My Mind full of Miniatures

Well, as I said in my previous post, I jumped right in after I decided to make a dollhouse for the dollhouse. I found that I enjoyed working at this scale much more than I had anticipated. So I was really disappointed that the showpiece was finished so quickly. Besides, there's no kitchen, no dining room, no bath, no ... So many possibilities I'd missed. So many little things I could have made from scratch. What to do? After thinking about it for a while I decided that an extension was necessary. There was only one option: build it on top of the existing cabinet. I remember seeing some house shaped cabinets in my book ‘Victorian & Edwardian furniture & interiors’ by Jeremy Cooper. Like this ‘Architecture Cabinet’ (1858) by William Burges. And this writing cabinet by W. Gualbert Saunders. This secretaire by Richard Norman Shaw became the inspiration for the shape of the extension. The floor and walls are made of 2mm thick chipboard, the roof is made of cardbo...

The first piece of furniture I started with for this room, illustrates my point I made at the end of my second blogpost: it wasn’t planned to be in this room (not such a clear vision after all) . I also didn't stick to my intention to make as much as possible from scratch. It is a generic piece with wide availability. Not a good start… Well, in my defense: I found the cabinet in a grab box at a fair for a very low price and I liked the color and the shape. It was last year, at the very beginning of my dollhouse journey and I couldn’t resist, although I didn’t have a destination for it. Until I found some more pieces I couldn’t resist, at another fair: tiny 1:144 scale furniture. I realized that the shape of the cabinet was very similar to the well-known Dutch dollhouses from the 17th century (the ones from Petronella Oortman, Petronella Dunois and Petronella de la Court - that I was fortunate enough to see all three in person this January! ). And I had already decided I wanted ...

Victorians installed wall-to-wall carpeting in almost all their rooms. What a filthy affair that must have been! Burning coal fireplaces, streets full of dirt and ash, … and no vacuum cleaner! Eastlake thought this was an objectionable fashion. He recommended a parquetry border projecting two or three feet from the wall all around with a carpet in between. Here are some examples he gives: Exquisite! But far too difficult for a first attempt at making a parquet floor in miniature. At 23.8 by 26.9 cm my morning room is a small space, so I went for something much simpler: an oak veneer strip floor with a border consisting of two narrow walnut veneer strips. I kept the pattern in the middle section simple as I'm stitching a rug that will cover this part almost completely. I started by making a template from 1mm thick MDF and cut strips from 15mm wide oak edge banding that I ironed on the MDF. The border is cut from a sheet of walnut veneer and glued on. Each walnut strip is 2...