The white door has finally gotten a makeover with a dark green shade. This is the second go round. The first color was great but when I put varnish on, the whole surface turned to glue. I think I may have mixed an oil into an acrylic or something.

My mother loved the Irish custom of brightly painted doors so this is an homage. It’s not bright, but fits the idea of the house.

Happily my painter’s tape overkill worked and I didn’t kiss any of the other surfaces so no touch ups. I got a pretty good edge on the side too. Yay curb appeal.

I don’t think I mentioned the overflow of dollhouse stuff that came in with the movers. There was a big box with furniture, accessories and a tiny doll family that I’d totally forgotten. These dolls are bendable with porcelain heads. They look old, maybe 1940s.

I found a cute little plastic rocking horse in the box and took that as commentary. Sally would like a rocking horse, please. She had several life sized antique rocking horses in her house as pieces of art. She also had a real horse for a time. Horses must be represented in her honor.

The little plastic guy needed some work. I used an antique lead door stop of Sally’s for inspiration. I was trying to paint in naive fashion like folk art but my painting skills are pretty rusty so let’s call it a horrible fashion. And I forgot the yellow stripe. I’ll have a second go at this cutie sometime in the future.

I put a name on him – Sandy – which is on the kids’ mechanical horse at the local Meijer grocery store. No one rides Sandy. I can never look at that horse without feeling wistful. I want to abduct a kid in the aisle and plunk her down and watch her delight.

Hark the mail came. My ice for the kitchen arrived and now I see how she did it – tiny clear beads. Duh, I feel stupid. Also the microscope and a table fan, another nod to family lore.

“It was the hottest summer in YEARS and we’d just bought the house and had no money. I was pregnant, we were miserable and Daddy scraped together twenty dollars for fans, somehow…”

The dollhouse has become so personal. It is really a love letter. But one that will never be sent.

As I go deeper into the miniature world online, I am trying to figure out why these tiny worlds entrance us so. Does it make us into gods and goddesses, hovering in the cosmos, regarding earthlings as curiosities? I think it has to do with omniscience and power. Who wouldn’t like to be a maker of worlds? Especially if you could perfect that world – unlike real life. I’m beginning to suspect that my mother was doing just that, trying vainly to create perfection that eluded her in the chaos of life. And I’m doing the same, exact thing.

The PBS show The Miniaturist was based on a famous dollhouse of the seventeenth century created by Petronella Oortman in Amsterdam. In the show, the collector is shamed for spending money on tiny items. In her case, the dollhouse is a reverie on her life, and a form of escape. The wonder of each small piece of art provides some ineffable experience of transportation.

That’s it, or part of it – moving through worlds. You have one foot in reality while you regard this other world, so recognizable, yet not quite right, too.

I feel like I’m looking at her through the wrong end of the telescope. She is getting smaller all the time and I’m Alice knocking around in tiny world, crushing everything. When I finish the dollhouse, I fear it will be like the end of a Loony Tunes cartoon with the shrinking circle getting smaller and smaller until Sally finally vanishes into black.

Go to Part 6 or skip along in the navigation

The Miniaturist, courtesy PBS