Tudor restoration

After a long break in house restoration I felt I should turn my attention to my other houses since Womble Hall is more or less presentable. The Tudor house hasn't suffered as much as Womble Hall, and the worst damage was totally my own fault. After I had unpacked the house, I left it unattended overnight, and it was attacked by wild beasts who managed to pull it down from the table onto the floor, during which the roof went off.

I feel strong affection for the Tudor house, because it was found in a dump, and I restored it and added a lot of details both inside and outside. I did extensive research on various period-correct features, and although I would never say that a project is finished, the Tudor house was as complete as it can be. It was even featured in a dollhouse magazine.

Just as with Womble Hall, this is an excellent occasion to revise and improve some things. It has been eight years since I did the main work on the Tudor, and I haven't done much on it once it was sort of done. There are many things I would do differently and probably better today, and there are things that simply need repair.

The first thing was to mend the roof, and fortunately all shingles were somewhere inside the house, and I had spares from when I first made the roof. So it was first a matter of gluing loose shingles back and then fixing the roof on the house.

Before going on with interior details I decided to do something I had been planning all along but never got round to. The house clearly used to have a front that could be closed and opened. Right now it is more important than ever because it needs to be protected from wild beasts, but hopefully also keep off at least some dust. 

I cut the front from a large piece of board which I otherwise use for bookbinding, another hobby I have. It has an irregular shape because the three stories of the house go over each other, as they did in Tudor times to diminish land tax. The board is very thick, and cutting it is always a pain. 

I could not mix an exact match of the yellow paint, but I don't think it matters. Then I made timber frames both on the outside and the inside. 

I used cardboard boxes for "timber" - I am a recycler. 

There were hinges left from when the house had a front, but because my front was made of board rather than wood I could not use the metal hinges. Instead, I made hinges from pieces of leather. The hook that kept the front in place was still there, and I had an eyelet. 

I must admit that I had not noticed the hook before. 

Now I can close and open the house which is both convenient and neat. 

Next, I had to mend the interior. 

At some point, I installed display lights in this house. They weren't working, and I decided to remove them altogether. I wasn't quite happy with them even when they did work, and nowadays there are better technologies in case I want display lights again. 

I started with solar - the upper floor with the great bed.

It was in a better shape than I had feared, but the bed itself was broken. It was, however, easy to mend, and I also added side curtains. 

The solar was thus finished. I didn't add or change anything for the time being.

 

With the great hall and the kitchen I wanted a few more radical changes.

In the past weeks I have been making food from polymer clay. I have already shown my bakery and my greengrocer stall. I borrowed some bread and some veggies to go into the Tudor house. Tudors ate lots of bread, in all social groups. They were not too keen on vegetables, and at that time what was available was mostly cabbage and onions. 

But they were all the more fond of meats. I had meats in my old Tudor kitchen, but as I develop better skills in clay sculpting, I started replacing old meats, mostly made in air-drying clay, with more elaborate ones in fimo. I have used several books for instructions.

I started with ham, steak and leg of mutton, then made a variety of sausages.

 

These hang in front of the inglenook in the kitchen. I have removed objects from the middle and front for better view. 

Yes, there is a pig roasting in the fire!

I made pies and cheeses. 

 

I know the Tudors made cheddar. Not sure about stilton, but it's visually gratifying so it will have to be inauthentic.

Then I had a great test of confidence. The mandatory piece on a Tudor fest table is a boar head. If you told me even a month ago that I would be bold enough to make a boar head from polymer clay I'd say, no way. But I considered it for a while and thought: What do I have to lose? If I fail, I will just knead the clay into a ball and make something else. Again, I followed instructions from a book, telling myself that the artist is after all a human being, working with the same materials and tools as I, so why wouldn't I be able to make it? Judge for yourself. 

 

With these new additions, the great hall has become much more impressive. 

The chicken is the only thing I haven't made myself, but after boar head I am sure I can make anything. 

The full view of great hall: 

 

What I suddenly became aware of, which I believe is the result of my recent evolution as a miniature-maker, is that the furniture looks improbably new. Which of course it is. When I made it, eight years ago, I had no idea how to distress furniture and also would never dare to. So this is something I will need to do next: age and distress the table and benches. Now I have the necessary tools and skills. This is the exciting thing about going back to an old project: you see how much better you have become.

In the kitchen I knew I had to make some sacrifices. I have lots of lovely antique pewter stuff and lots of things I made to look like pewter, some even before I had the Tudor house. For many years I just kept squeezing everything into the house, and in the end you cannot see anything properly. So I deselected almost half of the objects that used to be in the kitchen, on various criteria: size, authenticity and also how they fit in with everything else.

I re-assembled the trestle table and arranged the remaining items on and around it. 

I will stop here for a while. A project is never finished, but at least I won't be ashamed to show this house to a visitor. 

Fruit and vegetable market stall, finished

 I will not keep you in suspense about my market stall display. Here is the final project: 

I must admit that I didn't spend a lot of time making the display, but I am still quite happy with it. 

I used the market stall I had before, with al the stuff I have now discarded, but of course it was too small for the amount of produce to display. 

Therefore I made a simple diorama from cardboard, then made two long benches to put crates on. I wasn't very careful with crates either. I probably won't keep this display and will use veggies and fruit in other projects, for instance in my Victorian house and even in my Tudor house, although Tudors weren't too keen on vegetables. 

In fact, I have already used a lot of these minis for a different project. And now it's time to move on. 

If you are curious about what I am doing, here are some pictures. 

 

 

 

 

These are stitch markers, and they are for sale. If you are interested, let me know. 

Fruit and vegetable market stall, part 2

I could of course make more vegetables for my market stall, like Brussels sprouts (ugh!), avocado, various lettuces and cabbages, but somehow it would be repetitive, and anyway I wanted to leave room for fruit. I had made fruit before as well, mostly apples and oranges because they are easy to make from air-drying clay. I also dried berries that look like fruit, and I made a pineapple from a pine cone. 

 

 

But now I wanted to use my newly acquired sculpting skills to make more realistic fruit. And a larger variety of fruit. 

Unless you make sliced fruit (which I will do at some point) I think fruit is easier than vegetables because they do not need as much work on texture. They are sort of smooth - although not oranges of course. 

 

I found two techniques on the web for making oranges, and for these I pricked them with a toothpick, then rolled a crumpled ball of aluminium foil over them. The other method that I haven't tested was to roll them in salt before baking, then dip them in water to dissolve the salt. You can also use sandpaper. Oranges did not need additional painting because they have even colouring. 

 

I then made apples, and I decided on green apples for colour variation. As with vegetables (and oranges) you cannot just use commercial clay. With oranges, I added white and yellow, and with apples I mixed and mixed until I was happy with the colour. Apples have  a deeper indent on top, and I used a silicon tool to form it, but a toothpick would have worked too. Then I shaded one side of each apple with several layers of chalk pastels. 

 

I will probably make several other apple sorts - there are so many, green, yellow and red. 

From apples, it was a natural step to pears: more or less the same technique, just shaping each ball into a pear shape. Again, mixing several colours of clay, then shading with pastels. 

 

Pears, too, come in different colours and even shapes so there is room for further creations. But I moved on to peaches. They are a bit like bell peppers, with prominent indents along both sides: 

 

 

I made apples, pears and peaches without consulting any tutorials, just looking at my full-size fruit bowl. But when it came to bananas I felt I needed instructions, which I found in a book. The opening sentence of banana instructions was a revelation: bananas are not round, but square. I didn't have bananas in my fruit bowl, but I looked on the web, and while before reading that book I would have sworn that bananas were round, I could clearly see that they weren't. Which is just another example of how much you learn from miniature-making. The true shape of bananas is essential knowledge. 

So for bananas you make a square rather than round "sausage" (the book I consulted called it prism) before cutting it into suitable lengths and then sculpting them at ends and bending. Partially following the instructions, I painted the ends of my bananas with light green pastel before baking, but then painted the stalk and the opposite end with brown acrylic and used the same acrylic for lines and spots along the edges. (There is, by the way, a reason why I made individual fruit rather than a bunch).

 

 

 

I am really pleased with my bananas. I had never expected myself to be capable of making bananas so I am getting much more confident about my skills.

Finally, I made water melons. Most melon instructions are for sliced melons where you need very complicated colour transition with five shades of pink. I made whole melons which still involved a lot of work to produce realistic stripes. You put tiny strings of a different colour onto your melon, distress it with a toothpick, then roll and shape until you have a smooth surface. I can see in the picture that it isn't smooth enough, but there isn't much I can do about it now. 

I also made some melon halves and slices, which needs, as I said, elaborated colour transition and a lot of texture work, as well as inserting seeds. 

 

 

 

 

I am not quite happy with these, but I have tried and will need to practice more. But for the time being, I varnished all my fruit, although peaches should probably not be so shiny - let's say they are nectarines.

 

There are many more fruits I could make: lemons, plums, grapes, figs - even before I move on to something more exotic like papaya, mango or passion fruit. However, once again, I only have limited space in my market stall. I am sure you are already puzzled how I am going to display my produce. You may have noticed all the various wooden crates I have made from cheese boxes and coffee stirrers. They all need space. So come back soon to see how I have solved the issue. 

 

 

To be continued.