Coffee Table Book of: Villages (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Villages is a large format book of old villages, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: hill towns and mountain villages, stone and thatched cottages, whitewashed island villages and half timbered lanes, standing empty at many hours and in every season, with their squares, doors, windows and bare old rooms seen close.

The hill towns crown their hilltops above morning mist, rows of lavender, autumn vines and silver olive groves, under storm clouds and at sunset, with stepped lanes under stone arches, a square with its well, a fountain, a cool cellar, a terrace shaded by a vine and a white road winding up from the plain.

In the mountains, dark timber chalets with deep eaves and balconies of red geraniums stand in flowering meadows, a granary rests on stone capped posts, a covered bridge crosses a green river, firewood is stacked under the eaves and a cowbell hangs on a larch wall, while villages lie under deep snow at blue dusk, above a sea of cloud and beside a still lake in autumn.

By the sea, whitewashed villages step down to quiet coves, with blue doors and shutters, bougainvillea over the lanes, chapels under pale blue domes, a windmill on a ridge at sunset and a little boat drawn up on the pebbles. Half timbered houses lean over cobbled lanes and quiet canals, a market hall stands on oak posts and a stork nests on a chimney top.

Short notes run through the book, on how village houses were built from the stone, timber, clay and straw of the land around them, the wells, ovens, bridges and squares that village life gathered round, and how roofs, walls and windows answer sun, rain and snow: many hill towns grew on high ground that was easy to defend and clear of the damp valley floor, the bright colour of bougainvillea comes from papery bracts round its small white flowers, stone slate roofs are built steep so that rain runs quickly off the heavy, rough slates, and a bell wall carries its bells in arched openings at the top, in place of a tower.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.