The Craftsman Builder

Dust jacket flap notes: "Four years ago, Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro published a photographic celebration of man's creativity in the best-selling Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutcher's Art. Fifteen thousand miles later, The Craftsman Builder continues the author's and photographer's exploration of the hidden architectural artistry of unknown craftsmen in America. Here the artists who have built their homes with their own hands display extraordinary ingenuity and imagination in their use of wood, ferro-cement, glass, and stone. the carpenters themselves are as different from one another as their work: some naive, some sophisticated, men and women, middle class and working class, black and white, radical and conservative. but they all share a single-minded dedication to well-crafted buildings that are designed with individuality and structured with care and pride. Some of these houses settle into windswept marshlands: others pull the natural surroundings into themselves through glass, stone, and plants. The Craftsman Builder depicts, in even greater detail than Handmade Houses, the evolution of owner-built homes in the United States. It is written and designed with the same pride and individuality that distinguish these houses."