In praise of the wood(en) shingle

A thing of beauty can sometimes come from industrial manufacture. That’s neither aesthetic heresy nor reductionist stating-of-the-blindingly-obvious.

There’s an old stave and shingle mill at The Ross Farm Museum in Nova Scotia. Every time I visit I think of what a laborious process it would have been for them to make enough shingles to re-side the local school or church.

And that was in the “olden days”.

Now they have machines telling the the machines how to forge the perfect shingle.

But it’s hard to quarrel with the outcome when all’s said and done (provided I am not the one doing the shingling, it must be acknowledged).

A wood shingled building isn’t just a symbol of this region, or an era or type of construction.

It’s a renewable work of art.

Walking by two of these the other day, I was struck by the simple grace and satisfying completeness of a (newly or latterly) wood-sided building.

Take the church in the attached photo, for example. It goes from well-worn archetype of a certain era, to vanguard of the renewal of the neighbourhood with a few wood shingles.

Or the school-turned-community centre. It goes from symbol of the idyllic past, to contemporary community-building magnet when hammer meets nail.

Both now carry themselves the way a child does with a sheriff’s badge affixed to their chest — with quiet confidence and absolute pride of place.

All without saying a word.