Home fit for imaginary family
A Timaru woman’s doll’s house is not only filled with the most gorgeous miniature furnishings but is home to an imaginary family. Esther Ashby-Coventry investigates.
Apicture of a doll’s house in a magazine captivated Fay Frater’s imagination as an adult in the 1990s and she has been working on her own ever since.
Frater’s latest three storey, four bedroom, doll’s house mixes fantasy with reality – her labour of love based around the needs of the family she imagines would live in such a home.
She spends hours thinking about, planning and enjoying her little house, moving items around until they are just right.
Little beds are neatly made, dinner plates of roast meat, potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and broccoli sit on the table, and tiny gumboots at the back door.
The family living there now, according to Frater, are the third generation of New Zealanders descended from an English family that emigrated in the early 1900s.
Comprising a businessman dad, a home maker mother, twin boys aged 10 and two girls aged eight and six they all live in the big house in the 1960s, without a TV.
With a 1:12 size ratio, lamps are lit, framed oil paintings sit on the walls and wardrobes boast individual hat boxes.
Even the bathrooms have towel rails and tiny soap, while apricot preserves are being made in the kitchen.
Named Villa San Jose, after her mother’s family home in South America, Frater has not given names to the family she imagines occupying the house.
But that is about the only detail missing from the impressive creation which sits in the hallway of Frater’s home, providing an attraction for all who walk through the front door.
Frater has made flowers for a tiny vase out of paper and her friends have made miniature biscuits and given her little gold rimmed plates and silver goblets to add to her collection.
A harp, a working abacus and a Punch and Judy puppet box add to the intricate pieces in the house, while a bible the size of a small thumb actually has the entire text of the scriptures on its pages and was made by a miniaturist in Akaroa. In a glory box is the English maternal greatgrandmother’s lace edged wedding veil.
‘‘They must be sorting a holiday. I’ve noticed the father has a passport and holiday brochure on the table.’’
Fay Frater
The art and craft magazine which piqued her interest in the hobby in the 1990s, offered a kit set miniature house with a new piece provided in each monthly edition.
Frater dutifully collected the magazine, gathering the pieces which included walls, flooring and cardboard furniture for the four roomed little house.
After fitting all the furniture together and making it complete, Frater was not satisfied.
‘‘I wanted a posh house.’’ After visiting a doll’s house shop in Christchurch in 2000, she purchased a new three storey house.
‘‘I built it and furnished it.’’ Inevitably, she then wanted something bigger and a new challenge, so sold the second house and drew up plans of her own and took them to a local joiner. Once the pieces were cut, she and husband Bill spent a great deal of time in 2005, glueing them together. This house she plans to keep and will keep adding to it.
Often buying things online, Frater sought out the perfect hand made dresser for the kitchen, made by a renowned English miniaturist, to display ornate plates. Such items can sell for as much as $200, she said. At the other end of the spectrum, she had spent $5 on a teapot with a tea cosy which had been made by a local woman.
She explains away the reason for a broken lamp and spilt wine in the house as being the result of a family argument and discusses the renovations the family have made in the house.
‘‘They must be sorting a holiday. I’ve noticed the father has a passport and holiday brochure on the table,’’ Frater said as if it was perfectly normal for an imaginary family in a doll’s house to be doing such a thing.