The wonderful world of miniatures
From a tiny bacon and eggs cooking on the hob to the most delicate, miniscule pair of shoes waiting to be polished on the wash room floor, a peek inside Susan Goldsworthy’s dolls’ houses reveal a perfect, almost deceptively real world.
From food to crockery, furniture to furnishings, all are an exact 1:12 scale size replica of its real-life equivalent.
Susan makes many of the pieces herself and buys objects from doll’s house fairs to create the mini worlds.
Her hobby began 25 years ago but stems back to her childhood. “I’ve always loved small things,” says Susan. “My father was interested in model railways and I think that started a fascination for things that are to scale.”
Starting with a doll’s house from a kit, she now has a handful of different houses – including one built by her husband, David – the rooms of which she fills with the tiny items she makes or buys. She also has some individual box rooms. “I particularly like doing the fiddly bits,” says Susan. “And, while I don’t have people in my houses, I like to make them look lived-in.”
From the pile of clothes left on the ironing board to the sheet of pastry cut out on the kitchen table, they certainly do that. One of Susan’s latest projects was to make a kitchen apron, created from a pattern with two teeny buttons painstakingly sewn on. She then arranged it on a polystyrene board, copying how her own pinny hung in her kitchen and sprayed it with starch so it dried to look as if the lady of the house had just that moment hung up her apron and gone out!
Susan uses all kinds of materials to make her miniatures, from Fimo modelling clay to fabric and even wood. She sources many materials from doll’s house fairs around the country where, she says, you can find everything from diminutive garden ware for a few pence to tiny silverware that sells for hundreds of pounds.
It’s at these fairs that she meets some of the hundreds of like-minded hobby miniaturists and gets inspiration for the next creation. “I come out of a fair and find I’m looking at everything in 1:12 scale. In shops I imagine how everything would look if it was reduced down and am always thinking how to make everyday objects, like cocktail sticks, into something for my doll’s houses.”
Now Susan is learning how to make miniature paper and porcelain flowers as well as experimenting with the growing trend for even smaller miniature work in a 1:48 scale house.
“The beauty of this hobby is you can do whatever interests you. You don’t need a full doll’s house, you just need something with three sides and a floor.
To get started, Susan recommends finding a doll’s house fair or doll’s house magazine to get ideas for what you’d like to make.
“It’s such a fascinating hobby and the possibilities are endless,” she says.
■ To find out more about doll’s house fairs and miniatures visit Miniatura, NEC, March 30-31