and built by Elli Farrant Architects to blend in smoothly with its surroundings. Features include underfloor electric heating and materials which are all either reusable or biodegradable. Here's what they say about it:

"The build uses a rational and low-cost structure that is built using simple power tools and from materials available at a high street builders merchants. A challenge of the build was to remove the need for wet trades, including concrete, for simplicity, the environment and the expense. The use of steel screw piles removed excessive ground works and precise levelling. The 800mm deep screws provided a foundation for the timber raft base. The walls and roof were designed as a series of rational timber frames that were each built horizontally and lifted vertically for ease of construction within a limited time frame, due to juggling a full time job and the build process. The window and door were sized to be inserted into the prescribed timber frame dimensions."

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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Garden offices in Rooms of Their Own

 

My new book Rooms of Their Own is published today. It looks at the rooms and spaces in which great writers write, their habits and rituals, and is beautifully illustrated by James Oses. Unsurprisingly, I've included plenty of garden offices and studios so you can enjoy a look around the workspaces of George Bernard Shaw, Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck (pictured bottom), Virginia Woolf, Isabel Allende, Michel de Montaigne (bit more tower than shed arguably), EB White (pictured below), and William Wordsworth.

 

Here's the full lowdown from the publishers, Quarto.

Rooms of Their Own travels around the world examining the unique spaces, habits and rituals in which famous writers created their most notable works. 

The perennial question asked of all authors is, 'How do you write?'. What do they require of their room or desk? Do they have favourite pens, paper or typewriters? And have they found the perfect daily routine to channel their creativity? Crossing centuries, continents and genres, Alex Johnson has pooled 50 of the best writers and transports you to the heart of their writing rooms – from attics and studies to billiard rooms and bathtubs.

Discover the ins and outs of how each great writer penned their famous texts, and the routines and habits they perfected. Meet authors who rely on silence and seclusion and those who need people, music and whisky. Meet novelists who travel half-way across the world to a luxury writing retreat, and others who just need an empty shed at the bottom of the garden. Some are particular about pencils, inks, paper and typewriters, and some will scribble on anything – including the furniture. But whether they write in the library or in cars, under trees, private islands, hotel rooms or towers – each of these stories confirms that there is no 'best way' to write.

From James Baldwin, writing in the small hours of the morning in his Paris apartment, to DH Lawrence writing at the foot of a towering Ponderosa pine tree, to the Brontë sisters managing in a crowded co-working space, this book takes us into the lives of some of history's greatest ever writers, with each writing space illustrated in evocative watercolour by James Oses.

In looking at the working lives of our favourite authors, bibliophiles will be transported to other worlds, aspiring writers will find inspiration and literature fans will gain deeper insight into their most-loved authors.

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Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

RIP Harrison Birtwistle, shedworker

Composer Harrison Birtwistle, who died yesterday aged 88, was one of the most famous and longstanding shedworkers. We've covered him before several times on Shedworking, but there is also a very good piece in The Guardian focusing exclusively on his garden office and the particularly fine 10 minute video below which includes the cooking of sausages. It was made for his 80th birthday by his godson, the wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill. 

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  Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of                     contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of 

  which do not require planning

Roald Dahl's writing shed reconstruction

Roald Dahl is one of the writers we've written about most on Shedworking but here's something a bit more unusual, the recration of his writing hut for the film To Olivia that came out last year.

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On holiday

The Shedworking staff have revolted and taken a few days holiday over Easter, maybe taking in a Pace Egg play or two. See you next week!

Garden Studio in Hammersmith

Coming soon from Shape Architects. Looking forward to seeing it built.

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Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.

Beach huts linocut print based on Wells Beach

As the weather starts to improve and our thoughts turn to sheds by the sea, here's a rather lovely linocut print of beach huts at Wells in Norfolk by Hannah Shepheard who runs Hannah and Her Press. Currently on sale at a reduced price so don't dilly dally.

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  Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of                     contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of 

  which do not require planning

SMART updates its garden office showroom

A rather nice piece of updating up for SMART's showroom in Bury St Edmunds with the help of Gardenology who helped landscape the space featuring a selection of their garden rooms, offices, and studios.

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Monday posts are sponsored by eDEN Garden Rooms. Stunning, bespoke high quality garden rooms, to suit your unique space and style