Queen Anne table

This weekend my group is making tables. There are three very elegant Queen Anne tables in the collection, and I have already made one.

This one was different, although after I had made it, I realised that it is very hard to judge from the cover picture just what the finished piece would be, size-wise. For instance, it is only after I had made it that I realised that the bachelor's chest was smaller than other chests.

 

You cannot tell from the picture that this table is higher than the tea table. Or maybe you can. Maybe I don't look carefully.

Anyway, after I had conscientiously sanded and stained the kit I suddenly felt that I had enough of mahogany tables, but could perhaps make something different. There isn't much room left in the house for more occasional tables, but what if I made a dressing table for the bathroom? The description says that these tables were sometimes used as dressing tables. A bathroom piece also allowed a shabby look.

I painted the bits on top of stain, and as it turned out, I didn't even have to paint over and wipe, but the stain showed through the paint in a most artistic way. I did wipe away the white a bit.

 

Assembly was easy, the drawer fitted fine (unlike the latest chest I had so much trouble with), and I found interesting knobs.

 

I replaced a small table I had had in the bathroom for ever. Nothing wrong with it, but this one is much nicer.

Chippendale dressing table

Some time ago, I had an epiphany as I was looking through pictures from one of my Facebook groups. Clever people have been imaginative and painted Chippendale kit furniture in various colours, added different knobs and generally made something different than prescribed. It was a liberation to realise that all Chippendale miniatures don't necessarily have to be mahogany and that I could use my imagination to make something truly unique.

In this group, we had a weekend challenge and everybody who had the kit made the same piece, a three-drawer chest, all using different ideas. I will show mine some other time.

Now I will show what I made this weekend. I got another lowboy kit in one of my bundles, and since I had already made a mahogany lowboy, I thought I could make a different one. The instruction says that lowboys were used for various purposes, including as ladies' dressing tables, and this was an interesting idea. Of course I already have a dressing table in the master bedroom, upcycled from a Poundland piece, replacing an earlier piece replacing a still earlier piece. But this is a huge problem with Chippendale furniture: once you have started with them, everything else feels unsatisfactory.

Thus, full of guilt as always, when I replace an earlier piece, I made the lowboy. Now, my aspiration was to find the right colour. My all-purpose antique white felt wrong, and I also wanted the shade to match a Carin Backlund chair I have in this room. So my first attempt was to mix antique white with pure white. Which just tells you how little I know about mixing colours.

 

This  was yesterday evening, and I realised that I probably needed daylight for such a delicate task. Just before I fell asleep it struck me that the Backlund chair colour was bluish (18th-century bluish white, which is just right for this project). So in the morning I added a drop of light blue to pure white and also diluted the paint quite a bit.

It is still not exactly the same shade,  and I will never get it exactly the same. I won't re-paint the chair because it is an artist piece, but it it close enough, and I am happy. It really looks much, much more authentic than the antique white. I added golden beads for knobs and painted the leg balls gold - not quite sure about the latter, but it can be changed.

The inside of drawers is painted light blue because that's how it was done.

 

There will be all kinds of lady stuff in the drawers.


Here is the dressing table in its room. I found a suitable mirror to hang in front of it.

I feel terribly guilty toward the old dressing table. I had put so much love into it. But it cannot be helped. See for yourself: which do you prefer?

 

But maybe I can use the old one in some other project.

More tiny details that matter

I have made a slight improvement to my dressing table by adding fancy metal handles (bead caps). Spot the difference:

Dressing table makeover

A couple of weeks ago one of my dollhouse groups started sharing pictures of their bargains from Poundland. I must admit that Poundland is not my prioritised shopping target, and since it moved from the shopping mall where I park when I visit my hairdresser I hadn't been there. But the bargains were too good and besides a challenge: I like making ugly things pretty. Not that they are really ugly, but not quite the furniture you put in your dollhouse and feel proud of.

As a first try, I made a seat for one of the chairs: 

I am not sure I am happy with the result, but I don't know yet where these chairs are going. 

My next attempt was a dressing table: 

There is nothing radically wrong with it, but it is plain. Plain things beg to be made over.

I made a dressing table for my Victorian house some time ago.

 

I still like it, but because of the clothes-peg legs it is larger than 1:12, and when I put a chair in front of it, it looked ridiculous. And anyway, it was time to make something new. I like the ornate mirror, so I decided to keep it. As I was looking for a suitable contraption to fix the mirror, I found a plastic ice-cream spoon. If you think it's a strange way of fixing a mirror on a dressing table, let me tell you that my genuine eighteenth-century dressing table is made exactly like this (although admittedly not with a plastic spoon).

Then I painted the table ivory-white, and just to show how a tiny detail makes a difference, here are pictures of before and after I added a length of lace on the front:

Here it is now in its interior, and the scale is right to go with the chair. The perfume bottles, by the way, are made of beads.

Collecting

I have repeatedly stated that I am a maker, not a collector, but I have recently succumbed to a number of purchases that have taken me off my maker's trajectory. The interesting thing about buying an unusual piece, such as the Marx clock, is that, if you are curious like me, you learn a lot. Sometimes it is something every miniaturist knows, or should know, but I am, as noted, not a collector, and I really don't know much about dollhouse and toy companies.

Last week in Stockholm, a friend took me on an antique shop round, which we usually do when we meet. I was tempted, and I fell. I could have fallen for more, but I showed character. This is what I bought:

I didn't have any particular project in mind, but I couldn't resist it. I think that by now I recognise an interesting piece when I see it.

In fact, the only piece I recognised was the Arne Jacobsen chair, The Egg.

 

I learned about Jacobsen when I was in Copenhagen some years ago, staying in a hotel that had Jacobsen furniture and folders explaining it. They also sold models in 1:6 scale, which I refrained from buying. I had since then been scouting for the Lundby-scale Egg on ebay, and it turns up every now and then, fetching fancy prices. I paid a fancy price for this one, but somehow it is different when you hold it in your hand. It feels authentic in a way you cannot be certain about a picture on ebay. Of course I know that sellers "age" their merchandise, but I am pretty sure that this chair is a genuine Jacobsen from the late '50s. (And if it isn't, I don't care).

Another piece that needed some research was this sofa:

The piece of paper says "Dollhouse furniture, architect J Udd". The person in the shop could not provide any further information. Web search yielded meagre results. "Architect J Udd produced models of dollhouse furniture of good quality in a nice, period-correct '50s design. Produced in the Gothenburg area". Hmmm... helpful. More search. Picture! Just like mine. "Fantastic sofa by architect J Udd. He produced his furniture during the '40s and 50s outside Leksand". Right, slightly contradictory information, but someone in my miniature group confirmed that John Udd made dollhouse furniture and lived in Dalecarlia, not far from Leksand. My miniature-collecting cousin said she had some furniture by Udd, and yet another virtual friend displayed a whole dollhouse of Udd furniture. So now I know that I have a rare piece, but so far I haven't been able to find any further information about the mysterious architect, not on the web, not in the National Encyclopedia or Who Is Who. Investigation continues.

First attempts

Let me tell you something: this kit was of very poor quality. Not like the elaborate x-acto, and not like the Swedish Kotte-toys, laser-cut with great precision. Half the bits were not cut through properly and broke, or I had to use a craft knife. How they suppose a six-year-old can do this - I don't know. (Although I have no idea what six-year-olds can and cannot do. Will see next week when the grandchildren are visiting).

Like with all kits, as I have learned, sandpaper until you drop dead. Again, because the quality of wood is poor, the result was still not quite satisfactory. There are no proper instructions, just numbered parts, so it isn't even clear what piece you are assembling. Or maybe I am stupid. Anyway, I just started with the first sheet where some things were missing.

I cannot say that this furniture is particularly elegant. To be frank, it's clumsy. The bits do not fit well. But it was an interesting experience.

And after I painted the pieces and added some details it doesn't look all that bad. For a first sttempt.

New bedroom

I start with the bedroom. I was stingy and recycled the old wallpaper, but I didn't have enough for the bedroom, so this is from the old drawing room. The top rooms have quite high ceilings that go well beyond the front of the cabinet (and were terribly uncomfortable to paint), so I decided to leave the upper part of the walls white, which was not uncommon at the time. I used furniture ribbon for cornice. I also recycled the old paper floors, but one day I will make real floors as I have done in the other rooms. The door opens into the bathroom, just as in the old house. The new detail in the bedroom is the wardrobe, or armoire, a word I didn't know until recently. It was a hard decision to replace my own creation with a more elaborate one, and I only did it because the armoire came as a part of a huge lot I bought from ebay. Since I keep moving things around, perhaps this piece will move elsewhere and the old pretty wardrobe come back. Of the other details, pay attention to the bed warmer. The handle is a little stick you get to stir your coffee on a plane. This one, from Spanair, had a round blade. I saw the form at once. The pan itself is a champagne cap.

I got the hatbox with a tiny bag and gloves from a friend. The Persian carpet is cut from a souvenir pencil case. The boot is possibly from Barbie, and the bootjack is an unidentifiable piece of metal salvaged from a pile of rubbish when we refurbished the 1:1 kitchen. The baby cot is a very recent addition, from the same lot as the wardrobe. I think I will paint it white at some point.

 I bought the mirror in a thrift shop because it would be quite difficult, although not impossible to make. I should probably paint it white as well. I am very proud of the new modesty screen which I had been planning for years and only figured out recently how to make. It is a broken fan from a flea market that I simply glued onto a piece of white card. The little sconce of the wall is from Dollhouse Enporium and works. But the chandelier I made myself.

 

The metal bit used to be a part of an ancient lady purse, or ridicule, with a silk bag attached. It belonged to my great-grandmother, and I cherished it for many years. The fabric was falling apart so I finally decided to sacrifice it. I added plastic beads for decoration and used a junk chain. There is a tiny bulb in the lamp. 

I am tremendously proud of this piece that has recently replaced the old dressing table. Not only is it more elegant, it it also much more imaginative. For legs, I used clothes-pegs (after a few failed attempts with chopsticks). The top is still, after all these years, the venetian blind, and I decorated the sides with bits of the same old lacey placemat. The mirror is a miniature frame, and the two drawers are mini building blocks with two pinheads for handles. Because of the size of the clothes-pegs, this piece is slightly larger than 1:12, but you cannot really tell when it is in the room, which now looks like this: 

The new doll has been around for a while, in fact, almost since we moved four years ago. I made her dress, using details from my old embroidered shirt. There still a lot of improvements and additions I can make to the bedroom, but it is complete.