Things have morphed from pure restoration into something else. I’m not interested in a series of formal empty rooms.

Now I want to tell a visual story in each room. A snapshot of the person who would have occupied that room, moments before, as if they’d just stepped away. Mise en scene. So I have to lay down some clues to what was going on.

To accomplish these vignettes, I need to make things that are very character, time period and location specific. One of the quickest ways to evoke location is adding tiny print materials. I can’t buy them, but it’s more fun this way. I’m trying to orient this house in a physical location, Geneva, Illinois.

I’ve used the internet to run down old periodicals from the town, and grabbed images of real pages that I’ll reduce and use to make newspapers. I found the old logo of a favorite store to create tiny packaging. I am making these with tools and materials that I inherited from Mom’s studio.

This has turned eerie on occasion. I’ll find the exact stuff that I need… as if…she knew. I have literally muttered, “Mom, I need _____”.  And I will bump into it. I’m not talking basics. It’s like, Mom I need quarter round chair rail, or a tiny, fine point, foot long brush to reach into some corner that I can’t get my fingers into.

I’ve begun to acquire period accessories that will help tell the story of these rooms. I’ve kept nearly everything that was already there because a) it’s adorable and b) it’s what Mom left behind. But to do the each-room-is-a-decade thing, the dollhouse needs period lighting fixtures, radios, the stuff of life. It’s all about the details so I’m sourcing them.

So, I need the stories. Yes, the 30s dining room is about the Depression… but what’s going on right then with the person who just left the room? Are they worried, or out of work? Is it the height of the Depression, or are they coming out of it? I need to create clues.

I guess it’s the novelist part of me. In grad school, you learn to layer in oddball physical objects so the reader is grounded in specifics of place and time. Then they  embroider with their imagination. For the teenage girl in the 70s bedroom… I think, what’s she like? Messy? Keeping a diary? Hiding something under the bed? What groovy Tiger Beat heartthrobs was she into? Is there still a teddy bear around?

I want that room to represent the time where you’re still in a child’s bedroom and you’ve grown beyond that but you’re not a teenager yet. I guess that’s called a tween. There’s innocence there still but adult things are creeping in; it’s a collision of lots of changes happening at once.

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Some insane wee items I couldn’t resist. Like a holiday box of decorations for the attic. The stuff you can buy online is just amazing…there are even board games from the 50s like Pin the tail on the donkey, old Lincoln log sets, it’s bonkers.

I can see how this could take over your life. Soon you’re adding tin ceilings or the Tudor wallpaper border I just saw and coveted.

I could definitely go on and on. But, I want little kids to have the marvel and wonder my sister and I had when we visited the Thorne Rooms. This is what the house was built for, to enchant. So I will indulge myself for a while but then the house must move on to its purpose. It has had to wait too long.

I also can’t go too far or I will lose Mom in all this. If I wanted to do Versailles type Neoclassical ceilings then I’d lose her boards and the funny little marks she made on them. She’s the point.

Bits of Paper Scrounged Online

Xmas Decorations

Today was a very productive day. I put the weathervane together – the o rings were the size of a mouse eye – and glued it into a hole I drilled in the roof (that scared me.) I will need to make a copper band to go around it. The weathervane is an exact match of the one my mother had on her house; I found it on eBay, land of miniature addicts.

It was a production getting it perfectly vertical. Toothpick supports, etc. Then I did the teenage girl’s bed treatment, sacrificing an old yellow scarf of mine for drapery. Sally provided the narrow red satin ribbon I needed for tie backs. The ribbon is from a roll I took from the old house. “Mom, I wish I had….”

Done, says the Ghost of Sally Past.

I thought that might be enough for the day, but I got out the new kitchen faucet, all excited to add it and of course it didn’t work because the sink is basically flat and this faucet mounts vertically.

OK, not a problem. I just need some wood to give the sink a lip that I can glue it onto and mount flush that way. I got out the box of Mom’s old dollhouse leftover woods. It turns out to have a lot of stuff in it, including tiny hardware. I found metal stick-on house letters. A few were missing but the ones I needed were there. 2-2-7. Our old house number.

They’re not in perfect scale but I know she had intended on using them. So I put them on. It’s one more guiding from beyond.

Next I hung the 70s lamp in the little girl’s room (battery powered lights!) and then added the new dining room Colonial chandelier.

I was really going to quit but then the mail came with a particularly amazing treasure off eBay. A vintage handmade set of dining chairs with velvet seats.

The lot included an incredible Regency dining table that seats 12 which is too big but I’ll never turn down dollhouse swag. Unwrapping each delicate chair carefully, I entered into someone else’s vision from long ago. The delicate chairs were marked with numbers underneath, and bits of stain. The sweet cushions had the maker’s staple marks underneath. A parent made these for someone long ago. It makes you wonder how they wound up on eBay.

I LOVE them. Sally would too. Whoever made them is her spiritual sibling. For a 1930s room, I think these chairs say, “these were my parents'” rather than buying an Art Deco suite which would be more nouveau riche. This family is neither nouveau nor riche. Just comfortable.

Handmade Chairs