Coffee Table Book of: Barns (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Barns is a large format book of barns, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: red barns, round and eight sided barns, bank barns, stone, brick and log barns and painted barn quilts, standing empty at many hours and in every season, with their haylofts, stables and old tools seen close.

Barns stand in deep snow at blue dusk and in heavy falling snow, beside a still farm pond in autumn, at the edge of ripe wheat and among round hay bales, under a towering summer storm, a starry sky with fireflies and soft spring rain, while a round barn stands in a snowy dawn and an eight sided barn beside an apple tree in blossom.

Bank barns are built into green hillsides with earth ramps to their upper doors, a stone barn shows rows of narrow slits in its gable, a brick barn a diamond of open gaps, a log barn the open passage between its two pens and a tall barn the hay hood at its peak, while painted quilt blocks of stars and nine patches hang high on weathered gables.

Inside are a hayloft barred with sunlight, a threshing floor between great open doors, a stable aisle, the stone lower floor of a bank barn, a granary, curved and gambrel lofts and the rafters of a round barn meeting like the spokes of a wheel. Close at hand hang a hay hook, a lantern, a scythe, a horse collar and an ox yoke, while swallows nest on a beam, a cat sleeps in the hay and a barn owl waits at the loft door.

Other barns are returning to the land: a roofless stone barn full of young birches, a grey barn sagging in tall prairie grass, a lone silo where its barn has gone, a leaning barn under red creeper, a bare frame in goldenrod and a stone foundation filled with summer wildflowers.

Short notes run through the book, on how barns were built and framed, how they stored hay and grain and sheltered animals, and how their shapes answer weather, work and the lie of the land: a bank barn is built into a slope, so wagons can drive onto the upper floor from the uphill side, the upper floor of a bank barn often juts out over the stable doors, keeping rain and snow off them, corn cribs were built narrow with slatted sides so the wind could dry the ears stored inside, and the hood at the peak of a barn gable sheltered the hay track and the loft door from rain and snow.

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