Mini treasures from the Arnhem DHN show

Hello my friends,

Long time no post. Almost two months! I've been busy with work. Chores around the house. A two week holiday to Germany and catching the last of the summers 'flu'.... keeping me bedridden for almost a week!

A good and rich life perhaps but I was starved for mini time. This (unvoluntary) miniature diet is probably the reason why I splashed out more on miniatures than I normally do in Arnhem this year. This highpoint of the Dutch miniature calendar was held on the 7th and  8th of october. So I am already three weeks late with sharing with you my bounty of that day. But, better late than never. I also spent some time here and there on miniatures and have a few posts for you the coming weeks. So stay tuned!

It was a delightful show with many well known and loved makers and sellers. But a lot of new miniaturists from abroad too! This hobby is still going strong in my view. 

I bought a lot more than I planned to, but that is probably due to not having been able to spend time on my favorite hobby. For a start I bought this silver bread basket made by the renowned Jens Torp. Next to it are a silver necklace and earrings with grey pearls made by Sun Lemmens of Nalladris. It goes without saying that these jewels will find a place in the dressing room of Belle.

Next are these "Zotjes". Whimsical Delftware statuettes of boys riding crocodiles. (Yes, in the 17th century exotism was more important than accuracy.) Henny Staring Egberts copied these from a pair she found in a museum. They will look great on a mantelpiece. Next to them you see a woven fruit basket with a porcelain plate in the bottom. I already have one which is a collaboration between Ilona Kraasenberg and Henny Staring-Egberts. This one is made by Will Werson who is famous for her wickerwork. To the left of the tableleg you see a wooden bucket, painted in the traditional 'Hindenloopen' style by WMS. Hindeloopen is type of folk art in and around the town of that same name that is popular to this day. The ground colour is a bright dark green but with the dark and rainy weather the camera did not pick that up. So the photo does not do the delicate paintwork justice. 

Of the talented Yosh Sagi I bought this delightfull little gueridon, or ocasional  table made of walnut wood.  It looks very much like a table my parents have in their house, that gives it an added value for me. On this table you see a porcelain cherub holding up a garland. This is a piece made by Victoria Heredia Guerbos. The Asian teapot is made by Elisabeth Causeret. I bought more of her stuff, but that will follow further on in this post.

I have already three figurines made by her, You can see them in this picture with the birds. I love them. I want to collect some more of these and use them to decorate the center of the future diningroom table. 

This next picture shows a lot of mini pottery made by the talented Elisabeth Causeret. This was her final visit to the show in Arnhem. She has retired from miniature making so this was my last chance to buy some of her wonderful work. It is hard to name a favorite but if I must the lttle asian teapot of yellow clay would by my favorite! but they are all lovely and well made. 

I also bought this pewter mini censer. It is the first mini that is intended to go into the chapel I will eventually make. I will polish it soon to bring out it's beauty. I do not know if it is really old or not but I like the elegant design very much. Next to it are two small silver pillboxes. These really are antiques. I dod not buy these in the DHn show but I did buy them in the same week. The small one will go into the dressingroom (a jewelry box perhaps) the large one shouts out LOUIS XVI (style) to me. It will probably end up in the diningroom...

Last but not least are these laboratory glass items. They are made by the late Leo Reijnders. One of the last occasions to buy his pretty miniatures. Carel Polyander dabbles in chemistry as one of his many gentlemanly scientific pursuits. This glassware is a nescessity to this aim. I especially love the few amber coloured pieces.

I also bought the portrait a water colour of an 18th century gentleman in a robe. But that is not yet in my possesion. It is painted by Jaap Wijtenburg but I will show it to you when I have it. Oh and there was so much more I would like to have bought, but that would really be unwise. Hopefully next year... then there is another show and another chance.

Well, that's it for now. Take care!

Huibrecht

A little bit of this and that. and a mini castle.

Hello my friends,

Last sunday I went to the dollshouse fair in Rijswijk. I bought some tools and craft materials, and some miniatures. 

The first is this rug. You may recognise it. It is a machine made piece and much too shiny. But it was so cheap that I still wanted to buy it. An ideal candidate for practicing distressing and/or ageing on. What method would you use? Soaking it in tea or diluted paint, or something else entirely?  Please let me know what you would use. Thank you!

If it does not work. I will have spoiled a cheap 13 in a dozen rug. If it works I end up with a rug for which I undoubtedly can find a room to lay it on the floor.

One of the last items I bought was this second hand desk with a leather inlay. The wood is stripped from its original finish which is a plus for me. Unfortunately one of the drawerpulls is torn off and another is out of shape. I have enough furniture hardware to replace them. That should be easy to remedy. It was however reason to barter about the price. We agreed on a lower price than was on the pricetag. I was pleased with the outcome.

This time I will not paint it and/or add painted decorations onto it. I want to stain this desk and wax it to look like mahogany. 

Together with some double weave embroidery.... I bought a piece of printed cotton. It has a dark blue (it almost looks like b) flowery print on a beige background. I want to use both for miniature upholstery. The evenweave can be used to simulate caning. Perhaps even combined in a single piece. For instance a chair with a caned back but with an upholstered seat. What do you think, dear friends?

And books. You may know that I love books and like to collect them (new or old) on the subject of Miniatures and dollshouses.

The two volumes of 'Collectively Speaking' by Kaye Savage Browning cost new (in the Netherlands) around 24 Euro's each. To my surprise and delight the seller wanted only 2 Euro per book. They may be second hand but the first owner seems to have never or hardly looked into them. Both books look totaly unused as if they are practically brand new. I am very happy to add these two to my small collection. 

And I can assure you that I have started reading the first book already. No book in this house will stay unread! At least not for long. 😄

And, as the title already mentions, there is also a castle... WM Houtkunst has a lot of items in smaller scales like toys, dollshouse furniture, (black forest) christmas decorations and more. Their designs are lasered into veneer. This castle set is a toy set. 

Now In Huis ter Swinnendael there is no nursery planned. Because in my story for the Zonneschuts, all the children of Carel Polyander and Belle are grown up and live on their own. Their eldest son lives in Paris on the fringes of the entourage around Louis Napoleon and is not yet maried. Their daughter lives in Rijswijk with her husband and their younger son is a protestant minister living in their smaller second estate near Delft.

But there still can be a few toys and childrens furniture scattered around the house and attics. Waiting for future grand children...

Because it is so small (1:450) I did not use paint but felt tip pens to colour the pieces. The walls have small indented stripes that give them a bit of relief. With using only very little pressure on the red felt tip pen the ink did not stain those horizontal indentations, leaving them bare. I like the effect it creates.

The castle walls are red and not gray because it is a Dutch castle. And most of my country has no bedrock where stone can be quaried. So, like almost every buildings around here it is made out of red brick. Sourced from the iron rich clay one can find en se eral places. 

Then it was time to assemble the pieces. They can be pressed out very easily and hardly need any sanding to remove visible joints. Because the fold lines are perforated bending them is quite easy. Although you have to act careful. The veneer is very thin after all. Because the floors and roofs all have a type of mortise and tenon (?) construction, every tower and wall section slots together easily has only one glued joint. 

More fiddly is getting the string through the holes in the wall and the drawbridge. I should have done the end that goes into the castle wall before glueing it shut. But for now it will be a fixed bridge instead of a drawbridge.

To customise it a little bit I plan on making a few roofs and spires out of printing paper for two of the towers. Topped with little flags. To finish it off I will varnish each piece with varnish coloured with a bit of raw umber to make the colours look less vibrant and new.

There it is an old brick castle with three valliant knights on horseback! Waiting patiently for the day that the sound of little feet can be heard running around the house again...

Huibrecht 
 

Treasures from the Rijswijk dollshouse fair

Hello my dear friends,

Last sunday I went to a miniatures and dollshouse fair in the city of Rijswijk. The first fair for me since the Netherlands went in lockdown due to Covid-19 in march 2020. The first dollshouse fair in general was held  in the town of Houten laat month, but I had other obligations that weekend. So for me Rijswijk is the first since lockdown! It also is the first time I visited the dollshouse fair in Rijswijk. And I loved it.

The weekend prior to the lockdown in 2020 I had visited the last fair in Arnhem. If all goes well the first edition of that fair will be held next march. Fingers crossed. But back to Rijswijk!

When Sun of Nalladris published a picture of a monogrammed 5 piece silver cutlery set on facebook, I asked her if she would like to make those for me too. I need 10 sets for the diningroom of Huis ter Swinnendael. 

She agreed to make them. She has put my monogram (HD) on each fork, spoon, and knife. On all 50 pieces but only visible after magnification. :-) 

Because of the then impending move to our new house, I asked her to keep them until after the move. That way I would not risk losing them because they could not be packed together with the already packed miniatures. But now I could finally hold them in my own hands. Are they not pretty? 

Fun fact: 'my' cutlery was shown on the Dollshouse Nederland magazine. Not as my cutlery, but as decoration for a picknick basket. It was part of an article tutorial on how to make the picknick basket. This way I (and everybody else) could see them before I got them. It was great fun reading the article and knowing secretly that these would be mine soon. :-) 

But I also bought a few things that don't glitter. And they are not made of silver. You may remember these garden urns. They are among the first mini's that I made/ decorated myself in 2017. 

I wanted some trees or topiaries to go in the two on the left. And when seeing all the little trees and plants of Omgardens, I became interested in the little citrus trees they sell. The above picture is for reference. I asked her if she wants to make 2 trees that fit the size of these urns. She accepted and I will get the garden urns with the citrus trees back in march at the dollhouse show in Arnhem. I can't wait to see the result! 

Finaly I bought a vase from Jeffry of Jeffry's Miniatures. And a bust of Hercules. And finally a little garden statue of a putto. I really had to stop there, or I would have bought more! And my budget was already fully spent with these three. 

They are made of resin, and painted to a beautiful finish. And that is what sets these apart. The vase looks like weathered terracotta, and the bust and putto resemble stone. The base of the vase is missing a corner but that broken off corner adds to the realism (he also had a complete vase but I chose this one) of a delicate object. An object that was possibly made in Renaissance Italy and has already an age of almost 250 years in 1805 when we find it in Huis ter Swinnendael. 

Stella, of the Kleine Poppenkast, sells many lovely and wonderful miniatures. Some that I have never seen before were skulls of different animals and human skulls. They are not made of resin or plastic but cut individualy from hartshorn. 

The detailed carving is very good, and very reasonably priced. I bought a human skull for one of the reliquaries I plan on making. It will need some aging though, to pass as a 1000+ year old relic. :-) 

And finally also some wood and brass. The brass weights on the left might be a little large for 1:12 but after I cleaned them I will write their weight onto them. For that I weighed each one and multiplied that by 12 to see what they would roughly weigh in our size. 

Their real weight is not secure which tells me these are purely made for decorative purposes. I rounded off the outcome to workable numbers like 150 grams and 500 grams. So now I will have to make scales too when I start on the kitchen of Huis ter Swinnendael. 

The little turned wooden pieces are intended for several furniture projects that lurk in the background. The two spice mills are yet to recieve a destination. 

I also received a large gift from a good friend of mine. But that will have to wait for its own post in the near future. 

Until next time. 

Huibrecht 

Treasures from the Arnhem show, March 2020.

Last saturday I undertook my bi-annual pilgrimage to Arnhem for the spring edition of the dollshouseshow there. Apart from nobody shaking each others hand you hardly noticed a thing of that nasty Covid-19. Some sellers had to cancel because of it of course, but it did not effect the mood and I enjoyed myself nonetheless.

At every succeeding show I spend more time catching up with miniaturists (sellers and buyers) that I have made my acquantance with over the past few years. It is great fun to see and speak to eachother again. So much stories to cath up on. But fortunately I managed to get some real gems that I want to share with you.

First of all I got these two wonderful miniatures. The bellows are painted by Wagon Mountain Studio. She specialises in Dutch folk painting. Especially the styles popular around Hindelooper and Assendelft. I asked her to decorate this piece in the so called 'shadow work'. This style of decoration consists of motifs like scrolls and flowers in black and cream on a dark green base. The black and cream give the illusion of 3 dimensional decorations.

Next to it stands a delicate Delftware tulip vase with 11 nozzles. It is a miniature copy of an antique original. It is made by Henny Staring Egberts.  It is a heartshape carried by two ducks. I will fill this vase with some of the tullips from Ilona Kraasenberg which I bought last year.

You may have noticed by now that I like birds. Also miniature birds. And so these two caught my eye. The pink Cockatoo is made by Montheron. I love her work. The robin spreading its wings (sorry for not having a better photo) is made by Sandra van Bennekom of Lovingastory. She makes different types of birds using real feathers. Apart from realistic songbirds and owls she also had a few lovely Fenixes modelled on the old Fenix from Harry Potter. I think I'll buy a companion for this robin the next time I see her.

Next up are these three items. A jar and two chalices mady by Herman Straeten. The one in the middle is made out of a hollowed out palmfruit and ebony wood. The other two are turned from amber. The lids can be taken of. They are hollowed out and are quite opaque. They surely look good around my mounted nautilus. :-)

The three painted speculaasplanken or cookie moulds are not new. The one with the man on a horse is the one I bought this weekend. Made by Arjen Spinhoven this is the fourth mould in my little  collection. I will have to stain it first though.

More woodturning! This time made by Jokra. 2 walking sticks and a wig or hat stand. The black wood is ebony and the striped Brown wood is made of snakewood (also called letterwood) this last one has a tip and a knob made from silver.

As you may know, I love silver. And Marie-Louis Markhorst of Smallscale made these lovely mounted shells. She also makes great items for the kitchen in copper and or brass. Some of those are a must in the kitchens of Huis ter Swinnendael. But since my budget was rapidly coming to an end, I had to leave those for a future moment.

 

And last but not least, this recorder made of Rose Ivory. I did not know it existed until last weekend, but Rose Ivory is not pink coloured elephant tusk, but a type of hardwood. The beauty of this recorder is that if my fingers were small enough I could actualy play on it. It is made out of two pieces, hollowed out and with the holes in the right place. After the flute I bought from Gerrit van Werven last year, this is my second musical instrument. It is also made by Herman Straeten.

And that is it, my friends. The loot from my trip to Arnhem. I hope you have enjoyed this little post. I will spend the rest of the evening making my miniature administration in order. :-)

Huibrecht

Dollshouse Arnhem show maart 2018

Allereerst wil ik mijn nieuwe volger welkom heten en iedereen bedanken voor jullie reacties op mijn vorige post.

Afgelopen zondag heb ik de Beurs in de Arnhemse Eusebiuskerk bezocht. Het was voor mij de tweede keer dat ik in Arnhem  ben geweest en voor mij is  de beurs nog altijd even magisch. Heel veel interessante en mooie miniaturen gezien, en met verschillende miniaturisten gesproken. Waaronder Diane Meijboom, Ursula Dyrbye-Skovsted, Esmé Hofman, Tine Krijnen en diverse anderen. Bij toeval ontmoette ik ook Josje, van 'A beautiful World.' Het was heel erg leuk en inspirerend om met elkaar kennis te maken. :-)

Wat verder nog heel bijzonder was op deze beurs was Het Rembrandthuis in miniatuur. Het hele huis in Amsterdam is in miniatuur nagemaakt. Echt meer dan de moeite waard. Nu het huis af is wordt het geschonken aan museum Het Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam. Dus wie het museum bezoekt, kan het prachtige (meer dan manshoge) miniatuur daar binnenkort bewonderen.

Helaas zijn mijn foto's van die dag mislukt doordat ik zonder het te weten een filter had ingeschakeld op mijn telefoon. :-(  Maar ik heb de herinneringen nog. Ik heb veel inspiratie opgedaan voor het bouwen van Huis ter Swinnendael.

Ik heb een paar miniaturen gekocht. Ten eerste drie speculaasplanken bij Arjen Spinhoven. Zijn laser-cut miniaturen zijn erg mooi. Ik kon deze speculaasplankjes niet laten liggen. In het echte leven heb ik een paar oude koekplanken uit het eind van de 19e eeuw. Die gebruik ik elk jaar om in november speculaas te bakken voor de weken voorafgaand aan het sinterklaasfeest. Hieronder twee foto's van een paar van deze speculazen voordat ze de oven ingingen.

Twee bloemenmanden, een galjoen en een druiventros.

Twee ruiters, een mand met bloemen en fruit en een haan.

De drie planken van Arjan Spinhoven stellen een sint, een vis en een plank met kleine speculaasjes voor. Het zijn stuk voor stuk oude voorstellingen die al eeuwen terugkomen in koekplanken. De planken liggen op mijn boekje over de geschiedenis van koekplanken van J.J. Schilstra. Daarnaast heb ik ook een bouwpakketje gekocht van een bordenrek uit de 17e eeuw.

Gezien mijn grote voorliefde voor speculaas (gekruid met speculaaskruiden naar eigen recept) is het passend dat ik dit als eerste miniaturen voor de keuken van Huis ter Swinnendael heb gekocht. Wat de keuken betreft, dit is de mock up voor de kookkeuken van Huis ter Swinnendael. Ik wil volgende week de hele kelderverdieping aan jullie laten zien.

Ten slotte heb ik bij Tine Krijnen een beginnersset boekbinden gekocht. Zo kan ik zelf proberen miniatuurboeken te maken. Ik heb er heel veel zin in. Huis ter Swinnedael zal beschikken over een bibliotheek. Daarvoor zal ik veel boeken nodig hebben. Verder zal ik ook boeken nodig hebben voor de rentmeesterskamer. Grote kasboeken en grootboeken voor de boekhouding van het landgoed.

Dat is het voor nu. Dank jullie wel voor jullie bezoek en tot de volgende post!

Huibrecht

De Grand Tour van Polyander Carel Zonneschut

Gisteren ben ik voor het eerst naar de DHN beurs in Arnhem geweest. Ik vond het geweldig. De Beurs is een echt walhalla waar ik van de ene in de andere verbazing viel. Ik heb enorm veel fraaie miniaturen gezien en met heel veel vriendelijke en interessante miniaturisten gesproken. Het was heel interessant om met deze vaklui te praten. Velen hebben mij hele goede tips gegeven waar ik veel aan hoop te hebben. 

Ik heb mij heel erg moeten inhouden om niet heel veel van de fraaie miniaturen te kopen die ik op termijn zeker wil hebben. :-) Sparen voor al dat moois is het devies! Ik heb me niet helemaal kunnen onthouden van het doen van aankopen. Deze drie zilveren beeldjes op Zwart houten voeten kon ik niet laten staan.

De beelden zijn kopieën van 3 beroemde standbeelden die in Italië zijn te bezichtigen. Van links naar rechts zijn het:

1. De David van Michelangelo; te vinden in Florence op zowel het Plaza del Signoria (kopie) als de Gelleria dell'Academia (het origineel)
2. De Belvedere Apollo; Een beeld uit de antieke oudheid. Opgegraven in de renaissance en te bezichtigen in het Belvedere in het Vaticaan.
3. De David van Donatello; Met het zwaard in de hand en nonchalant staand op het afgehouwen hoofd van Goliath. Ook te bezzichtigen in Florence.

Donatello's beeld staat iets apart omdat hij een andere voet heeft dan de linker twee. In de achttiende eeuw was het gebruikelijk voor zonen in familie's,zoals de Zonneschuts die op Swinnendael wonen, om een Grand Tour te maken door Europa. Vooral Florence, Venetië en Rome waren bestemmingen die op het lijstje met "must see's" stonden. 

Paul (Polyander) Carel Zonneschut
(portret uit de digitale collectie van The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Polyander Carel Zonneschut, heer van Swinnendael, heeft in zijn jeugd ook zo'n reis gemaakt en dit zijn een paar van de souvenirs die hij mee terug heeft genomen. Ik weet nog niet precies waar, maar ze gaan een mooi plaatsje krijgen!