Is it art? Part 97.

Posted on 11th November 2026 by admin

Do you remember this?

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Hello long term reader!  Do you remember this?  I’m sure you do, I even recalled what I had labelled it in my five bajillion pictures in the picture file on my laptop.

For new readers (hello, how are you?  Are you a November person or not?  When I switched Alexa on this morning, she asked if I knew it was Movember and what sort of moustache would I like to grow,  because she could give me instructions for growing a goatee.  So I am definitely not a November person.  Various astrologers, who I used to read avidly but don’t now, have told me this is the time of year when the sun is furthest away from my sign and I need to get a lot of sleep, and that I do agree with.  We all wittered on about the heat in the summer when we either rushed first thing in the morning into air conditioned offices and got a lot of work done early or we sat at home and ate ice cream.  And we complained!  Some people are never happy.  I loved getting up and just putting shorts, sandals and a vest on and I utterly adored the bit where you put the washing on the line and half an hour later took it in, crispy dry, and put it away.  Anyway, new reader, what do you think?)

Some months ago I posted the picture above of my attempt to cram as many rolled up toilet roll middles as I could into one toilet roll middle.  I may even have given a number.  Some of the completed, cannot stuff another in, efforts, were written on with the number achieved.  29, or maybe 19, is banging on my subconscious and, shortly, on my way early to bed, I will go and have a look and report back.

Yes I kept them.  Yes I kept on doing it. Yes I have a lot of them and yes I will photograph them in the morning.

Well it’s nice to have something to look forward to, so I’ll see you in the morning.

Of course, if you enjoy suspense, you could switch off your device when I stop writing (which I’ll tell you in a moment) and also go to sleep (though not if you are reading this in the middle of the day, or on a mobile in a supermarket car park, or halfway through frying an egg) and, enjoying the suspense, find out how many more toilet roll middles I continued to stuff into other toilet roll middles.  You could have bets with yourself of what the number might be.

Spoiler alert: It’s quite a lot.

Exciting isn’t it?

It is so slightly interesting I could probably write one of those TV cliff hanger miniseries, except I’m off to bed.  You too?  See you in the morning.


Oh, sorry.  Switch off NOW.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is not the following morning, this is three mornings later, but I hope you slept well anyway.

I continued to save toilet roll middles, because, once I had established the number that could be stuffed into one toilet roll middle, a habit had formed.

You are burstingly keen to know the number, aren’t you?

Oh well, suit yourself.

It wasn’t the number I thought.  I was sure there was a nine in it somewhere.  I would have bet money on that being the case.

This in itself is interesting and raises all sorts of questions about the reliability of evidence given in court years after the offence which has come to trial, or indeed what was on the shopping list that you wrote less than half an hour ago but have omitted to bring with you.  Fortunately I wrote on the side of the toilet roll middle, so it will not be necessary either to question me minutely, or ring home from the middle of the supermarket to ask if anyone can remember what they wanted.  This, very popular, activity I believe may outnumber the calls of the: Do you want a pink one or a blue one?  Family size, or just large?  And, of course: What flavour dip?  There’s Tandoori, Siracha, Blue cheese, Honey roast marshmallow, or Spicy sock, no sorry spicy sauce, I haven’t brought my glasses with me, why do they do the writing so small?

None of that, here is the answer

3roll

Eighteen and three quarters, demonstrably.

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As the observant will additionally have noticed, I continued to hoard toilet roll middles. Moreover I have stuffed the card middles into the other card middles in a variety of patterns of increasing difficulty and complexity.  This is because I was toying with the idea of perpetrating ‘art.’

I was indeed planning to saw these toilet roll middles up into different lengths and glue them, on their ends, on to a board and paint the result.

I hope you are shocked.

I, who have spent thirty three years mastering the craft of porcelain production to the point where I can think of something and then bring it into being, was contemplating the possibility of just gluing stuff together and calling it art.

People do this.  People take everyday objects and put them on display, saying they are art.  Urinals, unmade beds, cliffs covered with clingfilm, piles of bricks.  They tell people who have more money than sense that they are works of art and people who are heavy in the wallet but light in the head believe them.  Moreover they tell people at length and add some noughts to a made-up price.

It isn’t art, it’s con art.

I love many things about miniaturists, the chief being that you cannot con them.  There have been ‘professional’ miniaturists who have appeared, glued stuff together and sold it to other miniaturists but they don’t usually last very long at all.  The reason being that miniaturists are themselves makers who reproduce the world, history and fantasy with their own two hands and they know what takes skill and what can be done by just sticking stuff together.  There is no way you are going to be able to sell them stuff for long unless it is useful, dirt cheap, or something they couldn’t do themselves.  This is why I sell porcelain things I have made.  You need a kiln to make them.  This is why increasingly, I sell quite clever and reasonably sophisticated porcelain things I have made, because my skill is growing.  This is why I sell at very reasonable prices because I’m a collector too.

All the above are why I am still happily a miniaturist about forty years after I began.  Porcelain is satisfyingly difficult, it takes skill, knowledge and practice.

However, one of the interesting side effects of setting your brain to ‘create’ for forty years is that you get run-off.  Also, spill-over.  After a while you see creative possibilities in everything.  Mud for making flowers.  Fabric scraps for quilting.

Then you start to collect toilet roll middles and find you have accidentally switched your creativity on.

Gluing a load of toilet rolls together would be fun but it would not be art, it probably wouldn’t even be craft because less skill would be required than glue.  All you could do with the result would be to find a millionaire with an empty wall and a gallery that would like to make a hefty profit and was good at the chat.

If anyone is short of money but rich in glue and has a fancy gallery near them…

~~~~~~~

JaneLaverick.com art and so forth.

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Progress, the how and the why.

Posted on 26th October 2026 by admin

At Miniatura, I received a sad package.  In a plastic bag were the remnants of one of my fairies, who had been through a washing machine, by mistake, in a pocket.

Absolutely do not do this, at all.  The fairy had been bought for a young collector.  None of the dolls I make are intended for children, there are signs all over the stand telling you this.  Nothing I make has ever passed any tests as being suitable for children.  Nevertheless some owners are young.  I am not surprised.  I have not made very sophisticated dolls and do not plan to do so. My attraction to the world of the miniature, from the outset, was because of its innocence.

There have been doll makers who have specialised in the depiction of lust, of age, of assorted sorts of misery, of haughtiness and many other unattractive human attributes.  For me the whole point of miniaturising the world is to escape from the more awful aspects of humanity.  I always aim to make something you would like to pick up and cuddle.  It’s one of the reasons I do Miniatura rather than any other show.

So my dolls do often end up belonging to children, who form relationships with them specifically because giving your love to a doll who cannot tell you off, who will always smile at you and be happy, is a safe emotion in a dangerous world.

The fairy, who had been carried everywhere in a pocket, ended up in the washing machine and was retrieved very broken.  Happily the head was intact, the loops had stayed in the hands and feet, the eyes had stayed set with plaster of Paris and all the china painted features were as good as new.

I was very interested.  I do tell customers that porcelain dolls will last and that china painting becomes part of the porcelain but it was interesting to see how well the parts of the doll had endured.

I should not have been surprised.  In the eighteenth century there was an explosion of porcelain factories in England. We know of about twenty nine by the surviving wares.  Most of them did not last because of intense competition, the difficulty of producing the required quality and all the technical considerations.  In short, all the problems I’ve encountered over the last thirty three years of production.

We know where some of the vanished factories were by their wasters.  Wasters are the bits that turned out wonky, the ones where the colours fired very strangely, some where the handles dropped off and some that looked like a good idea but turned out plain awful.  I do know all about this, some days I make nothing but wasters.

What I do with my wasters is to fill plastic divided boxes with them.  What the eighteenth century factories did was to chuck them in heaps in the yard where the weather and time eventually buried the waste dumps.  However, long term readers (hello! Nice to see you!) know that one of the joys of all ceramics is their enduring nature.  We know of a group of people called the Beaker people who lived across Europe five and a half thousand years ago, even though they left no literature, stories, dwellings or other marks of civilisation.  Guess how we know?

Correct!  The museum here has several beakers.  It is an amazement to see ceramic drinking vessels that have been buried in the earth for five and a half thousand years, which you could still drink from (given a gallon of disinfectant.)

I have an entire cupboard full of wasters.  The smaller I go the more wasters I make.  In the latest, the little gargoyles

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are fourteen pieces of porcelain, which look big in this picture but are actually just over two inches tall, you can hide them in the palm of your hand if you fold your fingers.

Yet the loop of every foot has to fit inside the hollow calf, the hand inside the wrists and so on for thirteen joints.  Inside the kiln, parts placed nearer to the elements will heat faster and, potentially, distort more than items placed in the middle of a shelf.

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The actual shelf is the size of  a serving dish.  You can appreciate how small the parts are.

The gargoyles have tolerances of mere millimetres to make the feet fit in the ankles and so on.  When working with the clay, prior to firing, if I make the hole in the body where the thigh joins, unequal on either side of the body, the poor doll will have a built-in limp.  Then there are all the wire loops that looked OK going in but fired with bits of wire sticking out..

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which is why I make this many bits at a time in the hope of having a few that are perfect.

Or, to put it another way, why I make so many wasters.

Which is how, by trawling through dozens of little plastic boxes and dismantling another doll, I managed to mend the fairy.

I do say at shows, that because my dolls are made in the traditional way, that any museum that has Victorian dolls will be able to mend or restore them once I’ve gone.

This is true but it will have to be a very clever museum, probably.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in About artists., Dolls | Leave a comment

Alarums and excursions.

Posted on 22nd October 2026 by admin

Yesterday evening the S&H rang upon the telephone to speak to me.  For those new readers (hello!) the S&H is my son and heir to all my debts, IRL senior IT person for a finance firm, father to my grandchildren and, most importantly, the (completely unpaid) web manager for this website.

He has been computering since before he could walk. At the beginning of having a computer at home in the early 1980s, the OH (Other Half) (hello again new reader)  sold the sword which had been surrendered to his father in WW2 in order to possess a keyboard which plugged into the back of our small, cubical television, which emitted pictorial content in both black and white.  The keyboard had another electrical lead which plugged handily into a cassette tape recorder, to save all the wonderful knowledge that was so painstakingly being acquired.

On Saturday mornings I went into the language college and taught a crammer class, leaving the OH with the custody of his son, who was six months old at the time.  Upon the black and white television the BBC, ever aware of the interests of viewers, broadcast a programme, on Saturday mornings, which you had to be there to watch, (as no one had figured out streaming, or video recorders) lifting the veil upon the mysteries of the home computer.  In as little as six half hour programmes, at the rate of one a week, the OH learned how to type words on the keyboard and make them appear on the television screen.  At the end of the six weeks he had learned how to make

hello

appear on the television screen, at will.  His excitement would have known no bounds were it not that, round about week three, the S&H, sitting on the knee of the OH, had worked out how to lean forward, press ‘break’ and clear the screen of everything, instantly, then, as he had not yet learned to walk, slide down the leg and roll across the carpet, laughing.

By the time he was at school the S&H had inherited the keyboard and the cassette recorder from the OH, who had moved on to greater things (‘It looks like these home computers really might catch on, Jane.’)  Every evening the S&H ran home from school to type on the keyboard to make games appear on a screen.  This was great until the elderly cassette recorder fell over.  Then he had to run home faster and type everything in from scratch, as nothing was recorded.  Thus it was that he worked out how to do shortcuts.

By the time he was seven other children were telephoning when their machines were on the fritz.  He would listen to what they said and told them what to do until their machines were working again.

Without him there would be no website here for you to read.  It’s a bit basic because, when he asked me what I wanted, I had no idea what was available.  The purpose of it was to help Miniatura artists with publicity just before the show, so there were pictures and words.

The S&H has continued to help his technologically challenged mother, for free ever since.  Round about now there are a couple of thousand readers here, so there’s at least a couple of thousand of us very grateful for his generosity.

The reason he rang me recently was to tell me that, as I must have heard, on the news, there was a problem with websites world wide, which had been detected by AI.  I had not heard, but he had.  He did all the technical stuff necessary, having emailed the right people, got a patch sent to me, retrieved it, applied it and all was well here, hours before I read on the front page of The Times that there might be a problem.

I can say with great confidence that you cannot catch a virus reading this.  If you have ever bought anything from the shop here, any information about you is only available until I put your purchase in the post, after which it is deleted and unavailable to me or anyone else.

The contents of this site that you can read are actually stored in a facility in another country.  There are a few very safe and sedate countries in the world which are home to massively guarded huge buildings containing enormous super duper computers, protected from everything and so solid they are likely to be the last thing on the planet.

Actually, that might not be true.  A long time ago one of my collectors had a husband whose job it was to report on the environment for a famous newspaper.  He had been to the far underground, guardedly guarded seed store in a far away, remote area of a chilly country.  In this facility seeds from everywhere in the world are stored to reboot the planet, in case we need that to happen.

So, whilst there might be some panic generated currently about things in general, I am definitely not filling the garage with bottled water, which the OH proposes.  Neither are we stockpiling baked beans.

Chocolate, maybe.

However, one of the disadvantages of the contents of numerous websites being stored in safe locations, is that only the important stuff gets stored.  If you are depressed about the number of podcasts made by teenagers telling you where to put your lipstick, this is good news. If you were a new reader (hello, still here?  My goodness, you do have staying power, well done.) maybe not so much, as, trawling through the last seventeen years of this website, you may have noticed that the pictures from older posts are missing.  All the words are still there, I do occasionally go backwards in time and read them myself.  It is exceptionally illuminating to understand how I felt about various things at the time they occurred.  Even if I cannot see the pictures.  What this means for you is that, if you particularly approve of a picture from this website, and wish to see it again, you may wish to record the relevant posting on your own device.

Otherwise, all is well here.  Around us the world may spin. This site is here as it has been for the last seventeen years, thanks to the S&H, always on the side of the angels.  We stick to the principles of the hobby of miniatures.  We cannot control the world, we cannot control the bad people, but here, in our safe little world we can enjoy the things we make, share our interests, be creative, help each other and, thus fortified, return to reality and deal with it with grace and fortitude.

New readers (I promise I’ll stop in a minute) may have noticed that posts are a bit on the spare side just after Miniatura.  This is because I am putting all the wheeled cases and boxes away.  When I come back from the show I go through every case, starting with the one which holds the tablecloths.  Every case is emptied, the contents cleaned and repacked, ready for the next show.

By the time I get up to the case with all the packaging in it there’s a lot of work making boxes to replace the boxes in which dolls were rehomed.

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I’ve been doing that for the last week.  Now the only box left is the one with the dolls in it.  Making new dolls and sorting out the contents of that will take me the whole six months until the Spring show.  I have some great ideas for new dolls.  It has been difficult to ignore a couple of ideas and get on with the packing but I am nearly ready to start on the new things.

If you have been alarmed by news that the Internet is about to explode, or that someone can steal your shoes through your phone, I would just like to reiterate that this site is safe to read, to enjoy, to shop from, to waste happy hours reading (get a cup of tea first) and, as always, you can email me by clicking on: Leave a comment below.  What you say will not be published, unless you want it to be.  I will read it but no one else will.  Your comment will not go through any agency and we can just chat about the things we care about.

And, as always, thank you for reading.  I am here for you, because miniaturists asked me to be and the S&H facilitated it.

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Thank you.

Posted on 18th October 2026 by admin

I caught a cold at the Min and yesterday had my Covid and Flu vaccine and feel as you  might imagine.

There will be proper posting when I recover.

Meanwhile huge thanks to Dawn who saved my bacon at the Min.  Nowadays I am down with the kids and have a PayPal card terminal to take card payments.

This would be wonderful if I had a smart phone and knew how to work a handheld screen.  I have not and do not and as a result, couldn’t take payment from my first customer and had no idea what I was doing wrong.

Dawn, brilliantly, handed me her handbag as collateral and headed for the door with the terminal, to see if the metal building was acting as a Faraday cage.

After a while she came  back smiling.  Some idiot (me) had apparently set the terminal to aeroplane mode.  How? Why?  Randomly sliding my fingers across the screen.  Thick as a brick, dear.

Happily Dawn knew what to do and put it right.

Thank you Dawn, thank you very much, well done.

Miniaturists are lovely people, Dawn is a very good example.

Back to bed for me, catch you later.

~~~~~~~~

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The Min, as it happened.

Posted on 12th October 2026 by admin

Miniatura is over until Spring 2027, until when, although it is in the far future, will not be long enough to do all the things I plan to do.  The show itself, the visitors, the ambience, all give me many ideas.  I write them in my book during the show, and when people ask me for things they’d like me to have a go at.

Two occurrences at this show have been particularly notable.  One is a fantastic new artist I’ll tell you about later.  People with long memories know that for about twenty years I reported the show for magazines.  I used to set up my table, leave a helper in charge and then stride round the hall in two and a half inch heels, interviewing artists, trying to get as many interviewed on Saturday as possible.  This was not only because I could then spend time with my own customers on Sunday but also because the magazine photographer was only paid to be there on Saturday.  I used to weave my way through a thousand people, none of them looking at me, all suddenly stepping backwards into me when I was carrying precious miniatures to the photography studio, always with the promise to get back as soon as I could in case someone wanted to buy the exact item I had removed.  The most artisans I interviewed in a day was twenty seven, a couple of them in languages I did not speak.  Which was interesting.  The most nerve wracking was carrying a large architrave, hand carved by John Hodgson for the house at Hever Castle.  It was massive and heavy and I was followed by John who only mentioned casually that it was worth several thousand pounds and could I be careful because he didn’t have time to do it again.

Now I am doing the show on my own I am unable to go round the show and have a look, but on Sunday morning, before public entry, my passage back from the cup of tea stand was arrested by wonderful paintings, of which more later.

The second happening at this show was not a good one.  Having a little tidy up and putting dolls who had wandered around back in their places, I came across an abandoned purchase in its little gold carrier bag.  I did ask Andy if he could put out an announcement but he said if he did the show would be nothing but announcements, so he couldn’t.  I know this is true by the number of people who have stopped by my stand to ask: Have you seen my husband/ wife/ daughter/ son/ friend I came with?  The interesting thing is that husbands never have any idea what their wives are wearing.  You might as well live in your gardening trousers and bin day cardi, for all the notice they are taking.  Friends, however, can tell me everything, down to which earrings you were wearing when you left home.

If the purchase leaver was you, please click on Leave a comment below and tell me what was in the bag and I’ll send it.  If you do not read this web site, I’ll keep taking it to subsequent shows until it is claimed.

I was delighted to meet everyone I talked to.  Miniaturists are utterly brilliant, knowledgeable, clever and creative.  I love hearing about houses and seeing photographs.  Maybe the best couple was a husband and wife team.  He had built the dolls’ house for her and she was filling it.  That is the way to build happiness into a marriage.  The most unusual was a security guard who was amazed by the show and asked me in a lull about the possibility of doing miniatures as a hobby with his children.  Of course I told him of my experiences with the S&H and people I know who are no longer on the planet in person but whose children still have them in the house they made together.  I thought he was going to burst into tears.  Gathering himself he vowed to do that and I hope he will be security guarding next show and able to tell me how he is getting on.

Most surprising was a visitor who recognised my name which is sewn along two sides of my table.  As a child she had read Dolls House World when visiting her grandmother’s house.  As long term readers know (hello!) the only people I love more than miniaturists are readers. Recently there have been items on the television news about the government belatedly encouraging people to stop doom scrolling on their phones, which is bad for you and only encourages you to chuck yourself under a bus, and instead read words which is good for your brain.  Who knew?  (We did.) (Always.)

The other surprise was a visitor being surprised when I asked her to count the number of people with dementia in the hall.  Zero.  None.

If you got a thousand people in any other place, especially when hundreds of them are quite mature, you’d expect a few struggling to keep up.  You just don’t get that with miniatures.  On two days running of over a thousand people each day in one hall, every single one was laser focussed on the shopping list, or lists (one for each house), the next kit, the next build, the bits needed, the special purchase, the workshop, the chat, the advice.

When you get home from the show with your brain buzzing, it is worth noting what dolls’ housering is doing for you.

It makes you completely sane.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The next Miniatura is 20th and 21st of March, tickets go on sale on the Miniatura website in November.  Details at www.miniatura.co.uk

~~~~~~~~~

Posted in About artists., Miniatura | Leave a comment

Are we nearly there yet?

Posted on 8th October 2026 by admin

Sometimes I wish I had a co-worker to shout at when times are tense.  As it’s just me, I get tight lipped.  It does not help that the OH has a terrific cold and is sneezing everywhere in his usual unfettered, pass-it-on manner.

Some late nights and early mornings have been put in and I still have two fairly major things to do, partly because I have radicalised the packing and am attempting to leave two of the wheeled trolleys at home in favour of each area on the show table having its own box.

However I have finished dressing the kittens, which are hilarious.  There will be cats, which are marginally larger and kittens which, at two inches, are a bit smaller.  Either feline is available in the fur with cattitude for £15, or dressed and/or accessorised for £18.  If you were a visitor going round the fair, asking stand holders which is the best bargain on the stand, if you asked me, I’d say these. 

kit1

They are five pieces of internally jointed, china painted porcelain, which will stay like that for hundreds of years.  They stand, balanced on their own tails and will sit down, or lie on the beds, or scrag you through open plan stairs, or bring something unsuitable into the house…what is that?  What exactly is that, you have brought in?

kit2

Whose doll is that you’ve got?  Is that my waistcoat you’re wearing?

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If you say your mummy made you do it, I don’t think I believe you.

The great thing about 24th scale cats is that they have no taste at all, you can tell that by looking at them.  They will love the cheap furniture you found as a job lot.  They will sleep happily on the slightly overscale bed you made, they’re cats, they don’t care.

And if you have a 1940s plaster of Paris turkey in your collection, what more can I say?  They’re home.

Like everything I make they are better in the hand than in a photograph.  Perhaps I’ll see you at the weekend, when you come to have a look to see which one makes you purr?

www.miniatura.co.uk   If you are planning on the money saving, pre-booked tickets from the Miniatura website, these disappear soon, at 11.30 on Friday UK time, or sooner if they have sold out.  The hall does have a limit on numbers, nearly reached at a previous show, which is why the show has moved to a larger hall.  It is still the best miniature art show, having the greatest proportion of original artist exhibitors and, this time 110 stands.  If you have never been before, although the stands are just six foot long tables, mostly, because the things are tiny, it’s like visiting 110 shops in a weekend.  Be comfortable.  I used to wear two and a half inch heels for the show, but that was long ago when I was young and stupid.   Comfy, removable layers of clothing can be a good idea, a thousand people in  one building can generate a lot of heat.  There are plenty of free seats and, though the refreshments are good, you can bring your own sandwiches, if you are saving your money for better things.

IT IS SO EXCITING!  IT IS MINIATURA!  I LOVE THIS SHOW!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in About artists., Dolls, Miniatura | Leave a comment

Working up to the line.

Posted on 4th October 2026 by admin

I apologise for the radio silence, like every other exhibitor at the Min I am working up to the line. 

If you have never exhibited at a show, you might well wonder what takes the time?  Surely between the shows we all make the stuff we are selling, don’t we just stop and take what we’ve made?

The crucial consideration, is, of course, the size.  Other than actual houses, which can be the size of a sideboard, and three lifted on to a table can take about ten minutes, most exhibitors are exhibiting miniatures.

There are over 100 exhibitors, each filling, mostly, a six foot table, which is about the size of your dining table, with things the size of your thumbnail.  You have to plan how you are going to display them, so that people can see them without bending over to get to the back of the table, inadvertently picking up all the stuff at the front on their clothes.

As you know I have an entire new display.

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It has taken nearly a year to design, sculpt, mould, pour, fire, colour, fire, china paint fire, assemble, wing and tail two different kinds of gargoyle.  Having done so I then had to design a way to display them which was fun and effective.  It took a fortnight to make the roof.  The tree growing through the roof at the back is actual greenery, which I grew.

For many years I had a wisteria in the back garden.  I made an arch for it to grow over picturesquely.  It happily grew over the arch along the fence and round the hangers of some hanging baskets.  Having done this, but very little flowering, for several years, it died.  When I removed it, I found the stem had grown in spirals round the hangers of the baskets, with a fork going in two different directions at the top.  Careful use of secateurs gave me a spiral stem on a foot that stood by itself.  I kept this for eighteen months, always intending to hang gargoyles off it, as you do.  This was built into the footing of the roof, once I had wound wire round it to make hangers for the gargoyles.

To make the roof I needed sheets of tiles, foam core board, big sheets of mounting board and some wine bottle lead.  All of which was in the garage, in huge card boxes, slotted in behind the book shelves for the lockdown library.  It took a couple of days to find it all, and the library had to be suspended during the finding and the building.

I couldn’t just build as I fancied.  The only available space on my Miniatura table was a foot long, so the wisteria, the roof and the base had to be that length precisely.  It took a few days to paint the backing sky to go behind the roof, stick enough card layers on it so it would stand on its own and then cover it all with clear sticky backed plastic.

Having designed the display, I then had to find boxes for the gargoyles to travel to the show in, and make boxes for newly rehomed gargoyles to travel in.  I was lucky here and found lovely dies to make nice black coffin boxes for the gargoyles, and did so.

If you’ve been adding the time up, you can see how long it takes to invent new things and make the display, means of travelling, means of being rehomed and even the baggage to get them all undamaged to the show.  Fortunately a day of interviewing boxes and bags uncovered a zip-top freezer bag perfect for the job, which will also not take up too much room in the car, because whatever new thing I’ve designed and bagged has to go in the car, together with all the previous things and still leave room for the driver and pack together neatly so the porcelain does not bang around in transit.

Having done this I spent a week doing a mock up of everything on my dining table, putting out all the dolls to see where the gaps are and making sure there is room for everything.  The Ancient Egyptians are still there

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but have had to be crammed into one box, with their pillars left behind at home.

All in all it takes me about a month of long days to get the entire display ready.  I have to make sure I can put it all out in the time allotted, which is three hours on Friday afternoon and another couple on Saturday morning.

I have to put everyone away to get safely home at the end and I am nearly always the last exhibitor in the hall because other exhibit-heavy people, such as Petite Properties, have helpers.

But it is all worth it to make the best show in the world with the greatest proportion of original artist exhibitors.  I know, right now, a week before the end of the show, over a hundred other people will be doing exactly the same as I am.

We do it because of the motto of the show: By miniaturists, for miniaturists.

I love people who love art.  I love people who shrink their troubles.  I love hobbyists.  I love collectors. I love creative people.

And so does everyone else here:   www.miniatura.co.uk

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a miniaturist in possession of a roof, would probably love a gargoyle.

Posted on 27th September 2026 by admin

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Here they are.

This is my new display for autumn Miniatura of my fabulous new porcelain gargoyles. 

They stand, helped by their bendy tails.  They sit because they are fourteen pieces of articulated porcelain internally jointed, and…they fly!  (Well, not really, they come with a transparent elastic band under their wings, so you can dangle one off your chimney pot.)

They come in two sizes.

The big ones

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are three inches tall, they have leather wings and tails and come with your choice of either a television ariel or

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satellite dish.  Goodness knows where they found them.

The little ones are only two inches tall, ideal for smaller houses but they still have fourteen pieces of porcelain, stand on their own, sit and dangle from their elastic band.  They come with a bat

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because everyone likes a bit of bat.

More later. Have I gone bats and gargoyles?

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Yes!

See for yourself here   www.miniatura.co.uk   in a fortnight.

Incidentally if you are not yet receiving emails with show information, head to www.miniatura.co.uk   and sign up, just click on Home and Contact.

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Purrcelain.

Posted on 11th September 2026 by admin

Since the kiln went on the fritz, knackered by an incompetent kiln engineer, not the manufacturer’s engineer, and some dodgy wire, not the proper high temperature wire, doll production has been a cat-astrophy.

Now everything has been put right by the proper people and the proper wire, I’m pleased to say I’ve been having kittens.

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Here they are.  These are two inches tall, porcelain, internally, invisibly jointed.  They take three firings to come out of the kiln as you see them, all the colours are permanent, they will potentially last furrever. You can see how small they are compared to a normal pen.  You can also see that they stand up without a doll stand because they can balance on their tails.  There are 16, which is large for a litter, and they are all very sweet, though there’s one at the back who I would not leave on his own for long.

In reality, next door’s cat has started bringing me presents and leaving them on the patio, or the doorstep where we meet.  So far I’ve had half a banana and a small bunch of grapes, we have quite lengthy chats.  Cats are just very good, aren’t they?

The porcelain kittens will be photographed again, when some have been dressed.

Four weeks to the Min, here are the details:  www.miniatura.co.uk

Pawfect!

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Tenterhooks.

Posted on 6th September 2026 by admin

I am on tenterhooks and have been for some time but specifically the last fifteen hours or so.

Regular readers (hello) know that, after seven months of waiting, the manufacturer’s kiln engineers finally arrived and put the kiln right, with the exception of the things I forgot to ask them to do because the OH was throwing a wobbly.  He is getting increasingly controlling, as his control of his own addiction vanishes.  My adoptive mother was very controlling because she was terrified of her alcoholic father to whom the entire family owed a debt of gratitude from saving them from poverty, in the terrible times between the world wars.  Controlling people, whatever the cause of their control and narcissism are very good at distracting the rest of us; it is hard to remain focussed when someone is rubbishing you to make themselves feel better.

The kiln is, theoretically, mended after years of being wrong, and, according to the kiln engineers, in peril for several years because the previous, not really a kiln engineer, had put a vital component in upside down, stretching the electrical wires dangerously.  This is why he had to put the control knob on upside down, because he’d fitted elements inside, upside down.  I think Vulcan, god of kiln owners must have hearkened to my prayers, as the house did not go up in flames and the porcelain did fire, just.

However, learning that you have been loading a potential bonfire, unknowingly, for many years, does as little for your confidence as someone having a go at you.  So I loaded the kiln with  little tests.  Test wire, test glazes, new eye glazes, different stringing loops.

The kiln fired and shut itself off in three hours fifteen, which is about right for new elements.  That was yesterday afternoon.

Porcelain is a noble clay, it likes to be left to go clay cold after firing.  If you expose it to the cold while it is still cooling down it will develop stress fractures almost anywhere, but especially where the clay body is thin, which, in the case of miniature articulated dolls, is everywhere.

Now it is today (weather follows after this forecast).  I went downstairs to the garage at seven o clock in the AM and took my bungs out.  When I am certain everything is cold, later this morning, I will open the kiln and retrieve whatever is there.

What will I find?

If it all works I’ll be at this show in five weeks: www.miniatura.co.uk

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