Gingerbread!

 Mini Gingerbread House

I have been admiring the Gingerbread houses in the magazines and decided it was time for me to make one for my dollhouse kitchen.  I am very pleased with the results!  I was not sure about the glitter because it seemed like it was maybe a little too "glam" but it actually turned out to just the right amount of sparkle.

I started with a molded plaster house

The house is raw sienna paint and the white "icing" is fake whipped creme used in making mini foods

Glitter added

The final result added to my dollhouse

 Dollhouse display

I was recently asked if people ever build display stands for their houses, or just concentrate on the houses themselves.  Here is one of my favorite examples of a dollhouse where the artist built not only the house, but the cliff it sits on with the ocean waves crashing below.  

 Adopting Another Dollhouse

Here is a Log Cabin!  This looks like a great project for the high school class!

 Dollhouse Moving Day.  Just back from a presentation at the Library.  For those of you who might wonder...yep...this is how we move it!

Halloween Doll Club Meeting & Luncheon

I hosted my doll club, The Renaissance Doll Study Club, for our October meeting.  Of course, I had to do some fast dusting and tidying of the doll room which usually tends more towards chaos.  I preset the dining room table for a buffet to keep it simple and I did my program on the Christian Hacker Shops.  Sooo...that sounded great in theory until it occurred to me I had to move them downstairs for the talk.  The shops have a lot of "little" things in them!  Lol.  All in all a good time was had.

 

The Shops set up for the program....all the little things made it safely down.  These shops were made by The Christian Hacker Company in the late 1800s early 1900s.  

Meanwhile up in the Doll Room....

My collection of Kitchen miniatures resides in an antique Hoosier cabinet.  I have a lot of fun setting up the displays.  I always place dogs in the settings...every doll needs a dog!

Even though I have not started the monster restoration project that is the Mystery House...I had some fun setting it up for viewing....

FAO Schwarz Mystery House Project

Oh boy...everyone needs a project and one landed in my lap this week!  I get an email once a week of local Estate Sales, and I have to admit, I don't pay very much attention to it.  Every now and then I will open the email and look through the photos hoping to find an antique dollhouse or doll and very rarely do I find anything...at all.  I usually just get super depressed wondering what will happen to all my things someday and delete the email.  Well...not this time!

This time as I paged through hundreds of photos (235 to be exact), my eyes caught an old jukebox.  The jukebox was cool, it was round and I had never seen one like it and I actually stopped my scrolling to look at it.  As I moved on to the next photo, that tiny corner of my brain that all us doll and dollhouse collectors possess, cried out.."Wait...go back!"  Well...sure enough...a corner of a doll house was just visible next to the jukebox.

And not just any doll house but what looked like an 1890's FAO Schwarz Mystery House!  I thought this was highly unlikely, you just don't find these kinds of things in the garage of a tract house in Southern California.  But I now searched all remaining photos until I found more pics of it.   Yep...there were painted floors. Yep...there was chamfered "tramp art" trim.  OMG!  It had to be a Mystery House.

Ok, now just be the first person to get there and buy it.  Easier said then done.  I got to the sale early, I waited in the sun (with a hat and water and a tape measure...would this thing fit in my car?).  I was number 20 in line.  The sale team opened the garage door, which would be our entry point once they let us in.  And there it was...the very first thing in the garage...right at the front.  My heart sank.  I would not be anywhere near close enough to get my hands on the tag first.  But I waited with my heart pounding and spent the time getting a good look at the house.

It was in bad shape, as I had seen in the photos.  But the front panels were all there.   They had not been in the photos online so I wasn't sure if they were there.  I had made up my mind I would buy it anyway but I really hoped the panels would be there.  I also hoped the window trim and interior doors would be there too.  The painted floors were in good shape and the structure seemed to be good.

The sale opened a bit early and people went running past the dollhouse to get at the jewelry and collectible pottery and I was at the dollhouse in seconds with the tag in my hand!   I was able to make a deal as there were two dollhouses and I only wanted one.  I quickly paid and then spent the rest of my time searching the garage to try to find the window trim pieces etc.  Along the way I met a kindred spirit who had also seen the house online and knew what it was.   She arrived later than I did but was able to get the other house...a small 1930s Gottschalk with original papers in very good condition. 

No window trim pieces, doors or windows turned up.  I met some of the family members and gave them my number and they said they would ask their mom if she still had the missing trims.

Then I tried to put it in my car.  I had measured and thought I could tilt the house sideways to fit it in my hatchback, but the width of the base was just a little too much...one inch too much.  Sigh.  I stared at the house for a long time.  I could leave it there for a few days and come back with a truck or van, but the sale was over an hour away from my house and the crowd was pretty rough on things.  A couple of people had tripped over the house running into the garage when the sale opened and I felt overly protective of my find.  The roof was already very loose and disintegrating in places and I suspected I would end up removing parts of it anyway during the restoration process.  The garage was filled with tools for $3 each, so I added a few more items to my purchase and sat on the curb with my house and "very" slowly and carefully took the roof off.  It fit in the car with no trouble after that and off I went.

Why do I feel like the adventure is just beginning?  I am excited!!

(Note that the panels are just leaning against the house in this photo and 2 of them are upside down but they wouldn't stay in place for the quick photo right side up)

East German 1950s Grocery Store

Continuing my fascination with the antique and vintage shops...here is a piece from the 1950s.  I believe this was made by Linus Dahnert in East Germany in the mid 1950s.

I have dressed it with items from my own collection, though a lot of the food packages came with the shop.  I bought it from a dealer in Germany and had it shipped here to California a couple of years ago.  I love the design!  The display cabinets are wrapped in plastic sheeting that fits in groves in the top and bottom of the cases.  The shelves in the side units and back are glass.  The working wooden scale came with the shop, though I am not sure if it is original to the piece.  The store is about 35" long x 13" deep x 12" high. (about: 89cm x 33cm x 31cm)  For scale reference, the dolls are 8" tall.

Along the back wall and on top of one side is my collection of the Libby's metal cans.  Originally mail in premiums.   The can in the back is a money bank that is shaped as a mail box.

The red wooden jar holder was a separate purchase but it seemed to fit here.  The seltzer bottles are souvenirs I brought back from a trip to Buenos Aires.  I found some of them at a flea market and the others at a small antique store.  The coca cola tub is a re-purposed Christmas ornament.

The built in holes for the glass jars are my favorite element of this room box.  I have added the little "oven" as a bakery on the back shelf.  Keeping with my love for Japanese Re-ment toys...the little muffin pan and icing bag are Re-ment.

Christian Hacker Grocery Shop Redressed

I spent some time cleaning the large Grocery Store.  I also got the Christian Hacker book and found this shop (424/4) listed in the book.  So I can now confirm that this is indeed made by the Christian Hacker Factory sometime around 1905-1907.  Here are some fun pics of all the items put back in the store.

 The Front Windows

The Cheese Display

The Bakery Display

The Back Pantry stocked with meats and butter

Hat Shop Re-Dressed

I spent some time cleaning the Hat Shop room box...it took a long time with Q-tips!  But it looks much nicer now and the mirrors and glass are nice and shiny.  I have not fixed the door to the glass cabinet yet.  I need to buy new hinges for it, so for now it is tacked in place with museum putty.

These glass shelves spin when the clockwork mechanism is wound up and released. 

I have a large collection of blown glass bottles from glass artist Sue Ellen Fowler.  I have been collecting them for 25 years or more.  I think they look wonderful in this shop, so I decided to make the left side of the shop a perfumery shop and the right side the Millinery shop.

19th Century Dutch Dollhouse

This is another recent addition to my collection of antiques.  It is from the 1800s though it has had quite a bit of restoration work done to the exterior.  The work was done years ago by Phoenix dollhouse artist, the late Mickie Haynes.  She sold the house to Jackie McMahan and it was on display for several years at Angel's Attic Doll & Miniature Museum in Santa Monica.  As with the previous items I have posted about, I bought this house when the Museum closed its doors following Jackie's death in January of 2017.

The house is about 2 1/2 feet tall.  I believe it originally opened in the front, but was updated somewhere along the line and now has 3 doors cut in the back of the house. The yellow molding that goes around 3 sides of the house must have been added when this is done.  Perhaps the front of the house was too damaged to allow the door to open and so it was stabilized.

When it was restored a new base was created for it and it houses a small electric transformer which powers a bulb on each floor.  (The new base ends after the bottom yellow molding and includes the stairs)

When I first saw the house it was set up as a grocery store, with a wonderful 3 shelf unit which had cakes and groceries on it, and some wonderful old furniture and dolls in the upstairs rooms.  By the time I was able to purchase it, all of the interior furnishings had been sold.  As I went to retrieve it from its location on the 2nd floor of the museum, I noticed the shelving unit that had been in the house had fallen out and was under a nearby chair!  I scooped it up and restored it to the house, though I have no way of knowing if the shelves were original to the house or not.  But they fit perfectly.

I have done a lot of research and finally found a very similar house in the museum in the Hague in The Netherlands.  (link at the bottom of this post).  That house is only 2 stories but it is also arranged as a Grocery store on the first floor and if you look VERY closely at the picture of it on the Museum's website, you can see some shelves through the door.  So I am content in my belief that the shelves are original to the house.

As I have several Grocery stores in my collection, and I also have a number of vintage and antique potted plants, I have decided to set the first floor shop up as a florist shop for now.

There is very minimal furniture inside.  I added a metal fireplace and some beds and will continue to work on furnishing the house with items from the appropriate era as I find them.

Here is the link to the similar house in the Hague Museum in Holland and a picture of that house.

Haags historisch museum

Don't forget to look closely at the picture on the site, and zoom in to see the faint shelves though the window!