It is the second weekend since Miniatura and I still have a hall full of wheeled cases and assorted exhibiting stuff.
My paraphernalia is mild compared to other exhibitors. Some have very large vans, especially if they are showing houses, as you might expect. Some have huge boards to put on top of the table to extend it, especially if they have a lot of very small sundries and accessories to show in partitioned baskets.
I only can have what I can fit in my car, which is a ten year old Volkswagen UP. As there is only me I do have a bit of wiggle room without a passenger, nevertheless, the exhibition sundries occupy more room in the car than the dolls.
Some of the sundries are items you might expect such as table cloths and stands. I spent a long time working out how to display dolls so that they could be picked up and put down again safely. Leaning, in a box, is the answer, so that the boxes themselves have been propped on a range of leaning devices. For years they were on metal picture tripods. inherited from my father’s antique shop and picture gallery, until I bit the bullet and actually purchased wooden stands for artists to paint pictures on. These stand on boxes which I made and covered so that some of the dolls are at eye level. Visitors like to look at a doll often before they pick it up and everyone complains of back ache at the end of a long weekend, so I like to get as much as possible into a viewer-friendly area. The art easels have an arrangement at the base like deck chair feet, so that the rake can be varied, so that dolls can fall back into the boxes easily.
All of this ancillary stuff takes up space in the car, going in various containers but the packaging takes up an entire wheeled case of its own.
When I began, dolls were rehomed in paper bags. Many exhibitors still do sell their wares in paper bags, which would be the packaging of choice if you were selling ribbon, for example.
Over the years, talking to collectors and being a collector myself I have realised the importance of packaging at the fair. For a start many miniaturists have travelled a long way to get to Miniatura, I know my dolls live all around the world. The packaging has to be strong enough to survive a journey. I also know that many of my dolls live in packaging waiting for a house to be built for them to live in. Some dolls are part of a collection without a house and can be displayed in rotation.
Whatever the reason the packaging is important to keep the doll safe, sometimes for years.
I make most of my own. I spend many hours researching dies to make various boxes. I am so glad to have a die cutting machine which is so much faster than measuring and cutting card with a craft knife, which I used to do years ago. It still takes a few days of hard work to cut all the replacement boxes after a fair and stick them all together. For a while I had Gladstone bags in light card for the twelfth scale dolls, but I decided this fair they weren’t strong enough and instead have bought white postal card boxes, for the twelfth scale dolls. Anyone under three inches tall goes in a matchbox made by me. I have just found a third size of matchbox dies, which I am very happy about, they will fit the new lad perfectly, being long and slim.
I think matchboxes are just the right thing for the dolls, even if they never get anywhere near a dolls’ house. It is perfect to have a real, articulated, invisibly jointed, original artist porcelain doll, in miniature, living in a matchbox.
That’s what miniatures should be about, I think. If you never get further than a collection, a collection of wonders in matchboxes pretty much defines the hobby, I would say.
What do you think?
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