Cottages by the Sea: The Handmade Homes of Carmel, America's First Artist Community

If you're into Carmel like I am, you'll love this book, perfect to browse through when you get sentimental and miss Carmel and it's beauty... I keep it at my coffee table, so guests who've never been there can look, ooh and ahh, and daydream of what it might be like to go there. Nice and thoughoh, <--sp? but yeah, it's a great, great book, definately buy, if anything just for the pretty pix.

I keep this book nearby, like a bouquet, to look at from time to time for the simple pleasure of it. The pages convey not only thearchitecture of a period and place, but the personality of an era.This is a companion book; to be cherished forever.

I'm not sure how attractive this book would be to the general public. For me, it reveals the stories behind many of the houses I grew up with. As a Carmel native, I enjoyed learning the stories and histories of many of our local homes. The photographs are nicely done, and the text tells the information in an interesting presentation. I do wish that a local map had been included, to help pinpoint the location of some of these homes.

I opened this book as one would a box of expensive hand-crafted Belgian chocolates and savored each page. The photos are luscious, the text tart and logical. Interior and exterior views of cottages and Jeffer's stone tower remind one of European villages.Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" and "Creating the Not So Big House" are both good, yes, but nothing in them sets off the same resonate sensation as seeing "Cottages by the Sea." This is what real homes can be: shelters for the mind, body and spirit, places of rest, security and inspiration.I'd write more, but excuse me---I'm booking a trip to Carmel.

My wife and I traveled to beautiful Carmel-by-the-Sea in October. It was our first visit to that part of the US. I must say that we found all of the surrounding seashore from Big Sur to Monterey spectacular and unique.During our all-too-brief stay in Carmel, we walked the tree-shaded streets and explored the white sand beach. We could see houses and cottages half-hidden behind spectacular foliage and vine-covered walls. They looked lived in and inviting. Of course, we strolled more or less randomly, following Carmel's narrow lanes where they would lead us.At a local bookshop we purchased a copy of Cottages by the Sea. This excellent volume showed us what no uninvited guests could view on their own. We dreamed of being able to enter the gates that its author and her photographer did, and to view the warm interiors of the cottages whose exteriors we glimpsed. We were heartened by the author's quiet but firm thoughts about preserving Carmel, and villages like it from development and unplanned `progress.'We had not known about Carmel's `artistic' past, and this book led us not only to Tor House, but to the poems of Robinson Jeffers, a volume of which we found in another shop. The illustrations in this book are wonderful. The text provides a brief history of a place that I can assume is like no other in America-or in the world.We have one complaint. Some of the reproductions of documents and plans were too small to be legible. Perhaps they could be enlarged in a later edition? But all in all, this book added much to our experience of Carmel, and we highly recommend it to anyone who loves this type of modest domestic architecture. We have bought copies for our friends in the UK who plan to visit the US. And because of it, we hope to return to Carmel.