Chippendale slant front desk

This weekend my group made the Chippendale slant front desk. It is a slightly less common kit, but several people had it, and those who didn't could also make the Chippendale desk or the Chippendale desk on frame. I will not show the step-by-step progress because the steps were straightforward, but since I have now made all the three kits I can share some thoughts.

The most common kit, the Chippendale desk, was among the first I made, and I wasn't very skilled, but it also has what I would say now a fault that could be easily avoided. The front is hinged, and hinges are very hard to fix neatly. When I made the cellarette I decided to skip hinges and used tiny strips of leather. In the slant front desk, the front is held with pins (just as the desk on frame) which is endlessly easier to make and looks neat.

Both the plain desk and the slant front desk have three drawers and a small apron with bracket feet. Actually, with the front closed they look exactly the same (only the slant front desk looks neater because of pins rather than hinges).

Bit when you open the front, it looks different and more like the desk on frame:

It has these pigeonholes and two drawers. Why two? The desk on frame has six drawers with two empty pigeonholes. I believe I could make some more drawers if I want. Or maybe it will be too many drawers. The desk on frame has no large drawers.

What I wanted to add was a key. I have a bundle of tiny keys left from an Alice in Wonderland party - they are wine-glass charms. They are in white metal, but it was easy to paint a key gold. The trick was to attach it. As in Alice, either the keyhole was too small or the key too large, but there was no way the key would fit into the keyhole. I had to make the keyhole a bit larger (but the keyhole plate is so tiny I was afraid to damage it) and I filed away as much as I could from the key, and finally -

 

I used red mahogany stain, but I used many coats, and it doesn't look as red as some of my other pieces. In other words, I am very pleased. With my old Chippendale desk, I have a closed cabinet top, which was my very first Chippendale miniature and was the reason I got hooked. I have another closed cabinet kit, and I may make a cabinet to match this desk. On the other hand, I don't even know where I will put it because my Womble Hall house is absolutely crammed. But I am not giving it away!

Chippendale desk on frame

Some time ago I made another incredible bargain on ebay: one more bundle of Chippendale furniture kits from House of Miniatures. If you haven't seen my Chippendale furniture, have a look at the cabinet, candle stand, canopy bed, night stand, desk, chest, another chest, chairs, wing chair, sofa, and not least the magnificent table.

I knew there were more pieces in this series, but if you buy them one by one it can get quite expensive, especially if you buy from the USA because the shipping will be more than the price. You can get a small selection of modern copies from Minimundus, but they are really expensive. I browse ebay every now and then, and here is what I found at a very reasonable price:

Of all these pieces, I only had the candlestands before, and you can have several of these.

Since I have been fully occupied with my big project I thought I didn't have time for cabinet-making, but suddenly I felt that the smoking room needed a proper desk. This will be another case of infidelity, because the old desk is one of the very first pieces I made. I was proud of it then, not least the tiny knobs, but now it looks crude as compared to the other delicate furniture in the room.

This is a very sophisticated desk, and if I hadn't made other Chippendale miniatures I would have been intimidated.

To be honest, I was intimidated when I opened the box and placed all details on the layout sheet. They were so many and so tiny!

Luckily, I remembered some of my previous experience. For instance, against the instructions, you must stain the wood before glueing because stain doesn't work on top of glue. If a minuscule drop of glue remains on the surface there will be ugly white patches. So I stained the parts and lay them out again.

The instructions for these kits are excellent, and if I made three stupid mistakes it was my own fault. I didn't take step by step pictures because I thought they weren't terribly exciting to look at, and I had shown the process before. Plenty of patience, sandpaper, waiting for glue to set, good tweezers. But now it's done, I think I should have taken pictures after all. With each step, the assembly became more and more amazing. Here is the final result.

 

 All drawers can be opened, and side slides that hold the writing surface can be pulled out as seen in the picture. I think it is still more gorgeous when open:

 

 The green fabric was not included, but this is what would be used for such a desk.

I think this is the most beautiful piece I have made. Or maybe it is like with so many other things: you love the most recent creation best.

Of course it cannot stand in the middle of the room like this, but I haven't yet decided where it will be best. Come back soon.

Chippendale desk

The next piece of furniture that I made was the most complicated so far, even though I have certainly developed some skills during the past few weeks.

I anticipated that it would be complicated because it has hinged top, and mini-hinges are a very delicate job. In fact it is one bit of miniature making that I actively dislike because I am not good at it. I wonder why they couldn't cut hinge slots when they have all the other tiny details. It would have made this step so much easier. I considered for a moment to use strips of leather for hinges as you can do with mini-doors, but that would make this exquisite piece look clumsy.

This is one of the occasions when having good tools is essential. When I had eventually managed to cut the slots and started to insert the unprintable half-millimeter screws into unprintable holes through unprintable hinges, I discovered that my smallest screwdriver was not small enough so I ended up working the screws with my mini craft knife which was the unprintable of a job. I was exhausted when I finished and almost gave up on continuing that evening, but I had to reward myself for being so persistent.

Assembling the frame was easy. 

 

Then came a step that demands dexterity and patience, but nothing like the unprintable hinges. Keyholes and handles for drawers - and I had earlier done this with the night stand. 

I had to leave the assembled desk and drawers overnight to set. 

Then I gave it a coat of varnish.

Here it is in the interior, with the top cabinet in place. Now I only need some teeny-tiny objects to put into drawers and pens and stationary for the desk top.

Modern study

In the middle of the upper floor there was a square hole, the size of a window. I have no idea what the creator of the house intended it to be. I considered building a winding staircase, but there was already a staircase, and it would take too much of the floor. So I just sealed it. I wanted this corner of the house to be bright green, but I didn't have green paint so instead I papered it with colour printer paper. Remember, there also was a window in the wall which I had sealed (the bedroom is on the other side). This room is a study. I first wanted it to be an artist's studio, but then I remembered that magnificent shelf I had in the cellar of my original house and realised that its time had come. The shelf was twice as large as I needed, so reluctantly after all these years I sawed off a bit. 

 

Then I put some ornaments in the shelf. Some of them immediately looked wrong, as in the left picture. I started filling it with books. I was lucky to find a magazine with a whole page of books. I cut out each square individually and pasted on card with flaps that I could shove into the square in the shelf. I made the mistake of cutting the upper edges straight, but it didn't look natural, so I had to take them out and cut again, with uneven edges.

This is how I made the swinging chair. The base is a plastic door handle, and the lever, a bit of a spray bottle. The seat and back are made of cardboard, lined with padding and covered with fabric.

 I made the writing desk from my famous venetian blind and strong wire. The CD player, speakers, remote, the computer keyboard and mouse are cut from a catalogue, while the computer screen is a lid from a little plastic jewel box. The blind is cut from a placemat. The wastepaper basket is a bottle cap. In this pictire the floor is still bare.

 

More drawing room details

The right corner of the drawing room is where the master of the house has his books and his collection of weird things. You can see where I ran out of wallpaper and had to take another pattern, pretending it was a purposeful design. There is a Dutch tile stove and a low chest of drawers to put trinkets on, most of which are from ebay and thrift shops. The cello is a fridge magnet. The old map is cut from a magazine, and the butterfly collection is made with stickers from the Butterfly House in Stockholm. A grandchild made the roses from modelling clay.

 With all the furniture back, the room looks crammed, as it should be.

The pretty turned table was inside another dollhouse that my husband found at the garbage collection (of which more anon). I made the candesticks from broken juwellery. The little table to the left is made from kit, as is the cake stand.

The Oriental smoking table is made from a metal buckle. I made the box of chocolates and the miniature book, which is The Children's Book, by A S Byatt. The smoking utensils and the pretty plates are from ebay.

Building with blocks

I was going to make a dressing table for my bedroom, but it turned out to be a chest of drawers for the drawing room. It took me several days to make because I needed to stain the wooden bits, and the stain takes a long time to dry. Lesson: stain won't work on top of glue. Stain first, glue after. You can't cheat. (If you have made miniatures for your whole life, you are laughing now. But remember: this was just a week since I started. I didn't even have a mitre box). I used wooden blocks that I had bought at the flea market and put in bits of venetian blind between them. I didn't have a model, like I had with the bed, so I was using imagination. The top had to be sand-papered to round off the edges. It makes such a difference with neat finish. Bits of a photo frame became base and top front. 

What I found myself doing, to my great amazement, was handles. Just a week before I was reading a description in Eva Malmsten's book of how she drilled tiny holes, cut off ordinary pins to make miniscule nails and painted them with gold. I was laughing then, but here I was, doing exactly the same and being proud of it. The handles are cut from golden foil (champagne again). It was delicate work, but I was proud of the result. I must admit that it doesn't look as neat from behind, but who cares? On the chest, I displayed a goblet and a photo frame from Barbie (although I replaced Barbie and Ken). Don't remember where the little elephant came from, but the book I cut from a real book. I don't normally mutilate books, but this was a boring conference volume. 

Then I made a writing desk in the same style. The book and binoculars on the desk are also from Barbie, but I painted them from horrible pink. The rug is cut from ny husband's old shirt. The wallpaper is of course a paper tablecloth left over from a party. 

The clock is the first object that I bought from ebay. There were more to follow because at the beginning I didn't have enough confidence to think I could make clocks, barometers or telephones. I can now. But every now and then it's nice to put in an elaborate detail.