I am waiting for a dolls’ house which I am not expecting any time soon but eventually. Not only am I really happy to wait for the house, I want the builder to get on with something else. Keen miniaturists will be wondering if I have lost the plot completely, long time readers, going back to my magazine writing days, will know that I always applaud the general good, because what is good for the hobby is good for us all.
This latest development is really good. So good you’re going to want one as soon as I show you.
OK, so here’s a picture of a hall, so what. So, I’ll tell you what. This is not a real hall, it’s a dolls’ house room box, there are some in-scale switches. When you switch the switches, the light comes on. As if you were a mini person, going into a room and switching the light on, in fact you could hold the hand of a doll and get them to work the switch and the light would come on. The only way it would get any better is if the doll said, ‘Crikey!’
How realistic is that! Yes, I want one too, form an orderly queue please.
The clever electrician is John at Creative Dolls Houses, whose work you first saw last Christmas in the lovely 24th scale he built for his brother. You next saw him in my Miniatura report with lots of great houses and the authentic book nook of the Bronte hallway, which is the one I’ve ordered.
Quizzed about this recent achievement John says his Mum* had a dolls’ house with working light switches but they were way out of scale. Keen history-researching miniaturists may have noted these, in pre WW2 houses. I remember seeing one in a museum, the switches were just very small real life switches, and the lights weren’t up to much either. I had similar lights in my big house. No switches, you had to crawl behind the house and plug the transformer into the wall and switch it on and all the lights in the house came on at once unless the mini plug bar in the loft had come undone in which case they all didn’t come on at once. Apart from the bit where I was scuffling around in the dust in the loft, it was nothing like a real house at all. In fact I was so disgusted with the awful plastic lights and the dodgy wiring, my grandson helped me pull the lot out when he stayed in the summer. I’ve got the battery lights that work through the floors with magnets to install, which can light one room at a time but to switch them on I’m going to have to put my head in the room and knock all the furniture over. Gulliver’s Travels on steroids, it’s such a nightmare, all the furniture is living out of the house in a laundry basket in the hall.
What is needed is a proper light switch near the opening of the house, that you can switch on and make visitors gasp.
The room box is a replica of a room in the big house John showed at Miniatura, with the chimney breast moved to the back wall so you can see the lights.
And here it is!
If you would like to see the light, John is likely to be at a show near you soon. He will be at the York fair and Kensington’s Christmas fair. For details of other shows please go to the website. I will be first in the queue to be blinded by the light at Spring Miniatura.
Every now and then over the course of thirty years as a pro in the hobby, I meet someone who is so switched on to what miniaturists need, you wonder what you did before they appeared.
Have a look for yourself www.creativedollshouses.co.uk
*Ah, well, now I know. John and his brother have genetic dolls’ houses, no wonder they are so good at the hobby.
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