I am happy to say the Tudor doll’s doll kits are done. Each variant is packaged but, naturally, that is not the end of it. Having designed the doll, the kit and the instructions then you have to design a way of displaying them on the table so they do not take up unreasonable amounts of real estate and miniaturists can pick them up to have a good look and know where to put them down again. So, if you are coming to the show and fancy having a go at dressing a Tudor doll’s doll such as one of these
or these
you’re in luck. The red and blue dressed dolls are one and a quarter inches tall and the gold and black dressed dolls are just under an inch.
Now they are done and packed I can get on with dressing some of the dolls through history. One, the Victorian shoulder head doll, was meant to be a kit too but I don’t know if I can face another kit just yet.
Speaking as a fair visiting miniaturist, before I turned up on the other side of the table, I think I was aware early doors that kits are a very moveable feast. Thirty years ago the dolls house metal kits in assorted cold pour pewter, developed from toy soldiers, were ubiquitous. The instructions were basic and there was not a lot of background information and you had to buy your own paints and glue. I did quite a few and enjoyed them. I also did a few carpet kits which were mainly printed canvas tapestries complete with all the wools required. I came across one of those in a workbox recently, unfinished. It’s a lovely hunting scene that represents hours and hours of work, so far. How Nicola Mascall offers completed, perfect, miniature tapestry work to commission, without going right round the bend I shall never know. She’ll be at the show, go and have a look at the detail in the carpets she is doing.
One of the features of kits is that collectors expect them to be a bit of a bargain buy, reasoning that they, the collectors, are putting in all the work. Having spent weeks and weeks last summer researching, developing and inventing the dolls, making the moulds, pouring, firing and china painting; followed by several weeks doing the instructions, preparing all the components, printing, picking and packing, I can absolutely assure you that a very great deal of work has occurred before the kits hit the table.
But I do know that if I had found a kit, with a porcelain doll in it to make a historically accurate doll for a doll’s house doll, long ago when I was just a visitor, I’d have been so happy. How visitors to the show greet the kits, time will tell. It might help that I’ve priced them at £15, which sounds like the sort of price that most folk could afford if they’d come with a shopping list and then spotted the doll kits.
And I am delighted to say there will be a gift with purchase again this show. You will pick the box, to choose your scale and, in the mystery box, there will be a slice of porcelain cake and a china painted glazed plate to put it on. I randomised the cakes and plates so that no two boxes will have the same combination. The cakes and plates will never be for sale and the only place you can get them is Miniatura.
I think this is what collecting is all about: going out for a day and getting a gift with purchase, of your choice, with contents you cannot get anywhere else. You could buy a doll kit that has never been seen before and get a cake and plate that no one else could have ever, and spend less than you would for your lunch.
To see what the other exhibitors will be doing and who they are, pop off to: www.miniatura.co.uk and have a look.
And just in case you are new here, the show hall is surrounded, about twenty steps away, from all the free parking.
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