If you read the previous post below, you won’t be surprised to hear I’ve spent the day interviewing lace. I have a massive collection of small lace, which started probably thirty-five years ago. As my dolls have gone down in scale the fineness of the lace and the size of the piece has had to shrink to match. If you put a piece of lace trim that looks great on a twelfth scale doll on to a forty-eighth scale doll it looks ludicrous.
I have collected lace in many places. When I went to Australia for my cousin’s wedding in 2008 1 found a great ‘op shop’ with quite a lot of old lace on the old cards from the old shop it had come from. I have, of course, bought a lot of lace from haberdashers in miniature at Miniatura. They are by and large very focussed individuals. Hilary Spedding, the original Dolls House Draper, excelled at trading round the world and never let geographical distance get in the way of obtaining all the good stuff for her customers. There was another haberdasher who described at length the extreme joy of sorting through the rubble of a bombed-out sundries factory on the edges of civilisation, and rescuing cards of ancient ribbon. Others waited until factories making fancy knicker trimming for a well-known high street clothing store, had an unfortunate surplus, whereupon they would wade in, arms akimbo and relieve the manufacturers at an advantageous price.
This afternoon I have begun what might be quite a lengthy task of designing Tudor doll kits. I appear to have made the porcelain dolls in three sizes and confidently predict there will be much trial and error before the kits land on the stand, so I’d better get on because it is now six weeks to the show.
Talking of which, you might want a little look at a previous show. Apparently there have been videos made at the show for a couple of shows. I only found this out when I emailed Andy to ask if there could be videos and for lo! There are!
Oh hooray! Get in the mood right here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kkRDLMmMbo
this is on YouTube, if there are adverts just click on ‘skip’
Excellent!
Now where was I? Oh yes. Here, kitty kitty!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~