Are you easily distracted?

Posted on 30th November 2025 by admin

Me too and I don’t even have a mobile phone.

The OH spends hours of his life on his phone.  He is unable to watch the news without getting out his phone to look something up, usually half a minute before the news reader tells us exactly the thing he is looking up.  This may or may not come under the heading of impatience, which, for the OH is highly likely.  It seems to go with the territory of being overly keen on alcohol, elderly and having an interesting variety of ailments.  This combination is enough to make anyone annoyed, but if it proved inadequate there are millions of things to get annoyed about if you have a mobile telephone to hand.

The very first moon landing was achieved with a computer with less computing power than a very basic mobile phone.  Probably just as well, if all the astronauts had had modern phones to hand, they’d have been so busy looking up moon facts, they might have missed the landing.

Which would have been very annoying.

Not having a mobile I have to rely on my own brain to get distracted, at which I am ace having had tons of practice.

I am meant to be getting on with the Christmas card. As always, this year is planned to outdo last year.  Half of it is in my head and the other half actually exists.  Part of the interest lies in wondering if I am actually going to be able to do it but if it is looking quite difficult, or hard work, (currently I have die cut twenty four of a major multi part component and have at least another thirty six to go, of the first component,) I tend to wander off and do something else.  I have just tidied about a five years’ worth of a massive dies collection because I am contemplating buying some more for another idea I’ve had and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t got them already.

Last evening I foolishly watched a Black Friday event on a crafting TV channel and not only bought a load of stuff I had not intended to buy; when they invited emails, I joined in and subsequently went to bed with my brain buzzing.

At this time of year I reread Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather, easily the best Christmas book ever.  It is very hard not just to sit up all one night and read the book.  I force myself just to do a bit and make it last.  As a result I only had the end, which is definitely the best bit, to go, which did not prove enough switch off from joining in with TV.  I love making smart email remarks and getting them read out on TV.  The aim of the game is to make the presenter laugh or distract them so much they forget what they were selling.  This distraction, which died with Create and Craft, looks as if it’s back with HobbyMaker, much to my delight.

Here is another game, good for all year.  It’s the toilet roll middle game.  You are playing against your own previous efforts.  The aim is to pack as many carboard roll toilet roll middles into one cardboard toilet roll middle as you can.  Like this

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see?  Empty roll middle on the right, packed roll middle on the left. You would be surprised how satisfying this is.

This one

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has ten other toilet roll middles packed inside it.  How many more do you reckon I can get in there?  Two? Three.?

You can spend a remarkable amount of time on this, especially if you have finished in the bathroom and the next appointed task is unsavoury or daunting.  I got the last four in there when I was supposed to be washing a floor and, ideally, plastering up the dent in the wall made by my head. 

There are people who just start a task, finish it, tidy up and go to bed.  If you have proper work that you have to go to, you are more or less obliged to do that.  If you are retired or self employed, you would imagine that the endless days stretch before you until boredom sets in.  My problem is the endless possibilities contained in every 24 hours.

I don’t actually have 24 hours in a day, I have discovered that, without a couple of hours workout, everything seizes up and sleep is elusive.  If I take the two hours out to workout I will get a solid eight hours sleep, which leaves an hour for a shower and an hour for kitchen, food, or cleaning related tasks and an hour sitting in a heap for lunch, an hour sitting in a heap for tea and an hour for random stuff such as shopping, all of which only leaves nine hours to do anything in, such as writing this, which has taken a couple of hours.

How can anyone take two hours to write such rubbish?  You may well ask.  You do have to proof read careflly or et loks liiik siz.  You also have to do thinking, er, I think.  Though, really, how can it take two hours to write a measly thousand words?

Before I answer I have a toilet roll middle to cram into another toilet roll middle, now I have taken the picture and shown you what to do.  They won’t just cram themselves you know, it takes thought, a skilled finger and sometimes a tail comb.

And, of course, something else altogether which urgently needs doing.

Which I will definitely get round to when I’ve done this.

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Uncivil.

Posted on 24th November 2025 by admin

If you have just watched Civilisations rise and fall because I mentioned it, I am very sorry for wasting an hour of your life that you’ll not get back.  Quite how you are able to make the sack of Rome, one of the great disasters of history, so boring, is a wonder.  Having several different presenters, who all sounded as if they were lecturing Class 3B on a Friday afternoon was as unhelpful as time lapse photography of visitors rushing round the British Museum ignoring the artefacts that told the story.  Was there not one member of museum staff who could have shown us an artefact properly in a good light and explained the object?  The fact that the objects in the horde were of precious materials and virtuoso manufacture wasn’t mentioned.

If you are old enough to remember the original Civilisation as told by Kenneth Clark with absolute fascination, so that it was utterly riveting when all he basically did was get on his hind legs and talk, you’ll feel as short changed as I do.  There was no clever clogs camera trickery in 1969.  With all the technology available to tell the story in 2005, why did they not use it?

Spoiler alert.  I’ve already told you that the Aztecs were mostly defeated by diseases brought by the conquistadors, and their own beliefs that the invaders were gods.  The Ancient Egyptians were defeated by Rome and became a Roman province, as I remarked.

Just in case you were wondering, the Samurai were brought down by superior fire power and a desire of their leaders to modernise.  It can take many years to learn how to wield a sword properly.  Many antique weapons have the same disadvantage.  Regular readers know the OH has been enjoying archery for a few years, has made his own longbow and some archery bosses (targets) for his club and still has plenty of days where he finds the target remarkably elusive.  In the middle ages most towns had an area where all able bodied men were required regularly to practice with a bow and arrow for which they were granted the right to farm strips of land.  In the town where I live there is still a street called The Butts.

As the spate of mass murders around the world by lone lunatics with a firearm attest, you do not need any skill to fire a gun around generally.  You just need the weapon and some bullets.  An older version of this ability suddenly made the skilled Samurai swordsmen obsolete.  The OH inherited a Japanese sword surrendered to his father, who was a young sailor in the Navy at the end of the Second World War.  The OH sold it and bought a computer keyboard, that linked to the TV and fascinated the baby, now in IT.

I think I may predict that the new series of Civilisation will emphasise that strength to keep a civilisation going lies with its ability to keep up with the times, with new technology, and recent developments in weaponry, and keep a beady eye on what the people are doing and who they are.

Depressingly all that will be necessary to destabilise the current Western civilisation will be a magnetic pulse or similar that can knock out all the computers in one go and leave them that way.  We have already experienced cyber attacks with massive financial implications, all it would take is for enough hostile powers to recruit enough nerds who regard cyber crime as a personal goal, to take over a country.

The geeks shall inherit the earth.

Meanwhile you can still turn off all the devices and read a good book, might be time to get the original paper Civilisation by Kenneth Clark out again, Amazon is selling the paperback for a fiver and some pennies.

Reading in various forms has been a good idea since the first caveman drew a hunt on the cave wall.  It will always be beneficial to understanding to do your own research.  Read some books.  Visit museums.  Make an historical model.  Dig a test pit in the back garden.  Have a go at crafts and skills of the past.

In short, find out for yourself.  Use the human brain.  The more you use it, the better it gets.

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Ancient Egypt for miniaturists.

Posted on 23rd November 2025 by admin

It has not been often in the history of this blog that I have added a new category.  Ancient Egypt for miniaturists is the new category for many reasons.

Talking to miniaturists at Miniatura I realised how much I knew about Ancient Egypt.  I didn’t have to look anything up, it was all there in my head.

Straight after spring Miniatura I started doing the research, though it was hardly a new topic for me.  I was not introduced to the topic at school, though it is now part of many curricula but first became aware of it in a major way with the 1963 film of Cleopatra.  There is a copyright free image of Howard Terpning’s iconic film poster, here it is.

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The film had absolutely everything, it was gorgeous.  I haven’t been able to find it online to watch yet, but I’ll keep looking.

The film tells the story of the end of Ancient Egypt, which story has considerably more drama than most end of empire tales.  There is betrayal, romance, a woman fighting to save a whole kingdom, fabulous costumes, amazing crowd scenes and three of the biggest box office stars of the time.  It didn’t hurt the action one little bit that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton first met on set in the eternal city, Rome, and started a romance that sizzled through the celluloid.  In real life they had a glamorous time, she was the most beautiful woman on the planet, he was somewhat unfettered and bought her gigantic diamonds.  Really, really big diamonds.

Much of the tale of Ancient Egypt has a lot to do with things similar to really, really big diamonds.  Everyone knows the Howard Carter quote when he was asked what he saw with his head in Tutankhamun’s tomb, and said he saw wonderful things and ‘everywhere the glint of gold.’

There isn’t a person on earth whose attention wouldn’t be grabbed by gold and diamonds, add a fabulous film, that amazing year 1963, the most beautiful woman in the world and we all want to know more.

I963 was the year that I began to be interested in Ancient Egypt, I was gifted a book about it by my parents, then 1972 brought the Treasures of Tutankhamun to London, and though I didn’t go, being a very new teacher struggling to afford rent and all expenses away from home for the first time, it was impossible to ignore the souvenir items flooding the market everywhere you looked.

That is the impetus for my revisiting this past interest, and interest in the past.  A huge purpose-built museum is due to open in Cairo on November 1st which will house  all the treasures of Tutankhamun, in the same place for the first time since they were discovered, the solar boat of Khufu, an enormous statue of Ramses the Great and many other wonders.

Why does this civilization, which began to flourish 5,000 years ago have such a grip on us today?

The gold has a lot to do with it.

Because of their beliefs that important people in their civilization would, upon death, be reborn again, if they were good, and go to the Elysian Fields, a beautiful country where they would be happy forever, the Ancient Egyptians focussed their attention on the afterlife, and provision for its splendour.  This is understandable when you consider their actual lives, which were in the main, not very long.  Life expectation was about forty years if nothing went wrong.  However, many things did go wrong, starting with childbirth which was hazardous in all ancient civilizations.

Mummies have been discovered of women who died in childbirth with one or more babies trapped inside them. Delivery by Caesarean section is called after Julius Caesar, that’s him in the poster above, played by Rex Harrison.  There he is in the poster, the first person we know to have been born successfully this way. In the whole preceding 3,000 years of Egyptian civilization this had not happened, hence the stuck babies.  It did not help that any type of midwifery in Ancient Egypt was considered a low status job, given to the dancing girls, who were not generally important enough to wear clothing.  There was a birthing stool, examples of which have survived and the sacred lotus flower, which, as well as being nice in a bouquet and pretty as decoration on pillars, happens to be a powerful drug.  If you had had a baby stuck inside you for a couple of days, Nile flies swarming all over you and your only help a stool with a bit at the front missing and a lithe but dim dancing girl, you’d want a powerful drug.  Frequently.

Having read and reread all I could get my hands on about Ancient Egypt, I began to compare notes and books and discover mistakes, or areas of ignorance in earlier published works that have been updated or infilled with later research.  One of these is a mystery object labelled an apotropaeic wand.  Surviving examples are often made of hippopotamus teeth, which are naturally curved, the entire object looking like a very small boomerang.

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The pointed end shows signs of wear and the whole is covered with images of various deities and magical animals known to be protective of children.  There is an inscription which translates as: words spoken by these (animals depicted) are to spread protection over this child.

I read about these wands as mystery objects in numerous reference works and now believe by context of finding, by size and by previous descriptions and by hints in more recent publications, that this is an early version of a high forceps delivery tool to assist in childbirth.  If you are a female reader you may cross your legs now.

At Autumn Miniatura, exhibiting my mini Egyptians, more than one visitor told me that the Ancient Egyptians wore white because it deflected the rays of the sun or indicated purity.  A moment’s reflection on the probable condition of a child, dressed in white, sent out to play on the muddy banks of the Nile, would be unlikely to conjure up purity.  In fact, after a lot of reading, it becomes obvious that the Ancient Egyptians never found out how to make colours applied to linen to stay when the garment was washed.

As any miniaturist will tell you the Arts and Crafts movement with its emphasis on nature was the vehicle for the popularisation of mordants used to make natural dyes permanent.  If William Morris could have time travelled to Ancient Egypt the Egyptians  would have been delighted to dress in the naturally derived colours that we see in all the late nineteenth century paintings of the Arts and Crafts movement.

In fact the textile technology of the Romans, who were getting very good at dyeing using natural resources such as murex shells, a type of snail, to produce Tyrian purple, the status defining Imperial Purple, would have been available to the Egyptians had it not been for the unfortunate defeat of Antony and Cleopatra by Octavian at the battle of Actium in 31BC. Subsequently Egypt, one of the world’s great civilisations, became a Roman province.

It was civilised in some quite modern ways; Antony and Cleopatra spent time in the library at Alexandria, the greatest collection of literature (on scrolls) in the world at the time.  You’ll be pleased to know that cats were employed to keep down the numbers of mice that wanted to nibble the edges of the books.

I will be watching the new BBC series:  Civilisations Rise and Fall with great interest.  There has never been a civilisation on this planet that has lasted forever.  They have all put out propaganda about their existence into the far distant future, which always grinds to halt when they are conquered, overrun, succumb to interesting new viruses or fail because of geography, climate change or numerous other reasons.

One of the programmes is about the Aztecs.  Their legends about wonderful four-legged gods caused them to interpret the Spanish conquistadors, who arrived riding on horses, as benevolent.  As these ‘gods’ had arrived drawn by the gold, which they proceeded to steal in industrial quantities, bringing with them an assortment of diseases which the Aztecs had no defence against, including smallpox and measles, that was the end of that.

One of the advantages of studying ancient civilisations with the perspective of time is that we can sometimes see where they went wrong, but with the eye of a miniaturist, reproducing their reality, we can also experience their technology, their reality and the wonderful things they made and did.

As a miniature doll dresser, I have nothing but admiration for the textile technology of the Ancient Egyptians.  In the illustrations of their lives, the size of their hands is usually exaggerated because everything from textiles, to pots, to buildings and carved stone was made by hand.

A hand-made civilisation is a marvel we will visit again in the future.  If any reader has the chance to visit GEM, the new museum of Ancient Egypt in Cairo, please get in touch, we’d love to see your photos.

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Art and Tuscany.

Posted on 16th November 2025 by admin

Apologies for the radio silence.  I am healing from my ‘orrible injury and was, as usual, trying to do everything.  I sent a card to someone also having health problems and, having advised them to rest, realised I was not doing it myself.  So I stopped for a while and just spent time doing my little scrapbook.

I showed you the sketches I had done from life in Tuscany.

I think there is little doubt that the landscape has given rise to the art

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even the agricultural junk littering the landscape is incredibly picturesque.  If you are a fan of Matthew Palmer, who is a great painting teacher, his landscapes frequently have roads leading into the distance or going round a bend in the road.  In the UK he does classes in the Lake District and various places with interesting landscapes, which you need to go and find.

In Tuscany it was impossible to look in any direction and not see a potential picture.  It is the geography.  There was a great deal of looking out of car windows and, when looking at recently harvested fields, seeing very basic mud, in lumps; friable rich compost it definitely wasn’t. Round the villa there were olive trees, lemon trees in pots and various tame plants.  If you looked twice you could see the watering system  of half buried hoses.  If you look at the fields in the photograph, there are hardly any flat ones and some of the fields in the distance are not far off vertical.  Yes there is a lot of sunshine but the geography is not helping, at all, neither is the soil.

Tuscans must have strong thighs.  Every ridge top that was not an actual knife edge had a house right on the top,

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and an even higher mast on the top of the house.  Everything is up, even if you are only working in that flattish field on the left behind the line of trees, you still have to walk up to the house at the end of the day when you are tired.

I went, having, I thought, just recovered from a fortnight of flu-like something.  One vertical walk into a hill town was enough to convince me that my lungs were not working very well at all.  Each step was like breathing sandpaper.

People who live round here must be either hard as tanned leather or dead.

I am sufficiently recovered now to have nearly finished making up the little album and, before the Christmas cards and pouring the new dolls, I have some big sketches half done, properly done and to embark on from photographs, which I intend to watercolour.

I always enjoyed portraiture, which has now finished as there weren’t enough students.  Self-taught, I learned over a few years, the importance of getting the pencil lines in the right place.  Now that I have had my cataracts done and can actually see the landscapes, I’m going to see if the same thing will apply to the sketched views, enlarged, and some still in my mind but prompted by photographs.

I didn’t take enough photos.  My little Olympus Miu is on its last legs, the shutter is intermittently working.  So I spent more time looking with my eyes than through a lens.  As I am probably the last person in the world who does not have a smart phone I didn’t do any of that either.  I try hard to be present in my own life, using my own five senses. When I look at the work of some of the Uffizi artists from a previous posting, I am reminded that all they started out with was their own five senses and a pencil.

And the landscape, the incredible Tuscan landscape.

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Tuscan sketchbook.

Posted on 3rd November 2025 by admin

Although bits of the holiday were not that good, especially the journeys and injury, nothing could detract from the incredible scenery.

I had paid for everyone to go to the Uffizi, which would have been better not on the first day when, thanks to redirected flights we had previously had only three hours sleep.  However the splendour of all the Renaissance art was fortifying.

One of the features of art of this era is all that is going on in the background of the scene.  I often wondered about all the little houses perched on hilltops.

Here is  a photographic detail from Leonardo’s Annunciation, of stuff going on in the background, behind the angel –

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are these very sculptural trees imaginary?  What about the buildings over the balcony rail beside Mary?

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look at the pillars and the buildings going up the hillside, are they fictitious?

I took sketchbooks with me to Tuscany.  Little four inch square books with hardbacks.  We were staying in a rescued old house, refurbished beautifully by the owner and surrounded on every side by views.

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This is the view from the pool.  All those pointy trees and the buildings going up the hillsides and perched on the tops of the hills are real, and everywhere you look.

I only had a day and some mornings in the house to draw and only had a propelling pencil and some multicoloured biros, having provided the same for the grandchildren, but the views were unbeatable, and I hope I got better as I practised.  I always thought the Italian Renaissance had been inspired by archaeology, as people began to dig down through the layers of a thousand years of mediaeval mud, to the glory that was Rome below.  Quite  bit of it is down to the geography, unearthing thousand year old marble statues and standing them up again in such landscapes was bound to inspire anyone.

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Here is the dirt track up to the villa, done in biro with a bit of pencil in the background.

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Every view into the distance reveals little buildings, perched on hills, surrounded by sculptural trees, which are Lombardy pines and Italian Cypresses.

Absolutely everything is picturesque.  When talking to Italians in Florence, they want to know what sort of artist you are.  Outside of the Duomo a man in jeans and a tee-shirt was singing opera, by the shops an artist was painting pictures of mediaeval bridges with a palette knife.  I was glad I had learned the Italian to say I make miniature articulated porcelain dolls, because I was asked.

I don’t usually draw, but in the Tuscan countryside, you almost cannot help yourself doing so.

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I do need to go back.  I need less time being driven round and more time, much more time, just looking.

I should be getting on with some moulds, but I’ll not do that until my stitches are out and I feel better but I think I’m going to have to do watercolours of some of my photographs.

After the Uffizi I felt as if art was spilling out of my ears, now I think it may come down my arm and escape through my fingers.

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Thank you to all readers who emailed, concerned.  There goes my possible career as a top model, I’ll just have to tell Chanel, no, I’m sorry, I’m going to be an artist instead.

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Fall over oween.

Posted on 31st October 2025 by admin

I went on holiday.

So far so good.

I haven’t had a holiday since 2008, when I went to Australia to meet my new rellies, when my cousin married an Australian.

Good so far.

I came back from Italy, spiritual home, yesterday.  Flight swap in Zurich.

Very nice airport.

Flights in a bit of a rush, a lot of running through airports involved.

Was already tired climbing up Italian mountain villages with the remnants of Covid or something and short of breath.

Not quite as good.

Got home late, had a shower went to bed.

Still OK.

Got up this morning had another shower, put hair in curlers.

OK.

All the holiday laundry was in the utility room piled up in a small black suitcase, with sticking out wheels.

Oh oh.

I tripped over the wheel and headed inexorably for the corner wall.

Oh.

And, with my forehead, made this dent in the wall.

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I put my hand to my head and shouted as the OH came in to see what the noise was: ‘Ambulance!’

Because I thought I could feel a big dent in my head.

Not good.

I had decanted a box of tissues from the holiday on to a table.  I grabbed a handful and held it to my head.  Blood everywhere.

Then the OH got in the car and drove me to A&E.

Last time I was in A&E was when I fell on the drive and cut my chin open.  I had just washed my hair and turned up then in curlers

I must stop going to A&E like this.  It lacks style.

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However over the next hour my hair dried.  I took the curlers out and the OH took a picture of my skull.

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Happy Halloween.

It took about three quarters of an hour to put nine stitches in.

It didn’t half hurt, even with anaesthetic.

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I was going to put sweets out for the local children tonight, it being Halloween but I’ve decided not to.

Don’t want to frighten anyone.

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Not just for Christmas.

Posted on 22nd October 2025 by admin

Sorry for a bit of radio silence. I was dressing a doll which a collector bought at Miniatura.

The main reason I make porcelain dolls, rather than any other kind, is their durability.

Porcelain as a medium for any kind of art, is so well known for its strength that in past centuries, Lloyds of London, insuring ships and their contents, insisted on the ballast in the hold being plates and cups and tableware of porcelain, china and other glazed ceramics because they knew if the ship went down the porcelain could be recovered from the sea bed and sold to offset the cost of saving the wreck.

I have an eighteenth century drinking bowl, glazed blue and white porcelain, which went down with the Tek Sing, a Vietnamese trader, subsequently being retrieved by divers and sold by a TV shopping channel, as good as the day it went down.  It has very slight marine encrustation but only on the outside, you could still drink your tea out of it and, at the price the shopping channel sold the cups for, a good investment.

Of course, making dolls from porcelain involves numerous skills which are difficult to master, especially  if like me, if you could only afford one afternoon’s class to see what was entailed.  Afterwards I was self-taught, which might be an advantage, no one was there to tell me something was difficult, so I was able to fail at my own pace.

I will in time show you some of the ways in which you can make a doll.  There are many.  At any Miniatura you will find artists producing dolls in all the ways they can be produced, each way having its own advantages and disadvantages, as well as its own particular appearance.

Nothing beats porcelain for difficulty of manufacture, creating potentially hundreds of years of existence.

As each piece of porcelain achieves 1200 degrees in the kiln, the jacket of air round each molecule of porcelain clay is driven off.  The clay body shrinks and will stay that way even if sunk to the bottom of the sea for three hundred years.  The change at molecular level is what makes all fired clay bodies durable.  There is Ancient Egyptian pottery which is 5,000 years old in museums, still looking much the same as the day it was made.

Each piece of porcelain in a doll I have made, could be disassembled, washed and put together again, forever.  All the dolls are capable of being restrung, reassembled, redressed, rewigged and good as new forever.  For a small fee I’ll do any and all of those and when I have gone to the big workshop in the sky any museum that has old porcelain dolls will know how to conserve any of my dolls because they are made in exactly the same way as all the old dolls were.  No shortcuts, no glue guns, no wired armatures, no glued-on clothing, all proper.

Why?  Several reasons, one being that when I began miniaturising there was a lot of talk about a dolls house being an heirloom, which it is.  But it’s only as heirloomy as all the stuff in it will last.  All the miniatures which are true miniature versions of already existing big artefacts made in the same way using the same materials, such as miniature silverware made by silversmiths, miniature furniture made of wood by carpenters, miniature textiles woven, embroidered and sewn by  textile artists of various sorts, will last, because they already have done so.

The other main reason is that it doesn’t take long to realise how very clever miniaturists are.  The hobby attracts very able people.  If they can do something themselves, they will.  When I was writing for Dolls House World editor Lynne and I insisted that as many published items as possible featured the fantastic craftsman version, the kit version and the one you could do for nothing out of cereal boxes.

Therefore, if you are going to make and sell anything to miniaturists it should be something they cannot easily do for themselves.  Thirty five years ago we got our first credit card to buy a kiln, which cost a thousand pounds.  I was terrified of the cost, terrified of the kiln, and horrified by the items that appeared from the first few firings.  The learning curve was almost vertical but you could definitely argue that was not an investment that most miniaturists would be likely to make.  Looking back it was as much an investment in myself as anything else.  Apart from gardening and writing nothing else has proved as interesting for as long.

There are artists producing porcelain dolls from commercially available moulds.  These are all over the world, and, of course, all look the same.  There are artists producing dolls from ‘tweaked’ mouldings.  While the clay is wet you can manipulate it.

There are not that many artists making dolls from their own original sculptures.  It’s difficult.  It’s also not very rewarding financially.  If I made dolls from commercial moulds, of the type that have separate heads, hands and feet with soft bodies and then dressed them in a set of patterns that were either commercially available, from a book, or worked out by me and then endlessly reproduced, I could actually make a very slightly profitable business.  I have interviewed artists who did exactly that.  Some years they were into profit, some not.

I am very definitely on the side of art.  Every single doll has come out of my brain, down my arm and out through my fingers, via the kiln, into the world.  I once worked out that I work for 40p an hour.  I should probably sack myself.

But that last reason I do it this way is that it makes people happy.  I know many happy collectors, I have many happy collectors.

If you spend your working days making people happy, I think that’s a good thing to do with your life.

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Soft shoe shuffle.

Posted on 11th October 2025 by admin

Do you remember this?

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It is a vegetable crate pram which I made for a collector.

Many collectors like their dolls to be neat clean, pretty and living well in miniature but Anne had other ideas.

‘I have always been fascinated by the nursery rhyme “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”  I had always wanted to create this scene in miniature.  The opportunity arose when the dolls’ house club I belong to decided to do it as a project using an old shoe or wellington boot.  As luck would have it I came across a pair of large boots in a supermarket sale which only cost me £5 and I thought they were ideal.  So, full steam ahead, I decoupaged the inside of the boot to give it some strength, then cut out spaces for the insertion of windows and a door.  1/24th scale worked best.  The roof was covered with tiles made from egg boxes and painted.

I then put  the boot on a base and created a garden around it.  Next I needed some people and asked Jane to make a mother and 5 children and when they came they fitted in so well and had a real mischievous look about them which is just what I wanted.  So I am very pleased with the outcome and everyone is happy in their new home.’

Here are the dolls

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and this is the absolutely fantastic home Anne has made for them.

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Isn’t this absolutely wonderful?  I’m glad the lady is managing to feed them all, and she is keeping up with the washing.

The dolls look very happy to be living in Ireland with Anne who is looking after them so well.

It is such a pleasure to join in with miniaturists who have big ideas.  Anne says she first met me at Miniatura and wishes she could be there.  If you have seen the sort of thing I get up to doll wise, either at the Min or online and would like to make doll suggestions, please do.  Miniaturists have absolutely unlimited imaginations, and, obviously in Anne’s case, all the skills to make their ideas a reality.  The outcome is a real artwork, it is delightful.  It tells the story beautifully and is just begging to be played with and enjoyed.

Well done Anne!  I’m just about to get my winter boots out and I’m hoping they don’t fit.  Anyone else?

If you have any wonderful miniature creations that you think might benefit from an airing here and inspire other miniaturists, just click on leave a comment below to get in touch.

I do wonder what happened to the other shoe.  Is Anne hopping around, has she sawn it in half to do an interior, or has she given it the boot?

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Cornel’s Creations.

Posted on 4th October 2025 by admin

Years ago in the noughties, when I was reporting Miniatura for magazines and exhibiting with an assistant, I was able to see the whole show, talk to exhibitors and meet my collectors.  Now, exhibiting alone, with three hours set up time the previous day and a couple of hours in the morning, to set up a thousand items, I’m lucky if I manage to get a look at the exhibitors on either side  of me.

However, some exhibitors are so good, I have to have a quick look as I’m setting up, a slight visit before the show opens on Saturday morning and as long as I can possibly manage having a good gawp on Sunday morning.  Into this ‘cannot miss’ category for the last couple of shows, Cornel’s Creations have cantered, far ahead of the field.

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In the Autumn show Cornel was visiting Venice.  Here is a 48th scale street in Venice, complete with gondolas sailing up the red velvet tablecloth.  How utterly perfect are these houses?  Look at the windows, don’t they just make all other windows look rubbish?  Which house do you want, or do you, like me, just want them all?

These houses are the work of Cornel Gheorgheasa, here he is:

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At Autumn Miniatura I was too busy to talk to Cornel, though I did have time to photograph his fabulous houses.  I had already talked to him at a previous Miniatura about his exceptional windows and had not been too surprised to learn that making windows is what he does in real life and one scale.  One scale is the term used by show organiser Andy Hopwood.  I helpfully informed Andy that Cornel’s windows were so good because he made windows in one scale to which Andy replied that he knew, because he’d read the side of Cornel’s van in the car park.  Tricks of the trade aside, I thought it was time to talk to Cornel himself.  Here’s the story in his own words:

‘My journey into the world of miniatures began three years ago when I purchased my first laser-cutting machine.  At first I experimented with ready-made files from Etsy, but when clients asked me to adapt kits into 1:48th scale, something clicked.  I fell in love with miniature houses – and before long we were creating our own original designs.

I’ve been very fortunate to share this journey with my daughter, Ilinca.  Her brilliant talent for design makes her the true star behind our beautiful kits, while my role is to take her digital creations and ensure they are practical and ready for makers to enjoy.

Miniature making has brought me enormous joy – not only through the creative process but also through the wonderful community of makers, united by a shared passion for miniatures.

My background is in traditional joinery.  I own a small company producing handcrafted timber windows and doors, and everything I know was first learned from my father, a skilled joiner now happily retired.  That heritage of craftsmanship continues to guide every piece we make today.’

Seasoned miniaturists will have noticed that, in common with some of the best miniaturists there have ever been, Cornel knew all about his subject and had practised for years in full size before he became aware of the miniature world, and that he is working in authentic materials to produce the best kind of miniatures, the same in every way as the one scale item, but smaller.

Architecture in particular benefits from a bit of shrinkage, you get a different view when you can see the whole building at once.

The other question miniaturists will have is the one about the insides.  Are they as good as the outsides?

Judge for yourself:

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You don’t need me to tell you this is the inside of a book shop, I know you’re already in there, stacking the shelves.

I did ask Cornel at the show about scales.  48th is not really my favourite, I love 24th, as you know.  Could Cornel make any of his designs in alternative scales, I asked.

Yes he can.  The place to talk to him about it is at his website

www.cornels-creations.com

though I should warn you that you are going to want everything.

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This is the one I fancy, look at the windows, just look at the windows, have you ever seen anything like them, in miniature?

What complicates matters is that this house is not alone, Cornel has created entire streets, and furniture kits.  On his website there are gift vouchers, you could ask for them for Christmas, and get your nearest and dearest to buy a house kit for you.  There is only one massive problem.

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How are you going to choose?

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In chariot and on foot…

Posted on 28th September 2025 by admin

I am delighted to say the Ancient Egyptian dolls have arrived in the shop.

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Each doll will come with a scroll, giving basic information and a photograph of a 5,000 year old Ancient Egyptian model house, if you fancy giving them a home, and some pointers to information.

Ordinary Ancient Egyptians did not have much furniture, there was not a lot of wood up and down the Nile.  They were clever at using palm trees  and bundles of various plants to hold up ceilings.  It is these that we still see in the stone columns that support the roofs of the temples, which were carved to look like plants.

What they did have, and which a miniaturist could reproduce easily, was a lot of mats.  Miniature hat straw would be good here.  The houses were made of mud bricks.  These, although they were only made of mud and straw and baked in the sun, have proved very durable.  We don’t just have house models from tombs, the village that the workers in the valley of the Kings built for themselves out of mud bricks is still, mostly, there.

They were great potters and had vases, jugs and bowls for every purpose you can imagine.  They had discovered the potter’s wheel and were skilled decorators of pottery, walls, textiles by embroidery and papyri.

What is more, as I told everyone who looked at the dolls at Miniatura, this was a civilization in which you could have been paid by the government to be a miniaturist and do all the miniature stuff you do now, with a pension at the end of it.

That really is my kind of civilization – one that values artists of all kinds and is on record as advising children to work hard and be a scribe because it is a nice clean job indoors, sitting down.

I am so pleased with the way the dolls turned out.  They are very delicate with their turning hands and feet.  I have even given them separate big toes so they can wear sandals.

If you made a miniature Ancient Egyptian house and filled it with dolls, you could be in Ancient Egypt five thousand years ago and doing exactly the same thing.  The only difference would be that you would be a high status individual and people would say, as you walked past  – there they go, the miniaturist, all hail the miniaturist!  May Ptah the father of creativity bring his blessings upon the revered miniaturist!

Yes, they even had a god of creativity.

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