Early Scandinavia, 18th Century Europe, and a Miniature Museum
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Amsterdam – A Renaissance City of Refuge
“Noah’s Ark,” by Rembrandt van Rijn, Image from the Art Institute of Chicago, artic.edu, public domain. Amsterdam was a major shipping port in the 18th century, and I am writing it into my novels. As a hobbyist in the history of religion, church history in...
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Irish Immigrant Apartment
The first floor apartment houses a family of Irish immigrants to San Francisco in 1900. I'm going to guess that the fabulous doll with the orange feather in her bonnet is by Beverly Dahl, but she is not marked.
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Second Floor Kitchen
Grandpa is possibly following the advice of Thomas Jefferson on how to prevent colds--soaking one's feet in cold water. https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/bathing/
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – First Floor Rear
The first floor apartment has a bedroom and a kitchen at the back. The metal bucket in the kitchen has coal for the iron stove and a cast iron food warmer. I assume my mother made the furniture in the bedroom. She signed the end table, and the other furniture lacks...
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Gilded Age Fashion Trends
Wristwatches weren’t invented until World War I, so men’s watches sat precariously loose in men's pockets before then. In the eighteenth century, watch fobs, chains that hooked into a buttonhole on a man’s waistcoat, kept watches from falling out of their pockets....
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Gilded Age Women’s Fashion
The doll in the solid red dress with black lace is by Liz Staryk. When I find my mother's book of records, I will add the provenance of the others. In the first floor apartment, the ladies have been dressed and waiting for their escort to take them to an evening at...
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Gilded Age Men’s Fashion
These three dolls are in the stairwell of the apartment building, preparing to enter the apartments on each of the three levels. The doll in the riding ensemble was made by Connie Sauve in 2000. I do not know the provenance of the other dolls. The chair in the third...
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Balconies
The back of the apartment building opens to a kitchen and bedroom for each of the three apartments.
A Miniature Victorian Painted Lady – Exterior
A San Francisco Painted Lady, 1900. My mother purchased the shell for this house and did the exterior and interior trim work herself. The furniture is a mix of purchased items and items she made herself. Most of her house shells came from Ah Miniatures! in...
Novel Writing Update – June 2024
Two years. That’s when my first set of five books will be ready to consider publishing them. My setting is so unusual it doesn’t have a ready-made audience or specific literary genre category. Four years ago, I embarked on a study of church history in Scandinavia and...
Tales from Sapmi – Fishing
This story is hard to make sense of. It has a bit of shape-shifting in it, a phenomenon mentioned in Norse myth. The Sami had a broad understanding of Norse myth in the eighteenth century, as evidenced by the journal of Isaac Olsen, Lutheran missionary to Sapmi in the...
A Miniature Colonial House – Cindy Malone Furniture
The chair and settee are signed by Cindy Malone. The cabinet is by Ruth Pollock.