Image Gallery

Teeny library cottage on the Mud Dauber campus

Cob wall on campus, with a base coat of clay plaster

earthen floor with local red clay

Sculptural plaster in our daughter’s straw bale bedroom

bookshelf out of cob, with coats of lime plaster

Moon Cottage on the Mud Dauber campus

pigmented clay paint in the Moon Cottage

the colors of our local clay soils!

Slip straw wall (aka light straw clay) in progress

Our dining area and community space during workshops

Hempcrete (hemp-lime) workshop with Tim Callahan and April Magill

The straw bale “classroom” on our campus

An earthen plastered bedroom, in our straw bale home

The Heartwood and Sapwood cottages, with cob and straw bale garden walls, in different stages of completion.

the dining building, in progress

The original cottage at Mud Dauber School. It was constructed in 2014, completely with cob (no framing, and no straw bales!)

a cozy writing hut for a local author

strawbale writing studio with salvaged windows

green-pigmented clay alis paint, over clay plaster

dorodangos!

the dock + shade structure at our pond - built with roundwood from our forest and locally-milled cedar, it has been serving us since 2013.

permitted strawbale cottage in Chapel Hill, NC

a workshop group from 2017 taking a campus tour past the Cattail Cottage

a greenhouse/bathhouse hybrid building, with many different wall systems: cob, straw bale, slip-straw, wattle-and-daub, form cob, straw braids, bamboo, etc… 2017 workshop

the greenhouse side of our greenhouse/bathhouse hybrid structure

Leo brings his legos to play with an impressive cob model made by a student

this curvy cob wall in our addition allowed for us to sculpt build-in shelving really easily (just cut into the cob with a machete when it’s “leather hard”)

roundwood framing for a roof over a new cob oven building site

initial layer of plaster over an insulation layer

building a cob oven

smooth clay plaster

lime plaster and cob shelves in a bathroom

retroactively installing a chimney pipe through a green roof

cutting out cracked areas in a decorative way - preparing for a repair

finish layer of earthen floor repair - next step would be burnishing, then letting dry completely, and then 4 coats of linseed oil

embedding metal shelf brackets into the strawbale/plaster wall system

pottery-grade clay finish plaster over a site-clay scratch plaster