Stone books for Christmas

Stone related books make great presents for your stone mad friends. Here are a few stone related books I recommend checking out if you are looking for some great christmas presents. Just remember if you're planning on ordering your books online, get ordering soon to be sure you receive them before Christmas.
Most of the links provided have free worldwide shipping. Some of the books need to be ordered from the artist's direct but I have added these links also. The prices I have shown are correct as of time of writing this post.
So in no particular order here are my recommendations for Christmas 2016:

A Legacy in Stone… The Artistry of Andreas Kunert

Andreas Kunert is a stone artist based in Victoria, Canada. He has a substantial and impressive portfolio of work. Much of his work has gone completely viral on the internet, popping up all over the place.

This book is a lovely catalogue of much of his work and a great addition to your bookshelf. 

Order this book here through the artists website 

http://www.ancientartofstone.com/a-legacy-in-stone-the-artistry-of-andreas-kunert/ 

Price $45.00 plus P&P

The Andy Goldsworthy Project

Andy Goldsworthy's beautiful ephemeral artworks have been rendered timeless in numerous photographic records. This book deals with Goldsworthy's work in nearly twenty years, and underscores the artists permanent output since 1984.

Many of his great stone creations are in this book.

A lovely chunky coffee table book. 

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €33.44 (including shipping and 20% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/qakfyka

Andy Goldsworthy : Enclosure

Reflecting Goldsworthy's lifelong interest in the landscape of the British Isles, its history, and the people who work on it, Enclosure is a collection of ephemeral work that relates to sheep, including many of his dry stone enclosures.

A lovely chunky coffee table book. 

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €33.99 (including shipping and 43% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/jt38a4u

Stone by Design: The Artistry of Lew French

More than 125 gorgeous photographs showcase the beauty of award-winning stonemason Lew French's work in eight different homes, illustrating how rounded fieldstone, gray slate, rough granite, and even curvy driftwood can be incorporated into stunning pieces of functional art. 

I did a blog post on his work a while back which you can read here.

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €29.37 (including shipping via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/n3r8cch

Lew French's new book
Released just this summer, this second book on Lew French's most recent designs includes works like the huge outdoor water feature at an office building near Boston. A residential landscape on Chappaquiddick, as well as his own retreat home in the mountains of Brazil. Also featured are his framed art pieces, puzzled together from rock and driftwood

 Fans of natural building and all kinds of masonry will be more than impressed. 

I did a blog post on his work a while back which you can read here.

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €24.90 (including shipping and 11% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/j6hll2h

Dan Snow: Listening to Stone

Listening to Stone is Dan Snows follow up to his first book  In the Company of Stone. In this second book Dan once again proves that he is not just one of America's premier artisans, but also one of our most articulate voices on the natural world and our relationship to it. Peter Mauss's tactile photographs of Snow's artistry are matched by the artisan's quietly compelling prose.

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €18.97 (including shipping and 11% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/o9ztlq7

The Complete Pebble Mosaic Handbook

Maggy Howarth is one of the world's foremost pebble mosaic experts, known for the innovative traditional and contemporary designs she has used to create outdoor mosaics around the world.

This new edition is updated, revised and expanded by 32 pages to incorporate many new inspirational designs from the author's studio, Cobblestone Designs, including an experiment in 3-D, spirals and roundels, and large mosaic designs for community spaces. There is also a special section that explores pebble mosaics as a decorative art throughout history.

The book provides practical step-by-step instructions for creating mosaics using traditional and modern materials, tools and techniques. The 400 beautiful color photographs and illustrations offer inspiration and make this a stunning how-to book and wish-book.

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €31.39 (including shipping and 6% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/hv8kg29

Corbelled Domes

Corbelled domed structures are both fascinating and ancient in technique. The process of corbeling has remained unchanged for thousands of years. The proof of this is that many of these ancient structures still stand today, a testament to their solid construction method. Renate Lobbecke has been tracking down such structures for over 25 years. On her travels in 15 countries she has captured photographs depicting this unique phenomenon of designed nature."

Definitely recommend this one. You can find it in the link below with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €45.03 (including shipping and 6% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/mdt57ag

Stone : A Legacy and Inspiration for Art

Stone: A Legacy and Inspiration for Art is a beautiful, visually stimulating book, exploring the delights of contemporary stone sculpture and stone carving. Stone is a major resource and inspiration for artists, craft-workers, and scholars in many areas, and also has huge attraction for a wider public, given its high visual impact, dramatic footage and timely re-evaluation of often hidden professions. Stone offers an introduction to the traditional techniques of stone carving and reviews methods of extraction that are dying out. The authors traveled worldwide learning, interviewing and photographing these unique processes. The photographs in this book show the stunning results. The book then goes on to look at the work of crafts people today in contemporary stone sculpture.

Click on the link below to buy with free worldwide shipping.

Price: €25.40 (including shipping and 13% off via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/hrue564

Below are some practical stone related books.

Irish Stone Walls: History, Building, Conservation by Pat McAfee

A unique history and 'how to' book on one of Ireland's most distinctive landscape features - the stone wall. The Irish countryside is a patchwork of over 250,000 miles of stone wall.

A great little book on Irish stone walls. By the great Irish waller Pat McAfee.

The Book depository have a great 18% off deal on this book at the moment so its just over €14 with free worldwide shipping. See link below

http://tinyurl.com/qy2l4hv

Dry Stone Walling. A Practical Guide

Dry Stone Walling. A Practical Guide

by Alan Brooks and Sean Adcock

159 pages 

A4 paperback, wiro-bound 

391 illustrations, by Linda Francis and Elizabeth Agate

 Dry stone walling is one of the most ancient building techniques, used worldwide where stone outcrops at the earth's surface. Britain's varied geology has produced a wide range of building styles, which demonstrate the waller's skill in making the best use of the locally available stone.

Price: £12.95 plus P&P via the link below

http://tinyurl.com/j644xkz

How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls : Design and Build Walls, Bridges and Follies Without Mortar

Author John Shaw-Rimmington explains how to build a dry stacked stone wall, coursed walling, bridges, follies and more. He explains the important principles that contribute to the structural integrity of each. He covers all of the essential elements of dry stone building: * Design; * The foundation; * Packing or backfilling within the wall; * Slope of a wall face, an 'A' profile provides stability; * Bridge stones that span the width of the wall; * Coping, the top stones of a wall; * Weight-bearing stones in an arch, bridge, dome, etc. Shaw-Rimmington then guides the reader through the building process. With dedication to the task and the author's experienced guidance, the only limit is imagination. Click on the link below to buy with free shipping.

Price: €18.86 (including shipping and 23% off via the link below) http://tinyurl.com/hs8cdfa

The Art of the Stonemason

A fifth-generation stonemason discusses how to choose stone, build a wall on sloping ground, circular walls, windowsills, fireplaces, stairs, arches and hunchbacked bridges. 

A great practical guide to building stone features for anyone with some experience in stone building.

Click on the link below to buy with free shipping.

Price: €20.14 (including shipping via the link below)

http://tinyurl.com/lxnyfhf

Europe’s field boundaries

Written in two volumes 

Georg Muller has written a most wonderful book called 'Europe's Field Boundaries in 2 volumes. Georg basically spent the last 30 years traveling around Europe surveying dry stone walls, hedged banks etc in most European countries (Ireland, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Greece etc etc)

The books have almost 1300 pages and 5000 colour images. 

The books are beautifully bound with gold leaf and are a very special collection indeed, they are a real investment and highly recommendable. 

Information on how to order the books in the link below

Price for the two volumes together is €289 plus P&P

http://www.wallhecke.de/

This is just a few of the great stone related books that are out there. I have lots more book recommendations in the book recommendations section of my blog here. 

Jeffrey Bale's Mosaic Pilgrimage, a labour of love, a labour of pebbles!

Lotus Medallion Patio in San Francisco

Many of you may already be familiar with the work of Jeffery Bale, but for those of you who aren’t, I feel the need to share his work with you. I am a big fan of mosaics. One of my favourite city to visit is Barcelona, mainly because of all the wonderful mosaics of Gaudi that decorate much of the city. I have even ventured to make a few mosaics myself upon occasion (see my blog post on making mosaics) but nothing as large, detailed or impressive as the mosaics of Jeffery.

Jeffery at work

For Jeffery Bale, gardens and stones are not just his passion and his livelihood, they are instilled in his blood, passed on through a family history of gardeners and geologists. Quite possibly on some kind of subconscious level, these family genetics helped pave the way for his future carer. Jeffery likes to think so anyway. It would also explain why he developed a passion for these traits at a very young age.

Following his passion for gardening, Jeffery graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Oregon in 1981, but after a short stint working a desk job designing for a landscaping firm, Jeffery felt the need to get his hands dirty.

He spent the next few years experimenting in friends gardens and gaining onsite experience, before in 1987 deciding to set out on a sort of mosaic pilgrimage, to go and see the gardens of the Alhambra in Granada and ParqueGuell in Barcelona as the images of these places had mesmerized him back in college, and stayed with him long after.

Round step stone with marbles, Indonesian Turquoise, Red Montana Rainbow, Black Mexican Beach and center beach stone

Jeffery began his ‘mosaic pilgrimage’ travelling to Madrid in Spain  and then on to Lisbon, Portugal, and like any good pilgrimage, it didn’t take him long to have an epiphany.  Here, standing in a city encrusted in mosaics made from small hand split blocks of white limestone and black basalt,  every plaza and sidewalk had a different design, everywhere he went he was looking at marvellous decorative pavements, something he had never seen back home. So this was it. Jeffery Bale from of Eugene, Oregon, USA felt destined to return home to America to replace its concrete pavements with stones and jewels.

So when he returned home he set to work on a patio for his newly purchased home in N.E. Portland.  His design was inspired after reading the ‘Tao of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra.  Not really knowing the methods of construction in Spain, he developed his own technique, setting the pebbles in a bed of wet mortar.

From here Jeffery honed his mosaicing skills by creating mosaics whenever the opportunity arose, mainly making mosaics for friends and family.  It wasn’t until a few years later that he convinced a client in Northwest Portland to let him build a pebble mosaic patio for him, along with a mosaic path and parking strip pavements.  The patio is a 12 by 18 foot Persian Carpet. This patio would later be photographed by Alan Mandell and Jerry Harpur of England, being published several times, and even making the cover of Landscape Architecture Magazine in August of 2005.

The Persian Carpet

 Suddenly Jeffery was not just a garden designer anymore, he was bonafide pebble mosaic artist as well, meaning that he could frequently incorporate these lovely mosaics into many of his projects.

Parking Strip mosaic Mother giving birth with the moon in her hair

Looking at one of Jeffery’s mosaic creation, one can begin to appreciate the time and effort that must have been put in to create it. Each stone has been carefully placed by colour, shape and size to fit into these wonderful shapes and patterns. But what one might easily overlook is that every single stone in each mosaic has not only been laid by Jeffery, they have also been painstakingly picked by him. 

Jeffery carefully selecting stones in a big heap of Montana Rainbow  Pebble Mix 

 "I’ve spent a fair amount of my adult life gathering the materials needed to build these mosaics.  Each pebble is selected for shape and sorted by color, whether beach combing or sitting on piles of rainbow rock in a stone yard.  I have to look at every single one to discern whether it will fit amongst the thousands of it’s brethren."  Jeffery Bale 

'Council Ring’ fire pit. Most of the stone for this project was gathered from the beach below the property, giving it a strong connection to it’s setting.

Cyphers and Constellations in Love with a Woman, inspired by the paintings of Joan Miro 

One of my personal favorite pieces by Jeffery is actually the footpath below. It makes up part of a number of mosaics around one of his clients houses. The group of mosaics are inspired by the paintings of Spanish painter Joan Miro (including the mosaic 'Mother giving birth with the moon in her hair')

Molalla stone footpath with another mosaic inspired by Miro's work 

I love the simplicity of the footpath. The skilfully arranged Molalla flagstones are cut and tightly fitted together, with the gaps filled with pebble mosaic which connects to the other Miro inspired mosaics in the garden.  Jeff also cleverly incorporated gaps between the rectangle pads to allow for permeability in the pavement, and for the garden to flow through the work in planted lines.

 'The River of Life'

The ‘mosaic pilgrimage’ that Jeffery set out on back in 1987, is in fact one that he continues throughout his career. When ever the opportunity arises Jeffery sets off to get inspired by the different cultures and mosaics from around the world. 

Looking through his portfolio of work you can see much of what he has taken back home with him from socking in these different cultures.

The Moroccan inspired Sunken Garden

Jeffery has a wonderful blog that I recommend checking out. In his blog Jeffery documents his ‘mosaic pilgrimage’ sharing many of the wonderful mosaic sites, architecture, culture and mind blowing colours from around the world. http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com

Mosaic inspiration from Jeffery's blog

Moroccan inspired fire pit. The pit is built up of bands of pebble mosaic using black and gold Mexican beach pebbles, which are then capped with a band of eight pointed stars matching the other mosaics in the garden.  

Islamic Geometry in a small patio in one of Jeffery's gardens in Portland

Brazilian Carnival inspired mosaic parking strip

Lotus Step Stone Path.The lotus blossoms, alluding to a Buddhist Jataka Tale about Sidhartha Gautama being born, and having lotus blossoms spring from his footprints.

Full Moon Spiral Mosaic

There is much more amazing work by Jeffery that I was hoping to share with you, but as this post is starting to get quite long I will leave it at that. To see more information about Jeffery and more photos of his work check out his website http://www.jeffreygardens.com.

For a more complete and comprehensive look at Jeffery's work, I highly recommend getting a copy of his self-published book 'The Gardens of Jeffery Bale' This book along with other publications by Jeffery can be ordered online through the following link Books by Jeffery Bale

And don't forget to check out his wonderful blog http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.com.

Thanks to Jeffery Bale for his kind permission for the use of the photos and writings from his website and blog for this post.