When Sampsa first contacted me about building a masonry heater in a hands-on workshop, he already had drawings for a custom-made soapstone fireplace with an adjacent oven designed by Tulikivi in Finland. Working off these ...

In America, the first wood heating devices in the historic era were large open fireplaces. To this were added wood fired ovens, some on the back wall of the fireplace and some to the side of the fireplace. In the middle to late eighteen hundreds cast iron cookstoves were invented. ...

One of the great masonry heater designers and researchers of the mid twentieth century was a Finnish researcher named Asp. When I (Albie) began my journeys to Finland in the late seventies, my Helsinki, Finland friend, Heikki Hyytiainen, made mention of Asp's work and we were able to find one of ...

Sampsa Kiuru decided to install a Finnish masonry heater in his national eco design award winning home in New Zealand. Four features set Sampsa's heater apart from other heaters ...

Every indigenous culture has its origin and fire legends. At the Auckland, N.Z. museum, I caught a glimpse of the Maori fire legends in a tape loop being shown there. A native speaker explains that in Maori legend fire is a gift of the sun....