Just a brief hello, hello!
If you are a Gem Collector and have found me from a mention on screen, which was very kind of Emily, you are in the right place.
I have been blogging here for over sixteen years. I began this website, despite being the least technical person you’ll ever meet, to help artisans. I have been a professional miniaturist for thirty five years making my own designs of small porcelain dolls for the dolls house hobby. I have an unintentional background in antiques and houses, because my adoptive father was a builder who collected antiques. My treat in the school summer holidays was to go to a building site and then back home via an antique shop. When the hobby, which was starting to burgeon in the late seventies, presented itself to me via a trip to the Carlisle Collection of Miniature Rooms in the eighties, I found I already had a lot of knowledge.
I wanted porcelain dolls as good as those I had seen in antiques shops, but there were none. I wanted glass eyes, separate fingers, removable clothes, doll jewellery, the lot. I was told it couldn’t be done. So I took a one day course in how to make big reproduction dolls and was still told miniature couldn’t be done. Of course I did it. If there had been no furniture available I’d have been a furniture maker…
I have tried glassblowing and every other skill there is in miniature. It is truly a hobby without end. Anything you can do in big, you can miniaturise. The other advantage of it is that you cannot be wrong. You can build a house of any era, any location and none, or fantasy, or just have a collection of exquisite miniature artefacts, or just enjoy looking or build room boxes out of cereal boxes. No one can tell you you’ve got it wrong because whatever you achieve will be your original art, or your exclusive collection. Unlike reality, you call the shots.
There are many aspects to the hobby. There are fewer shops than there used to be and fewer shows. There are some very expensive shows around the world in big cities. There are web shops, there are magazines. I am very lucky to live in the Midlands of Britain, my local show is Miniatura. This world-class show is invited artisans who have been deemed good enough to exhibit there. It was started as a venue for collectors to meet artisan makers in a place that was not too expensive to get to, get in to as a visitor, or stay. It is still run by the same family, who have never lost sight of the original intention, it is for miniaturists by miniaturists and always has been.
I had only exhibited twice at Miniatura when a small lady in a beret came up and took one of my doll kits to trial for a magazine called Dolls House World. She was the lovely editor, Lynne Medhurst. On the strength of the kit instructions she asked me if I would write for the magazine. Thus began my column Just Jane which ran in the nineties and noughties. I also interviewed artists and did reviews and everything I was asked to do for the princely sum of £20 a page. I became aware that some other writers were relying on writing to eat, so I went on strike until the management upped it to £25 a page for everyone. I briefly became world famous in a tiny way and signed numerous magazines at shows, some of which were even the ones in which I had articles published.
I began this blog to help artists. Glossy magazines can have a six month lead-in. Artists complained that by the time the article was published, they had sold the piece, or moved on to something else. So up to the night before the show they sent me a picture and some words. The artist was happy, the collectors were pleased not to miss the latest and very soon I was asked if I could be funny about something other than miniatures.
The actual magazine writing stopped when I became carer for my demented mother. This generated the dementia diaries which collected emails from round the world of people in the same sticky situation. I think the number of demented people in my life is now in double figures and I still get enquiries about this topic.
The caring affected my health, I had two broken arms, cancer, adhesions from the cancer surgery and surgery for that. The last big hospital thing was a couple of years ago and I am hoping to be well now for a long time.
There is sixteen years worth of writing about all sorts of things here. A blog is written with the most recent posting at the top and everything else goes backwards. You can find things to read by clicking on the list at the side, by scrolling down, having scrolled by going left or right at the bottom. You cannot break anything by scrolling, or clicking. It might not be a bad idea to get a cup of tea before a reading marathon.
People who feature in this blog are the OH (the other half, my husband) The S&H (the son and heir to all my debts and a person who has been doing computers since before he could walk and is the wonderful thinker who knows what to do when the site goes banana shaped occasionally). There are grandchildren similarly abbreviated and there was a Step-Mum-in-law who also became demented.
The reason I rarely refer to people by name is that, having done bit of journalism, I would not publish anything specifically about a person unless I had their agreement. When I was first writing for magazines the text used to go back and forward in the post until the person I was writing about was completely happy that I had represented them and their art as they wished it to be. I was writing to make people happy.
You’ll also find reference to the lockdown library that I put at the end of my drive every day, which I also do to make people happy.
I post sporadically. The aim is at least once a week but if there is more to write about, or we are heading up to the next Miniatura and I am working hard I’ll show you what I’m up to. I write less about other artists now but you can find a great deal about the exhibitors at, in my opinion, the best art show in the world, that just happens to be miniature at the show website www.miniatura.co.uk
That’s it for now. If you think I am the Jane who writes silly comments into Gem Collector, I am. If you think I was the Jane who wrote silly comments in to Create and Craft, that was also me. I just like silly little things that cheer us all up. There are those who might opine that I am the silly little thing that cheers everyone up, and I wouldn’t disagree.
Real life can be hard work and, if you watch the television news too often, very depressing. If you spend your life doom scrolling on a phone, that won’t do you much good either. All you’ll get here is old fashioned writing which is mostly either cheerful or informative.
If you’d like to contact me, all you have to do is click on ‘Leave a comment’ just down there. I’ll get back to you.
So Hello! (Well goodbye actually, but only until I post again. We’ll post again don’t know where (yes I do, here) don’t know when (tomorrow or the next day maybe) but I know I’ll post again some sunny day (and also if it’s raining. Actually more likely if it’s raining because I won’t be gardening.)
Where you singing? At this time of day! (You’ll fit right in here, I feel.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~