Dollhouse Hill

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2012

The hillside  above my workshop is the land of 1,000 dollhouses waiting to be made in miniature.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2012

It is a beautiful sunny day here so I went up on the hill to take a few photos to share with all of you.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2012

I love the roof lines of the Tudor cottages with all their clipped gables, quirky dormers and little bay windows.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2012

If you look at the house directly above and the one shown above that you will see they are essentially the same house. But one has clipped gables, the window in the gable is different as are the shapes of the dormers. The chimney is placed somewhat differently but the overall foot print of the house is almost identical. It is an old builders trick to keep all the houses in a neighborhood looking very different but compatible with the fashion of the era. There are thousands of these 1930's Tudors in Seattle, some brick faced and some covered in wood siding.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2012

Birdseye view of my workshop and neighborhood

You can click on the photo above from Wikipedia to enlarge it. The yellow arrow points to the building my workshop is in. The neighborhood I was photographing is adjacent to my workshop  up above me on a steep bluff. This  photo also shows the ship canal that leads from the salt water on through to several of Seattle's lakes. The ship canal has a series of locks to raise (or lower) the boats as the lakes are higher in elevation.

The photo below is one I took today on the little public beach adjacent to the workshop. Lots of boating activity this first weekend of May.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2012

Parisian Houses in 1610

An engraving showing a street in Paris in 1610. The subject is the assassination of Henri IV, king of France. Photo from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Assassination_of_Henry_IV_%28Henry_IV,_King_of_France;_Fran%C3%A7ois_Ravaillac%29_by_Gaspar_Bouttats.jpg

Are you surprised to see the Dutch influence on these houses in Paris?

The old houses such as these were all destroyed to make way for new buildings, part of the plans to create the most beautiful city in the world. Of course it was not done all in one fell swoop. A couple of Napoleons, war, fire and of course decay all played a part. Oh well and who is to say it was not well worth the results? It is certainly a more liveable and elegant city compared to having winding streets of crumbling buildings.

The Dutch style was also an influence on the brick houses of Elizabethan England in the same historic period.

Elizabethan Era

The image above is of Little Moreton Hall from Wikipedia. This building is one of many Elizabethan structures that inspire me.

I have changed direction once again on the birdhouse I am making for my brother.  There are a lot of half timbered buildings from the late 1500s and early 1600s that I find to be inspiring including the Stokesay Castle Gatehouse, one of my all time favorite buildings. Old hand drawn illustration of it below

Wikipedia Image common license

But I don't want to try and replicate an existing building as much as I love the Stokesay Castle Gatehouse. I prefer to design my pieces "in the style of" an era rather than creating a scale model. For one thing I don't have direct access to old buildings here in Seattle unless I count the authentic Tudor Manor house that is near Tacoma, WA. It was taken apart and shipped to the USA then reassembled brick by brick. So this morning I got busy in my CAD program and began designing an Elizabethan Gatehouse to build in 1:12 scale. The basic size and shape of the building is now finished but not much in the way of fine details. That is how I work, first the massing study for overall impact and balance then later I start embellishing the surfaces with all the details.

No interior needs to be done as it is not a dollhouse. I will be putting my recently upgraded carving skills to good use on it! Tonight I will start cutting walls, first in cardboard, then the marine plywood I use for birdhouse substrates. I can't make any mistakes or redo the plywood pieces, too expensive and hard to come by that material in recent years. That is one reason I no longer make many birdhouses. Local shipbuilders have been on an almost year long waiting list for their materials.

My recent list of films to watch have included Shakespeare in Love, Anonymous and Elizabeth. A little bit of synthetic time travel, amusing as well if not completely authentic in details.

Elizabethan birdhouse 

Architectural images from Normandy

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

I love this old lantern with all the fancy, stamped metal embellishments.
These images have been left in higher resolution so do be sure to click on them for better viewing.

Every once in a while I take a little vacation back to France by going through folders of photos I took 3 years summers ago. The are of real value to me in helping to create a realistic dollhouse. It is not so much that I exactly copy a specific architectural detail. The value is that I know exactly what the textures and colors of the materials I am using should like when I finish the parts for my project.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2010

Looking at this photo I took in the Normandy region of France of  hinges and shutters I think I did get my miniature versions to look just right.

Kribje

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, click HERE to go to the website.

The photo above is from Wiki, it is an old box bed from a windmill, the Langerak de Westermolen in the Netherlands. I was sent to this web site by one of my followers, Evelien, her blog is to be found at http://ejacreates.blogspot.com/  thank you Evelien for taking the time to share this with me. The photo above  does have that quality that makes one think it might be a picture from a dolls house but it is a real building.


I think the crib very inspirational and I am going to put one in my own bedstede (Dutch for box bed). That is what I am working on today along with hopelessly trying to catch up on other neglected work.

Work and the blog have been slow this last week as I have caught a cold. I know why they call it catching a cold as I can't seem to get warm. It does not help that the weather will be lucky to get above freezing today and for several more days to come. Little work gets done when all you really  want to do is go back to bed and snuggle up with the cats to comfort you. Oh well only another week of this misery to go before I get back to normal. At least it is not a severe cold, I dosed it with zinc right away and that seems to have made a difference. Anyway enough about my little bit of misery it will soon be over.

I added that tiny extra window I showed you how to cut out just so there would be a glimpse of the little baby's crib in the box bed. That window is the only way to view into the far corner of the  little shed addition. You can reach your hand in there to tuck in some blankets and arrange the bed linens but you can't see it other than through the window. I have thought about making the roof removable but I don't like the potential that would create for damage to the roof section and it will make it hard to create realistic lead flashing details.

I hope to make real slate shingles for that little bit of a shed roof. However it remains a mystery to me if that will happen or not. We shall see sometime soon if that will happen or if I will make imitation slate. I have purchased thatching material for the main roof. But this shed was a later addition to the building and I think a change of materials is interesting. Also it will work color wise as the slate is grey with slight brown, blue and green undertones and that ties in with the timbers, the trim colors and landscaping.

Perhaps it seems a somber color scheme to you but I think it will evoke the mood of the coastal shoreline with weathered drift wood, water, mist, rocks and sand. There is not a lot of brilliant color along the shores other than the blue of the sea and sky and the occasional wild flowers or brightly painted boat and brilliant sunrise or sunset.

The inside of the house will have some sparks of color. The box bed walls are a nice golden yellow, a small ray of sunshine peeking out of a dark corner under the ladder to the upstairs. For the bed coverings I hope to find a tiny French Provencal print in a happy blend of colors, perhaps a hint of red or orange in the pattern. There is a fabric shop for quilters just up the road a short distance. I have yet to set foot inside the store but now I have a good excuse to go and see it.

I need a cup of hot coffee! Time to go and make one and give the cats a pet and perhaps crawl back under the covers for medicinal purposes. I will take along a reference book and finish planning out the roofing details.

Its all in the details

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I have been busy the last few minutes sorting through the digital photos I took a couple of years ago in the Normandy region of France. What I was looking for were the details on real life windows from colombages buildings also known as Pan de' Bois, timber frame, half timber. If you do an image search on any of those words you will find a great many photos that people have posted on the internet of this type of structure.

I am going to do very simple muntins on my windows. Muntins are the strips of wood, steel or lead that divide up the panes of glass in doors or windows. The muntins will be glued directly on top of a single piece of glass both on the inside and outside. My task today is to cut the lumber, age the strips, paint them, let the paint dry and then cut and glue them onto the door.

I will also start assembling the wood casement windows for the cottage.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I like the lead flashing over the sill, I saw that detail on many old wood framed windows in France. I have on hand enough thin lead from the old wrappers that covered the corks on wine bottles  to recreate this look in miniature.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Of course I also need hinges for my casement windows, this pintil hinge is so very beautiful, but it might be a little too wide of a design to fit my cottage window frame pieces. I would need to make 16 of them and that is a lot of work. Maybe if the new metal cutting blade I got for my scroll saw works out I can stack cut them in batches. I have been meaning to try that out anyway. If only I had a pancake blanking die for them it would be not nearly as difficult. But I don't have the steel material on hand to make the dies or the jig to hold the saw at a set angle to cut the die. It is something to think about trying but that list of things I want to try is longer than a lifetime at this point. Actually  I have been thinking about this for 20 years and visited an artist studio to learn how to do it. Still not at the top of the list for purchasing the needed items, will it ever be? Maybe I will order the steel for it, I need to put in a order of steel to create metal spinning tool rest. Might as well toss that item in with the order.

You can see a pancake die in the photo of this etsy listing, click HERE

As long as you have one straight edge on your part design you can quickly make thin metal shapes using the die and a press. My workshop mate Don has a press I can use so exactly why am I not doing this? Not a clue other than I need to order an adjustable saw frame holder and they are expensive.

Windows and Door

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2007

The photo above is the entry door to the Acorn Cottage, is is a plank door with cross banding. The owl is a brass finding I bought. The door handle I made from a strip of brass I textured and bent then solder onto it etched brass leaves. I purchased the sheet of photo etched leaves at a miniature show. I also used the leaves on the light fixtures for this woodland cottage.

It is time to start making windows and the door for my new coastal cottage. That requires a lot of research and quite a few decisions before I can begin to cut the wood pieces.

I am going to create a few outward opening casement windows. They need the shashes and trim moldings cut to shed the rain away from the opening. These windows are also a good opportunity to add some small scale detailing to draw in and capture the viewers eye and give them a change from the larger textures and shapes of timbers and stucco. The visual animation of hinged opening windows and doors helps to break up the plane of the exterior wall surface. An outward opening casement also allows me to place a table right against the window. Objects on the table will help the viewer transition their interest into the inside of the cottage with a little sneak preview. The photo below shows a real life example with the type of detailing I will make.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2008

The window style above with the dolls in it is what I will be using for the coastal cottage.
The drip edge at the bottom of white window frame will be a challenge to create. Love the French blue color of the sill below the window.


I have roughly imagined a build date for my projects framing of around mid 1600s to late 1700s but the time frame for the dollhouse as it stands will be 1900. Now that gives at least a couple of hundred years of remodeling changes and wear and tear on the building. A lot of things happened to home design during that time span, chimneys and fireplaces changed and windows, doors and hardware changed too.

When you look at the really old buildings you often notice changes in the framing around door and window openings, maybe they were added or enlarged or made smaller or even closed up areas that used to have windows and doors.

I plan to have a few small windows from an earlier era on the sides as well as the casement windows. My centuries of fisherman owners were into salvaging and scrounging for some of their improvements and left other things intact from previous generations. Sometimes the sea washes up lumber for home improvements.

This is a scratch building job, you can't walk into a dollhouse store and buy an odd assortment of windows spanning several centuries that are going to fit into a custom design. Over the years I have made dollhouse windows several different ways and I have a few new ideas for making windows I want to try out on this project. This time around my front door will have window panes in the top half as I want some extra light coming into the interior.

The glass I will be using for my dollhouse windows is clear with little waves and bubbles in it. It was mouth blown in France. Up until about 1930 or so most window glass was made by these methods. Picture windows are a modern invention, old windows are made from small panes because that is the only aviable size the glass came in. If you click on the link below you will see a video showing how the glass I am using was made and why window panes were always rather small.
Mouth Blown Glass Video


Update I have finished the door and windows since this blog was first posted. You will see it showing up now and again on more recent posts.

Timber framing for a dollhouse

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Lumber for the new timber framed dollhouse.


I am not going to be creating a real mortise and tenon frame for my dollhouse. That can be done but I have chosen a different method, one of overlaying timbers onto a plywood substrate.

The first task after the basic design is to choose the wood for the timbers. I am using Western Red Cedar. It is technically not a cedar tree, it is a member of the cypress family, thuja plicata is the proper nomenclature for this species. This is a plentiful, tree farm grown, local tree in the Pacific Northwest.

I was fortunate to find some fine grained timbers at the local home supply store. I was hand selecting for fine grain with a little curve running through the boards. They must have fine grain on both the top and side surfaces. My goal is to have it look as if the structure was framed with in-scale trees. You can't use branches for this kind of work, they might be the right width but they don't have enough growth rings to look authentic. The pieces I have just cut have between 25 to 35 growth rings per inch. That is fairly good for imitating old oak timbers, there could be more rings but that is very difficult to find without cutting down an old growth forest.

I started with 3/4" X 1-1/2" pieces and have split them on my table saw. That was the size of lumber I found that day with the right grain. Sometimes I am lucky enough to find 2X4 lumber. If I am going to have the timbers show on both the inside and outside walls of the house I will tape the split halves together before taking them to the bandsaw for further sizing. That way the inside and outside of the piece will be a match.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

In the photo above you can see the way the grain curves within the piece of wood. I use a pair of dividers set to the width I want for my timber and follow along the natural grain lines. Then I take the piece to the bandsaw and cut on those lines. The next step in the process will be texturing the wood. I don't have to worry about table saw or band saw marks showing up as those will be removed in the texturing step.

If I want a straight beam I choose a piece of wood with straight grain. But all the beams being perfectly straight means that my dollhouse would not have a realistic look for the style of structure I am trying to create. See the photo below for an example of using narrow trees on a old structure.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2008

Tiles for the roof

A lovely old building in a beautiful public garden in Cambremer, France. Great place for lunch too, they serve crepes at those tables. I went back twice and took many photos of the restored timber framed buildings on the estate. But what I am posting this photo for is the view of the charming red tile roof that covers the structure.

Tired of dealing with making timbers and sawdust today I turned to another task I need to accomplish for the new dollhouse, making roof tiles.

I had experimented with achieving the look I wanted a few years back when I first started this project so today I got out the box of materials to get back to working on achieving the perfect, flat, terracotta roof tile (tuile plate).

One thing to figure out was the dimensions of the tiles. I needed to know the height, width and thickness. For that I searched around and found some places on the internet selling antique, salvaged tiles, they listed the dimensions. Naturally there was some variation of size between lots of tiles on different web sites. These materials were not ordered from the big box stores, they were locally made products, hand crafted.

Colors vary a lot from tile to tile even on the same roof. There might have been a different batch of clay dug from another section of the pit.They might have been fired in a different section of the kiln. They could have been fired on different days at differing temperatures.

All that color variation means I can't open up a package of terracotta air dry clay, roll it out, cut to size and glue it on the roof. I have to make small batches of a wide range of terracotta colors. I am using the Plus brand of air dry clay from the Activa company. I will vary the color with universal tinting mediums from the paint store as well as natural powdered earth pigment. I make small batches of the clay and mix them in a small food processor.  I run it through a pasta roller a few times to blend it some more. If the mix does not feed through the pasta roller easily adjust the mix with more liquid or add more clay or earth pigment. It takes trial and error until you get used to the feel of what a good mix is for rolling. A little color streaking is a treasure to be enjoyed and very authentic.

After it comes out of the pasta machine I place the rolled piece between two pieces of flexible cutting board and roll it with just a little bit of pressure using a regular rolling pin. Then I cut it into tiles using a straight edge and a scalpel. The thin, very sharp scalpel leaves nice sharp edges on the tiles without rounding over the edge.

A hundred small batches of a thousand tiles and the job will still not be done. Further color variations will be added with watercolor washes. The paper-mache clays do tint nicely with watercolors. Then I will have hundreds of subtle shades of tiles on my dollhouse roof. You can understand why I have to get an early start on it, I will be making roof tiles for many weeks to come. This is a very labor intensive process but the results are totally worth it.

The next two photos show authentically aged roofs. These are photos I took on my trip to Normandy. Now if I can just achieve something even close to being as interesting. Try not to turn to other peoples dollhouses so much for your inspiration, instead do image research and try to achieve on your dollhouse a feeling of reality from life. There are thousands of these inspirational old buildings still standing in Europe although it does look like that building won't be around for long if the roof is not patched up. The sign in the dormer window say "a vendre", that means the place is for sale, what a fixer!

Torchis

Torchis is the French word for the more commonly known wattle and daub. The daub to be more specific.

I know from the newsgroups most dollhouse builders are using lightweight spackle for their plaster. That is fine for the interior of the house and newly plastered exteriors but not for a character house where the exterior plaster is wearing away or on structures where the torchis was never rendered over the top with smooth lime plaster. I found quite a few of those houses on my journey.

For my new series of houses that I plan to build this year I wanted to develop a new product to use to create that rougher texture in scale. I have been busy playing mad scientist this morning and am getting close to being happy with a mix of various things. I want to wait a week or so to see how strong it will be and how well it will adhere after fully curing. By the time I am ready to apply stucco material I hope to have something very realistic to 1:12 scale to use.

In the meantime you can look at the photos above that I took of real life examples and also do an internet image search using the word torchis. It will open up a whole new set of photos that searching on wattle and daub won't give you. Of course the danger is you will never again be satisfied with only lightweight spackle on the exterior. A wicked witch cottage would not look right all pretty and pristine. Yes I am going to do a witches cottage, I designed it many years ago but never got around to building it for reasons I will explain in a later post.

Finding Inspiration

Old Fireback

I am a book lover, always have been, always will be. Over the years I have collected quite a few books on old buildings from used book stores. A few of these books in my collection were printed before 1900. That means they are not protected by copyright. Google along with the Gutenberg project has taken to scanning these books and making them available as free downloads. I will give you a sneak peak here of one of the old books in my collection "Art in England" by Aymer Vallance. This book in my collection happens to be available for free as a download from Google. It contains many photos of old half timber buildings and a very good discussion on the design styles and details used on those old buildings. There are also illustrations of furniture, hardware and even needlepoint chair covers.

Here is a link to the free downloadable book from Google. Copy and paste it into your browser.
http://tinyurl.com/mju6jm

When I was browsing through the book at bedtime yesterday I was reading about the subject of firebacks. Firebacks are cast metal plates used at the back of the fireplace to protect the brick work so it last longer. This also helps prevent chimney fires from spreading through cracked mortar on the back wall of the fireplace. What I found interesting was that one method of making the mold for the fireback was pressing objects into a bed of clay then pouring the molten metal over the clay. The impressions in the clay become raised areas. Well how simple is that for making a miniature fireback? Of course we can use resin instead of melting metal. Get some clay, press some design by using metal stampings or other small objects, create a surrounding dam and pour in the epoxy resin. Trim off any flash after the resin is cured and spray paint it flat black. One of the items they pressed into the clay was rope. You can see the rope impressed fireback in the illustration above. Go to page 76 of the book for the discussion on the history of old firebacks.

I love being able to share a good book with all of you.

Bonjour Poupée

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on the images.

A couple of summer's ago I took my first trip to Europe. I chose to spend several weeks in the Normandy region and the better part of a week in Paris. Now and again I will be posting some of the photos I took. The trip was for me a research excursion to see in person many of the types of real life structures I would like to create in miniature.

As I was touring in some of the towns and villages I began to notice that more than a few people chose to display their dolls in the windows of their homes and apartments.

I thought you would enjoy seeing them and perhaps thinking about doing something like this in your French Cottage.