1 minute read
ntasy
from WelSpotted
Educating ourselves on the history of miniatures was a delight because, #attentionmustbepaid, this is some fascinating stuff ! Some of the earliest miniatures were created by the Egyptians 5,000 years ago, per www.shopofminiatures. com. Those trendsetting Egyptians—the mind boggles as to how ahead of their time this ancient society really was, huh?—created miniature replicas of boats, animals, furnishings, and even servants. These handcrafted minis were placed in tombs inside the pyramids (as the website points out, it’s an entirely different take on "you can't take it with you”). Dollhouse miniatures got their start about 400 years ago, when so-called “baby houses'' debuted in Europe. Despite their name, these tiny houses were off limits to kids, collectible miniature pieces that featured many fine architectural details and filled with painstakingly crafted furniture. Also known as “cabinet houses,” baby houses became a hit among wealthy patrons in Holland, England, and Germany, and also served an educational purpose: mothers in the 17th century used dollhouses and miniatures to teach their daughters how to maintain a proper home. We’ve been bananas about miniatures since we saw the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago, created by Narcissa Niblack Thorne, who assembled a group of artisans in the 1930s to create intricate rooms on the minute scale of 1:12. More recently, we’ve fallen in love with these incredibly posh miniatures from L.A.-based Chris Toledo and Brits Mulvany & Rogers, the latter of whom has miniaturized many famous buildings in addition to those owned by private clients. We love that Toledo’s finished miniatures are often showcased with whimsical life-sized objects (like a pair of glasses, a bottle of glue, or a pair of scissors) in order to show scale. On the less whimsical side but still fascinating: Google “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death”—macabre pint-sized dioramas we saw some time ago at the Smithsonian that still give us the shivers.
