If you were reading the blog last Christmas, you may recall the dolls I made for a wonderful 24th scale Dickensian house. This autumn I was delighted to meet the maker at Miniatura. He is John Dowsett, brother of the furnisher and finisher.
John has been building houses for a long time, he was featured on a local television programme twenty years ago as a house builder in miniature, though for many years he worked at his career as an electronics engineer.
Family circumstances indicate that working from home making homes will be John’s occupation for quite a while. If you are a fan of everything Georgian and you like your houses picture perfect, you are in for a treat.
How badly are you itching to furnish this house? This house boasts Farrow and Ball paints, as requested by the customer. John’s houses are definitely bespoke, the customer decides on the colour, the layout and everything else. This miniature experience is the nearest thing you’re going to get to being the landed gentry.
Here is another picture perfect house that will get your furnishing juices flowing. Next to it is a 24th scale house similar to the one John built for his brother.
But the house that got me going was this one.
This is not a book, this is a book nook, perfected.
I have seen many houses in thirty years as a reporter and professional miniaturist. A lot.
Reader, I ordered this one.
This is the hall, stairs and landing of the Bronte parsonage, where the book was written. John, a member of the Bronte Society, was allowed to crawl around the real building, doing a bit of measuring.
Here we are in the parsonage. Let’s just pop upstairs and write a masterpiece. These houses are so bespoke, that, even though it is a book nook, originally invented so you could slide a house into your real book case and peer in though the spine, I have ordered mine to be side opening (like a book) so I can play with it and get some dolls in there, and maybe a couple of pieces of furniture.
Houses come ready lit, utterly perfect, just as you ordered and ready to fit out, furnish and fall in love with.
These houses are really worth seeing at a fair, they are Georgian paragons. If this is up your street and you can’t wait for a fair, visit the website at www.creativedollshouses.co.uk .
You may be sure that I will show you my Bronte house in the fullness of time but I do have a lot of houses. If you want to get ahead of me in the queue, just say Jane sent you and I will wait while John makes your order. Having been miniaturising for so long I know that anyone making houses this good will very quickly be pounced on by keen collectors. If this is you I strongly suggest you get in the queue while the door is open (and up the stairs and on to the landing, oh I can’t wait – but I would for you.)
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