Merry Christmas to all

Copyright Karin Corbin 2001  Santa's Workshop created by Karin Corbin

Christmas Village Lighting

My client who commissioned the Santa's Workshop specifically wanted a place to display a 1:12 scale ceramic Christmas village that was created by "Sylvia Mobley". They really are special little houses and there are openings in the windows that allow the light to shine through. It is difficult to see that in this photo but this really is a lighted village.

Creating a mantel piece over the fireplace was straight forward but how to do the lighting to shine out the windows? I did not want wires strung along the top of mantel, that would have been clunky looking and the houses would not have sat flat and secure. So I came up with a different idea. First I decided on a location along the mantel for the various pieces my client had purchased. Then at those locations I drilled a hole through the wood of the mantel that was the same diameter as a "Cir-Kit Concepts candle socket".  I also cut grooves in the underside of the mantel to those holes to handle the wiring for the lights. The candle sockets were mounted so that the top of the socket was flush with the mantel in case anyone should ever decide not to have a Christmas Village up there. The bulbs are replaceable which is another nice feature.

Santa's workshop under construction

I thought you might enjoy a little excursion into the past back to the time I was building the Santa's workshop. I don't have a lot of photos of that time but I do have a few.

This photo shows the balcony area over the main work room. The balcony rest on the hammer beam truss structure that supports the roof over the workshop.

Have you ever heard of a dollhouse built with two scales? You are looking at one. The the balcony, the box beds and the adjoining room over the kitchen are all sized for the elves. Mr. and Mrs. Claus could never fit into any of those spaces. As I recall the beds are only 3 inches long even though the photo makes them seem larger.

The major style intent was to capture the feel of Victorian era, German Christmas card featuring a snow covered building in a forest. The owner of the dollhouse has many such cards displayed at Christmas time in her Victorian home. The detailing on the dollhouse beams is meant to resemble the hand carved ornamental style of wooden toys or cuckoo clocks from that era rather than a hand adzed beam more typically found in real buildings. There is also a very strong Scandanavian influence in the carvings on the structure and on those built in elf beds. This building has a lot of carving on it and I will show more of that in future postings.


The underlying structure of the dollhouse is a metric plywood, just under 3/8" thick. You can see all the layers of materials in the construction photo. This is a specialty plywood, waterproof glues and almost no voids. I purchase it from a lumber company that supplies to the wooden boat industry in the Pacific Northwest. It is the same plywood I use for my birdhouse building. I feel it is a museum quality way to build a dollhouse although it does make for a heavy house.

The timber framing details are Western Red Cedar. I hand select for dark colored, old growth heartwood with very tight grain patterns. Most cedar is fairly soft but this wood is sometimes so hard it can be difficult get a carving chisel through it.

1:12 fireplace from real stone

You can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Here are the promised photos of a fireplace I built for a dollhouse. The stone was gathered from a leftover stone pile from a real life chimney in Carmel by the Sea, California. I am able to work this soft limestone with a hammer, chisel and tile nippers. I do cut down larger chunks on a water cooled diamond tile saw although they could be split up by hand just about as easily. There is a hollow plywood box as a form under the stones for the chimney and interior for the fireplace. I hope you enjoy seeing it. Real stone looks so grand and yes so very real. I love the crisp, sharp, broken edges. That would be very difficult to achieve with paper-mache.

As you can tell by the interior scene this is a Christmas themed dollhouse. The elves are busy cooking in the kitchen. More photos of the project below.