Friday Finery: Monet's floating painting shed studio in Studios of Their Own

A sneak peak from my next book, Studios of Their Own, which is published next month. Here is Monet's floating painting shed studio which is featured, illustrated by the hugely talented James Oses. You can read a little about it here.

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Claude Monet's floating studio

French painter Claude Monet had numerous garden studios, including an absolute whopper that he built at Giverny for his waterlily work which he later felt was rather unsightly. By some distance the most charming was his floating studio boat.

 

Bought in 1872 following a successful sale of his work, Monet used the pale green boat fishing boat during the years he lived in Argenteuil, a few miles north west of Paris. He had a partly-enclosed wooden cabin built on it and the boat gave him access to vantage points unavailable form land. It was fully equipped with necessary supplies so he could spent the day painting on the water, whether on the move or anchored, though these were short trips rather than major excursions. The Regatta (Régates à Argenteuil, 1872), one of his most famous works and now in the Musee D’Orsay, was painted from this studio boat.  

 

Monet also included the boat in a number of his paintings, either drifting down the Seine or moored. His The Studio Boat (1876, pictured above) provides a view of it on the river from the back, looking a little like a small shepherd’s hut on top of a rowing boat, its twin back doors opened, a blurred figure sitting quietly inside either Monet himself or perhaps his wife Camille reading.

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Worcester community garden opens new garden office

Worcester community garden has unveiled a new office and tool store, funded by an award from the National Lottery and a grant from Worcester city council. The build sits on a giant pontoon so that when the annual garden floods occur the structure will float above the floodwaters, protecting the volunteers' tools and equipment.

Pictured above cutting the ribbon at the unveiling ceremony was Keith Slater of Community Boost who was key in helping to secure funding for the project. “Ever since I was first introduced to the garden and its volunteers I have said that this is one of the hidden jewels in the city’s crown," he said. "If anyone wants to see what a huge and positive difference an ever-growing number of volunteers can make to improve the quality of life for all involved, then this community garden is their place to visit.”

“The floating office and tool store is an imaginative response to the growing challenge that flooding presents for us," added Chair of trustees at Worcester community garden, Steve Dent. "It has been a great morale booster to see the structure going up so soon after the damage caused by the January and February floods. We are enormously grateful to Keith Slater for helping us achieve this ambitious milestone.”

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Boatworking: a floating garden office

It's been a while since we've seen a floating garden office on Shedworking but this is a particularly attractive one. 'Betsy' is owned by novelist and book publicist Georgina Moore. As you can see it's still not quite finished but it looks tremendous.

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Drew Campbell: shedworker

Awardwinning voice actor, audio editor, and sound designer Drew Campbell has put together an excellent video showing us around his garden studio. Here's what he says about it:

"From the age of 15 I dreamed of having my own studio for recording my music and that dream came true just over 12 years ago. With the help of my stepson Lee and his friends we built a 22ft x 8ft brick built out building at the bottom of the garden with 8 feet allocated for my studio, that I built all by myself. Soundproofed and includes a floating floor and it and originally it was floor to ceiling carpet off cuts, looked very ethnic lol. It has since been treated with acoustic foam, home made bass traps and home made Wooden defusers on the ceiling and a home made wooden Skyline defuser on the back wall."

A quick view of my garden studio. Full video https://t.co/wrAdY7cbuP #homestudio #Creative #music #voiceover pic.twitter.com/7dBZlfYUZn

— Drew Campbell - Multi Award Winning Voice Actor (@DrewCampbellVO) January 12, 2022

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The Pod Floating Studio

Artist Kathryn Webley produces her canal-inspired fused glass aboard her 28ft narrowboat The Pod. It's a purpose-built studio moored on the Chesterfield Canal built by The Little Boat Company. Here's what she says about her work"

"I fell in love with the canals first; moved onto a narrowboat and then aspired to be an artist afloat. I began experimenting with fused glass when I purchased a small table-top kiln. I was immediately hooked. I took the scenes of the nature I observed on the waterways and used glass to represent them. The same stretch of canal can change completely depending on the season, the weather and time of day."

 And here's a nice short video showing us her waterbased garden office shedworking space.

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Shed Heaven

One for the shed section of your bookshelf, Shed Heaven by Anna Groves is published by National Trust/Pavilion. What makes this stand out for those working in garden offices, is that in addition to the various sheds owned by the NT on their properties, there is a significant focus on the ones in which people worked. There'll be no surprises for readers of Shedworking in terms of the properties, but it's nicely done. Here's the bumph:

"The National Trust looks after many of Britain’s most important and beloved buildings – its sheds. They lurk in the shadow of grand country houses; they brave the elements on the tops of cliffs; they have inspired famous writers and housed everything from beehives to birdwatchers.

"These beautiful and sometimes eccentric structures are as individual as their owners. A Victorian coastal shed in Cornwall is where the Reverend Hawker went to write verse, and smoke opium. It’s also the smallest building cared for by the National Trust. George Bernard Shaw’s shed could be rotated throughout the day to make the most of the sun, while sculptor Barbara Hepworth used hers for napping in. Rather than a place in which to create, many of these sheds are the creation.  

"Alongside the literary writing dens and horticultural hideaways there are also floating sheds, coastguards’ sheds, artists’ studios, summer houses, beach huts, camping pods, bothies, teahouses, follies and much more."

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Cut and Frame garden office

 

 

An intriguing design from Ashton Porter Architects for a garden office in London that echos/mirrors work they did on the semi-detached house to which it belongs. Here's what they say about it:

"The connection between hut and house is reinforced by framing elements. The main house has a floating seat of aluminium that becomes part of the internal seating of the house when the large glazed panels are slid away and a garden seat at other times. It is clad in highly contrasting anodised aluminium and hangs from a discreet steel frame cantilevering from within the existing house. The reciprocal aluminium element to the writing hut can either be an elevated seat with access internally by steps or a display for artefacts and artwork."

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Floating garden offices

An interesting idea from Polish architectural designer Agnieszka Białek, a shedworkingesque co-working space on water. Inspired by water bubbles on her local river in Cracow, and floating water lilies with their connected root system, the individual pod workspaces floating on their own platforms are connected to form a single 'cell' which in turn is anchored to the riverbed. Here's what she says about it: 

"The design provides protection of personal space and privacy for potential users. In times of social distancing, it creates a unique comfort zone and sense of security. It is easier to focus on performing specific tasks when working in the designed space. The interiors of the enclaves, with integrated furnishings, allow one to achieve any individual positions during work."

She calls it 'Enclaves' and proposes a booking system to pay by the hour, 24 hours a day. To make things even more interesting, the pods can only be reached by kayak. 

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Ultra small garden office

We had an excellent response to our post earlier in the week about small garden offices so here's another, the Ultra from Smart which comes in at just 2.1m x 2.1m but with all the usual must-haves (integral electrics, full insulation, double glazing, etc), and with floating walls and fitted carpet. It does come in larger sizes too.

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Goodbye to the Shed Manual shed

As part of producing the Shed Manual for Haynes earlier this year, we naturally had to produce several sheds. The one that was closest to my heart was the garden office and it has now finally gone to a good home where it is currently waiting for a new deck to be built for it overlooking its new owner's garden pond in an apple orchard.

If you'd like more information about how it was moved and transported (by road at 20-30mph), read John's account of it here - it's an excellent detailed post with plenty of images showing each step of the way. I rather like this one which makes it look like it is magically floating...

And of course the book in which it is featured is still very much for sale.

 

 

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The KODA Light Float

Kodasema are hedging their bets with this design which they call the Koda Light Float, targeting both the tiny house and the waterside shedworking market with a model they say could be "either a harbour café, artist’s studio, not to mention a summer retreat or a fisherman’s dream.". It's built on floating pontoons using a timber frame with a plywood interior and finishes include this one pictured above with zinc cladding. In its compact 25.8m2 space it crams in a living room, bedroom, shower and lavatory, kitchen and terrace. ---------------------------------------

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The Northern Block: co-shedworking

Digital type foundry The Northern Block has called on shedworking specialists 3rdSpace to design a new headquarters to accommodate their creative team.

The resulting building takes the form of a black-clad timber and glass structure, with a 5m long floating desk surface running the length of the interior, overlooking Northumberland countryside. The brief sought out to create a space that would be at one with values and process of type design (to provide a functional and inspirational environmen.

The Northern Block director, Jonathan Hill, was also inspired by the principles of compact Japanese workspaces that made efficient use of space and natural light.

 "These spaces are really about professional craft or personal interest," said Ben Couture of 3rdSpace. "We have used our system to create a library for a literary professor, a furniture workshop for an author and a home office for an architect. They all begin with the same core components, but each comes to life and tells its own story when they are personalised with the objects or tools of each user, as well as bespoke internal elements."

For this project, a light-filled interior is internally lined with white-tinted birch plywood set between Douglas fir post and beams. The expressed structure sets a rhythm to the space and offers a reassuring symmetry. In addition to the custom-made cantilever desk, a laminated plywood wall-mounted storage unit displays graphic design books and journals in open shelving, and conceals lever arch files in the sliding door unit below. Magnetic glass white board panels allow an area for the designers to pin up inspirational images and draw out sample ideas at large scale.

The building was delivered to site, prefabricated in panels, and took just five days to fully assemble.

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Shedworking Awards 2012

We've been running our annual prizegiving for a mighty three years now, an opportunity to give a pleasant pat on the back to some of the finest achievements in the shedworking world over the last 12 months. It's been another busy year and so without further ado let's move towards the first gold envelope...

Best design – It’s been another great year for shedlike designs. Most recently, the Forest Pond House (one of the designs up for an award on the AJ Small Projects award) caught our eye, but over the last 12 months we’ve marvelled at tents which looked like sheds, caravans which looked like sheds, floating sheds, rotating sheds, and naturally sheds like hobbitholes. In the end, the winner is as much about concept as design. Custom Built Surrey run by Mark Burton, does produce some nicely built shedworking atmospheres but what Mark is really trying to do is raise awareness of the importance and advantages of tiny house living. In the USA the movement towards living small is really snowballing. In the UK, there are some meagre signs of its emergence, but if it takes off then it will be in no small part due to Mark. Nice work.

Best blog/web site – 2012 was the year that Pinterest really made its mark on the world of sheds with boards popping up all over the interwebs celebrating garden offices and other small design wonders. But in the main while these were a delight to browse, they largely involved simply scrapbooking other people’s work. So it’s ‘traditional’ blogs which have won the day this time round. In joint second place are two blogs which detail the design and build of garden offices, http://buildgardenoffice.blogspot.co.uk and http://buildingastudio.wordpress.com/. Which means that in first place is http://shoeboxdwelling.com run by design journalist Natalia Repolovsky. While not specifically targeting shedworkers, many of Natalia’s posts are perfect for those in garden offices since they feature transformer furniture, desks, shelving and storage in general, all in a succinct yet illuminating style.

Best Tweeter –  At its worst, Twitter is a platform for dullness and selfpromotion. At its best, it provides an insight into another world.  The @plankbridge feed from shepherds’ hut specialists Plankbridge was exactly this, always interesting, friendly without being imposing, frequently using photos and video to mix things up, and above all, genuinely reactive rather than simply using it as a broadcasting medium.

I'm framing up a Writers Hut, the smaller version that we do. It's going to be a craft studio for a customer twitter.com/Plankbridge/st…
— Plankbridge (@Plankbridge) December 22, 2012

Best popularisation of shedworking – A former Shed of the Year winner, it was not the smoothest of years for Songs from the Shed run by Jon Earl. But despite the challenge of financing arguably the UK’s leading music venue, Jon and his impressive list of invited musicians have brought us some tremendous sessions in 2012 (as regular readers will know since we often highlight some of our favourites on Shedworking), and in so doing underlining that shedworking comes not only in all shapes and sizes but also sounds. Help to keep them going by donating to the cause on their site.

Readers' Award – This year’s RHS Chelsea Garden Show had many sheds – and in fact a shepherd’s hut too - on display. Indeed there was a whole separate area devoted to them. But this year’s runaway favourite as nominated by you the readers (in second place was the appealing George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces television series, closely followed by Jane Field Lewis’s excellent book My Cool Shed) was Jo Thompson’s Silver Gilt-winning show garden which featured a garden office-ish caravan, at least partly inspired by the Shedworking blog. It was a lovely garden, a marvellous caravan, and Jo is a smashing lady. Congratulations.

Lifetime achievement award – Lloyd Alter is not a shedworker (though he does have a marvellous outhouse) but this has not stopped him from promoting this blog almost from the very beginning, as well as being a critical friend of what we are attempting to do with it. Many of you will know Lloyd from his work on Treehugger.com where he shares his deep knowledge of the world of architecture and passion for a sustainable lifestyle with a large readership. He writes well, he’s generous, and he has a fine sense of humour. He is, in short, a big hitter and it’s a privilege to have him on our side.

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The joy of the home office

We were very happy to talk to the amiable Jon Stock about his article in the Daily Telegraph, The joy of the home office. There's lots in the piece about shepherds' huts in particular. Here's a snippet, really rather a brilliant quote:

"The beauty of garden offices is that they’re not restricted by any rules of size, shape or construction material. It’s now easy to find ones which are octagonal or spherical, built on wheels, constructed partially underground or floating on water.”

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The Book Barge

A floating bookshop will be high up on many readers' list of ideal shedlike atmospheres in which to work. The Book Barge is exactly that, an entirely refurbished 57ft narrowboat which is moored at Barton Marina, Staffordshire, and run by Sarah Henshaw whose business ethic is inspired by the slow food movement. As she says: "We hope to promote a less hurried and harried lifestyle of idle pleasures, cups of tea, conversation, culture and, of course, curling up with an incomparably good Book Barge purchase."

The stock is a mix of general new and secondhand which Sarah says have been carefully selected to offer a quality alternative to high street bestseller lists including specialist sections exploring topical issues, titular oddities and travel ephemera. There is also a personal bibliotherapy service, book club and a section on the web site where you can buy pleasant literary lairs. The nicest touch is that if you live within bicyling distance, they pedal your book to you personally. And they also have a unique dinghy delivery service... Well worth a browse. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Floating garden office

Eco Floating Homes design and manufacture what they call "modern water dwellings". Who's for a floating garden office? More info here. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Manifest Destiny!

Manifest Destiny! is a temporary rustic cabin occupying one of the last remaining unclaimed spaces of downtown San Francisco—above and between other properties. The cabin is affixed to the side of the Hotel des Arts, floating above the restaurant Le Central like an anomalous outgrowth of the contemporary streetscape. Using a 19th-century architectural style and vintage building materials, the structure is both homage to the romantic spirit of the Western Myth and a commentary on the arrogance of Westward expansion. The interior space of the tiny house can be seen day and night through the curtained windows, a lonely beacon in the city’s dense landscape, and an incongruous, haunting vision from below.

Mark Reigelman
PhotographsCesar Rubio.
Via dezeen
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Sheila Blake: shedworker

Artist Sheila Blake works in this marvellous copper-sided garden office built on a sloping piece of ground in Takoma Park designed by Travis Price Architects. The entrance faces away from the main house and the whole thing rests on exposed concrete pillars. Large windows and skylights allow plenty of light into the space. The build is featured in Neal Zimmerman's excellent Home Workspace Idea Book where he likens it to a floating boat moored at a wharf.
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