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 
 

Home is where the heart(h) is 4c: Adding some colour to both princes.

Hello my friends,

Last weekend I had another workshop to work on the two tableaux of decorated tiles for the back wall of the fireplace of the drawingroom of Huis ter Swinnendael.

During the last Workshop in april. I had drawn all the lines of the two different drawings in blue porcelain "ink". Now it was time to fill in some colour and add some shade where needed. 

But first I had to reattach all 144  tiles and remove the dust. This dust is what remains of the pritt buddies with wich the little tiles are stuck to the large tile. With the firing in the kiln the moisture evaporates and all that is left is this powdery dust.

It took me over two hours to fix every tile in place. But now the painting could finally start in earnest!

It is hard not to put to much porcelain paint on your brush. It would make thick and dark patches of coulour. It gives you much more control and a much better result when you build up the colour through two or more thin layers. Making the translucent blue deeper and darker with every go. On the other hand, when you keep brushing you take some of the paint away, making the colour lighter again. 

At the end of the day. I added the colour where I wanted it. In the above picture you see a "before & after" compilation of Prince Hendrick. Or actualy I should say an "after and before"compilation... 

What happens next? Now the tiles will be fired again in the kiln. Next time (the end of june) the process of today will be repeated so I can add the final touches where needed. Hopefully I can start on the construction of the fireplace itself. 

Huibrecht 

Furniture: Lady Zonneschut loves crimson & cream

Hello my friends,

A while ago I showed you this small winetable and this House of Miniatures candlestand. The first I decorated in cream with crimson details, the second in crimson with details in cream. I really like the effect of the combination of these colours. And I believe it will combine nicely with the green of the walls in the dressingroom. Therefore I want to use it on more furniture pieces for Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom. First I want to tell you a bit about the inspiration that  influence my furniture colour choices. Then I will show you the making of this set.

In the Netherlands in the 17th century unity of colour and fabrics was seen as very fashionable and desirable. To have all upholstery, curtains, bed hangings and wall hangings in the room of the same fabric and colour was deemed the pinnacle  of wealth and good taste. It goes without saying that only one or a few rooms in grand houses had these costly treatments. 

From the second half of the 18th century these rules became much more relaxed. From the rococo/Louis XV onwards a tasteful combination of different but matching colours and fabrics became the fashion. A nice example is the boudoir in the picture below.

In Huis ter Swinnendael there is a mix of styles and colours. In the dressingroom the panneling is sage green and the fabrics used (so far) is a mustard yellow. The usual colour for the furniture would therefore be yellow or green. But, I really like the combination of cream and crimson. And I believe it will combine nicely with the green of the walls. Therefor I want to add more Crimson & Cream pieces to Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom. 

I like to believe that these pieces are favorites of Belle Zonneschut which stood in her appartment in their town house in The Hague. With the 'voluntary' exile of the Zonneschuts to their country estate due to the Batavian Revolution (the Zonneschuts support the house of Orange in excile and therefore stand on the "wrong side" in this revolutionairy period) , Belle could well have her favorite pieces sent over from the town house in The Hague to Huis ter Swinnendael. Resulting in the amalgam of different pieces in her dressingroom. 

To furnish the room I collected a few more House of Miniatures kits. I now have started with assembling them. I started with a Queen Annne fire screen and a candlestand matching the candlestand I have already decorated. This way I turn them into a matching set of three pieces. 

I also bought a Queen Anne side table, a Queen Anne tea table and a Chippendale lowboy. I have been assembling the side table but I was not sure yet if I would add it to the crimson and cream set. The lowboy will not be assembled as the kit is intended. I will chop it up and use the parts to make dressing table in the style of a Mazarin desk. But that is for another post. 

Sanding the cabriole legs of the side tabe round and glueing the pieces together was straight forward enough. To make the holes for the drawer pulls I pushed some dressing pins through the soft wood.

 I wanted to stain the side table in a mahogany colour. But since I accidentally broke a table leg while cleaning the room, It was an ugly repair that would always show when merley stained. That is why I decided to paint the side table in the same colour scheme. So the Crimson & Cream set got a little bit bigger. 

But I will not paint all the furniture intended for Lady Zonneschut's dressingroom in crimson & cream. That would hardly be realistic. Even though it would look good in my opinion. Huis ter Swinnendael may be a wealthy gentleman's home, but it is not a royal palace where money is no objection (just raise the taxes!). So this room, as well as the other rooms will be furnished with pieces in a combination of different styles and finishes. Collected over several generations of Zonneschuts.

But returning to the furniture at hand. I painted the new pieces crimson. Then came the hard part. The decorations in cream. To that end I added a little cadmium yellow to titanium white until I had a soft creamy colour that matches the cream colour on the original candle stand. 

First I retouched the original piece in some places to enhance the decoration. Then I copied that on the second candle stand. Now it was time to decorate the fire screen. The legs and the bottom half of the pole of this fire screen are the same as on the candle stands so I decorated those in the same way.  

I was tempted to add an escutcheon with a family crest onto it, but I decided to leave the central panel open. I did add a shell-like motive in the corners of the screen.

The fire screen and the candle stands have the same construction for the feet and share the same decoration on those. These pieces differ on the top half. not only by their construction and purpose but also the way in which the edges are cut. Where the edge on the candle stands are hollowed out,  the edge on the fire screen are rounded off. Therefore I did not gave it the same edge decoration as on the candle stands.  

The table top at last, got a decoration on the border similar to the fire screen and a simple division into different panels with thin lines in cream. This way all pieces share some of the ornaments used which helps to tie it together into a set. I did not add a decoration into the panels  on the tabletop. It is my intention to place different items onto the table and they would obscure a decoration from view. 

But the table and fire screen did not fit into the set as intended. I realised that the hollow edge on the front of drawer should be similarly decorated as the one on the candlestands. So I made some more cream cololoured paint and added these. I also added a cream line along the outer edge of the table top and the fire screen. please compare the two pictures above.To me they now look much better and more as one set of furniture pieces.

Then all that was needed was to push the handles through the escutcheons and into the holes before bendimg them flat. Now the drawer has handles.

Here you can see the four pieces together. The bright red of the crimson will be subdued and darkened a tiny bit when I varnish the pieces. 

Now the most important pieces for this room are ready. Although I am quite happy with how this set turned out. I have to admit that this is not by best brushwork. Not by far. The lines  almost never run straight where they are supposed to. Oh well. I believe it is not out of place. 

What is next for this room? A chaise longue and a dressingtable will follow soon. They will however not be part of the Crimson & Cream set. 

Have a great day.

Huibrecht