Book Reviews
Book Reviews Colin Brooker. The Shell Builders: Tab- preservation consultant, has provided by Architecture of Beaufort, South Car- it. Brooker explores tabby from every olina, and the Sea Islands. Columbia, conceivable angle, including its chem- SC: University of South Carolina Press, istry, antecedents, variants, history, www.sc.edu/uscpress, 2020. 320 pp., and literature, and writes with winning illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ease. His research is impeccable, and US $39.99, paper; ISBN 978-1-64336- his knowledge of the material profound. 072-0. He has seemingly investigated every surviving remnant of the stuff, from Coastal concrete, or tabby, as they call it an old foundation repurposed under a in the Carolina and Georgia Lowcoun- Daufuskie Island lighthouse to a crum- try. No history-minded traveler there bling chimney base situated by a Hil- can miss it—that delightfully practical ton Head baseball diamond. But even concoction of lime, sand, and oyster more interesting than Brooker’s archi- shell that was used to erect brooding tectural knowledge, is his cast of char- river forts, plantation big houses, slave acters—“landowners … sea captains, dwellings, barns, sugar mills, cisterns, pirates, merchants and speculators, rice gates, seawalls, and box tombs. politicians, governors, an occasional Tabby was fashioned from the ocean’s clergyman, one or two signers of the bounty and spread largely by means Declaration of Independence, several of naval power. Surviving examples, heiresses … and women widowed with backgrounded by spreading marsh, fortunes large enough to fuel ambitions placid estuaries, and moss-hung live of suitors and new husbands alike.” (9) oaks eloquently conjure up a culture Who knew that such a modest com- tuned to its distinctive environment.
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