I have begun pouring and expect to be at it for days and days, possibly a week or more. Every day’s pour takes at least two to clean, so it looks like that’s my summer sorted. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Would you like a closer look?
Can you see some plain fireplaces and a built in range? Let’s look at the next tray.
Here you might be able to spot early television sets, a wireless on a shelf, some inglenook fireplaces and some art deco ones. Here’s the last tray:
Can you see portable ranges ^ cottage ranges and the sculpted frieze fireplace? Oh it’s all so exciting. I love pouring new moulds. I still don’t know if I’ve got the sizes right and I won’t know until I’ve fired them.
Today I’m busy with kitchen units and a shower, I’ll show you when I’ve finished. None of this is a production run, unless it’s right first time.
If I get it right pieces might appear in print in the Dolls House Magazine and, if I’m in time in the AIM online magazine. I have been involved with magazine publications since I was at school. All through my student and teaching years I wrote and helped to produce magazines and began again, inadvertently, as a miniaturist. I was exhibiting at Miniatura when up popped a character in a hat. It was Lynne Medhurst, then editor for a miniatures magazine. She took a doll kit to review and came back to enquire if I would help her by writing for a magazine. Quite why a doll kit would prompt her to ask the question I never found out, I must ask her. Or it could have just been that she was desperate for some help. At the time I thought I was finished with magazines and was planning to be the great doll artist but she looked like someone who really needed a hand, so I gave it. At the time the hobby was taking itself very seriously, so I immediately started being as silly in print as I could get away with and I’ve been doing it ever since.
A good magazine, especially about a topic you enjoy, is such a pleasure and compared with other pleasures, longer lasting, not expensive and not fattening, unless the topic is cookery. I’m currently writing for two magazines. The paper one is now an iPhone app! How fantastic is that. You can find it at www.pocketmags.com enter Dolls House Magazine in the search bar and there you are. I think an iPhone app magazine is just the job if you carry your life in your handbag and it’s getting a bit dire in there. If you’re carrying an iPhone anyway, it’s no extra weight but available anywhere you go and have a few minutes to wait or half an hour to spare. The other magazine for which I write is the free magazine online www.artisansinminiature.com which is written for free by miniature artisans in many countries and edited and got onto the page in a similar fashion.
As I know from the response to this column, our hobbies and shared interests are a binding force around the world that has become an integral part of the communications revolution. It’s wonderful to know that we read together, talk together, laugh together and enjoy art together all round the planet. The last time I reported my stats you were one of readers in 40 countries; you are now one of readers in 45 countries. When all the countries are reading they will be one and there will be no one left to go to war with.
Imagine.
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JaneLaverick.com – everybody reading.