I was going to write about several widely distributed, somewhat recently released, house books, so that you might add them to your holiday gift list. I was thinking of highlighting Deborah Needleman's The Perfectly Imperfect Home and Diane Keaton's House -- both pleasant diversions, but instead, I want to share with you a small-press offering: House and Home, an OrangeArt Miniature. It's a tiny 3-1/4" x 4-1/2" letterpress original by Darrell & Elisabeth Hyder of The Sun Hill Press.
It's full of sunny and/or pithy house-related quotations and intermittent tiny sketches, all bound between faded-blue, house-plan end papers. Within its pages find insight like Frank Lloyd Wright's "No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together each the happier for the other." And quips like Joan Didion's, "You have to pick the places you don't walk away from." And heart felt sentiment like Mark Twain's, "[Our house] had a heart, and a soul...we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace..."
Pick up a copy, where OrangeArt Miniature's are distributed, to savor the rest of House and Home's wisdom.
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
Pick up the April/May 2013 issue of Old-House Journal to find my story about the energy-saving retrofit of Historic New England's c. 1793 Lyman Estate in Waltham, Mass. The retrofit aims to reduce the National Historic Landmark's energy consumption by 50%, while respecting its historic character. Old-house homeowners, in general, could benefit from many of the same energy-saving strategies.
