Mindblowing Art #8
The Masterlist
Miniature world is (not so) miniature.
This issue is somewhat untypical, cause I’m not going to feature just one artist. Do you like dollhouses and scale models? It’s one of things switching my mode [WANT] [NOW] on. On the other hand, imagine regular dusting of this all…
It’s not just a branch of art; it’s a whole branch of market. Associations, conventions, contests, magazines, books, sites in all languages (Polish, German, Finnish), companies and shops all over the world (Poland, Hungary, Germany, France, Japan, Russia) … not to mention the history long enough to make material for museums.
Therefore no wonder that many artists specializes. Say, in miniature cookery. Of polymer clay, but still.
Like Stephanie Kilgast (official site, dA, fb, G+, Twitter, Flickr), who makes also jewelry…
…or Betsy Niederer (dA, blog, Flickr)
…or Jackie Chaves (dA, blog, fb, G+, Tumblr, Twitter), also a mini-food-jeweler.
Obviously, furniture is popular, too. Виктория Цай (Viktoria Tsai, official site) makes great… er, small. Great anyway.
Barbara Moore (official site) specializes even in her specialization, making medieval furniture mostly. Sadly, she doesn’t photograph her works with anything to show the scale… These are under 1" if I’m not mistaken.
However, for some artists miniatures are not as much the goal as their medium of choice. Unlike typical dollhouses, works of Marc Giai-Miniet (official site) are not exactly intended to be just pretty…
Alan Wolfson (official site) creates rather dollstreets, very much urban and very atmospheric.
Dollhouses by Maria Adelaida Lopez (official site) are dusthouses. Real dust, from a vacuum cleaner. For, ehm, authenticity of the experience. Ack? Well, they have some horror quality, at least…
But among them there are artists who take it to a whole new level, making dollhouses as fanworks. Maddie Chambers aka Maddie Brindley (general blog, Twitter) built The Bag End Hobbit Hole…
…and The Mouse Tree House from Brambly Hedge series by Jill Barklem.
LotR is a popular theme. obeliamedusa made another Bag End. You can see the work in progress, the finished project and The Bag End decorated for Christmas (check out also the links at the bottom of the last one).
grace_poppy made Dr. Stephen Maturin’s sick bay and other cabins of the HMS Surprise (Aubreyad aka Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian). Notice the bones; they’re real, picked from owl castings.
Sally Wallace (old official site, new official site) built Harry Potter’s… everything, actually. Hogwarts, Ollivander’s Wand Shop and Honeyduke’s Candy Shoppe, Hagrid’s Hut, The Ministry of Magic and The Burrow.
A fan by nick Dragonmiss aka Shiraziel made Harry Dresden’s Wizard Lab from Dresden Files (the TV show, not the books). More here.
Charles Brogdon (Flickr) makes miniature sets of tv shows and even news programmes. He has published books about his works, On the Set: Famous Hollywood Studio Sets in Miniature and On the Set. Take Two!.
On the photo Murphy Brown.
Who’s greater fan than the author? Tove Jansson, together with Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola, built Muumitalo (Moomin House) in 1976-1979. Now it’s presented in Tampere Art Museum. You can read more (in Finnish) and see other photos here.
Miniaturists are widely Sherlocked. Caroline Stafford (official site, fb) made a Sherlock Holmes room and a few Sherlock themed desks.
Nancy Garcés-Saroli (official site) made another one.
And Craig Calvert (official site).
And Art Walker, who made a whole Sherlock apartment. More here.
And so many others that they have a special association for Sherlock miniaturists, The Mini-Tonga Scion.
(ETA: BBC Sherlock fans might want to see the supplement for this entry.)
The photo series Houses of Fiction by Julia Callon (official site, fb) is somewhere between fanart and just art. Actually, the artwork in question are the photos, when the roomboxes are just props.
On the photo Wuthering Heights (in the gallery linked up there you need to keep clicking on the displayed photo to see all).
Speaking of dollhouses and art, some of guys that today belong in encyclopedias happened to be made into miniaturists once. You see, in the first half of the 20th century the sisters Carrie, Florine and Henrietta Stettheimer had many friends in the cream of artistic society of New York. They agreed - among them Marcel Duchamp - to make replicas of their works for the sisters’ dollhouse. Probably nowadays it makes The Stettheimer Dollhouse the world’s smallest museum of art? You can see the dollhouse’s interiors here and here and here.
Last but not least, and not particularly in the fanworks line, but most certainly in the line of More-Than-Just-Dollhouses, Frances Glessner Lee (Wikipage, museum) in 1940s went beyond the realm of art, creating Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, that is eighteen dioramas presenting actual crime sites. The Studies are a significant piece of the modern forensic science’s history. You can read about them here and here, and see a detailed analysis of some of them here. There is also a documentary Of Dolls & Murders (official site) and a book by Corinne May Botz.
~*~*~*~
Of course, there’s much more to see under all the links above, and still it’s barely a pinch of a fraction of the tip of the iceberg. If you’re really interested, you can find more and much more here:
Mini Mansion’s Linklist
A huge private collection of links, with descriptions.
Imagination Mall
Mostly sites of miniaturists of all the world.
British Miniature Directory
What it says on the tin. You can browse by artists’ names or by their specialties, everything from miniature books to animals.
The Dolls House Directory
Another British one. This one’s better for planning trips. You can browse by locations and see if there’s some miniature museum or fair or shop near the place you’re going to visit. Or you can browse by categories - Fairs & Shows, Makers & Artisans and so on.
Dollshouse-Info
British again, serves mostly for advertising (dollhouses for sale and such), but it’s worth to check out the links page, with descriptions.
Small Stuff Link Page
Lots of links in a few of categories.
Miniature world is (not so) miniature.
This issue is somewhat untypical, cause I’m not going to feature just one artist. Do you like dollhouses and scale models? It’s one of things switching my mode [WANT] [NOW] on. On the other hand, imagine regular dusting of this all…
It’s not just a branch of art; it’s a whole branch of market. Associations, conventions, contests, magazines, books, sites in all languages (Polish, German, Finnish), companies and shops all over the world (Poland, Hungary, Germany, France, Japan, Russia) … not to mention the history long enough to make material for museums.
Therefore no wonder that many artists specializes. Say, in miniature cookery. Of polymer clay, but still.
Like Stephanie Kilgast (official site, dA, fb, G+, Twitter, Flickr), who makes also jewelry…
…or Betsy Niederer (dA, blog, Flickr)
…or Jackie Chaves (dA, blog, fb, G+, Tumblr, Twitter), also a mini-food-jeweler.
Obviously, furniture is popular, too. Виктория Цай (Viktoria Tsai, official site) makes great… er, small. Great anyway.
Barbara Moore (official site) specializes even in her specialization, making medieval furniture mostly. Sadly, she doesn’t photograph her works with anything to show the scale… These are under 1" if I’m not mistaken.
However, for some artists miniatures are not as much the goal as their medium of choice. Unlike typical dollhouses, works of Marc Giai-Miniet (official site) are not exactly intended to be just pretty…
Alan Wolfson (official site) creates rather dollstreets, very much urban and very atmospheric.
Dollhouses by Maria Adelaida Lopez (official site) are dusthouses. Real dust, from a vacuum cleaner. For, ehm, authenticity of the experience. Ack? Well, they have some horror quality, at least…
But among them there are artists who take it to a whole new level, making dollhouses as fanworks. Maddie Chambers aka Maddie Brindley (general blog, Twitter) built The Bag End Hobbit Hole…
…and The Mouse Tree House from Brambly Hedge series by Jill Barklem.
LotR is a popular theme. obeliamedusa made another Bag End. You can see the work in progress, the finished project and The Bag End decorated for Christmas (check out also the links at the bottom of the last one).
grace_poppy made Dr. Stephen Maturin’s sick bay and other cabins of the HMS Surprise (Aubreyad aka Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian). Notice the bones; they’re real, picked from owl castings.
Sally Wallace (old official site, new official site) built Harry Potter’s… everything, actually. Hogwarts, Ollivander’s Wand Shop and Honeyduke’s Candy Shoppe, Hagrid’s Hut, The Ministry of Magic and The Burrow.
A fan by nick Dragonmiss aka Shiraziel made Harry Dresden’s Wizard Lab from Dresden Files (the TV show, not the books). More here.
Charles Brogdon (Flickr) makes miniature sets of tv shows and even news programmes. He has published books about his works, On the Set: Famous Hollywood Studio Sets in Miniature and On the Set. Take Two!.
On the photo Murphy Brown.
Who’s greater fan than the author? Tove Jansson, together with Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola, built Muumitalo (Moomin House) in 1976-1979. Now it’s presented in Tampere Art Museum. You can read more (in Finnish) and see other photos here.
Miniaturists are widely Sherlocked. Caroline Stafford (official site, fb) made a Sherlock Holmes room and a few Sherlock themed desks.
Nancy Garcés-Saroli (official site) made another one.
And Craig Calvert (official site).
And Art Walker, who made a whole Sherlock apartment. More here.
And so many others that they have a special association for Sherlock miniaturists, The Mini-Tonga Scion.
(ETA: BBC Sherlock fans might want to see the supplement for this entry.)
The photo series Houses of Fiction by Julia Callon (official site, fb) is somewhere between fanart and just art. Actually, the artwork in question are the photos, when the roomboxes are just props.
On the photo Wuthering Heights (in the gallery linked up there you need to keep clicking on the displayed photo to see all).
Speaking of dollhouses and art, some of guys that today belong in encyclopedias happened to be made into miniaturists once. You see, in the first half of the 20th century the sisters Carrie, Florine and Henrietta Stettheimer had many friends in the cream of artistic society of New York. They agreed - among them Marcel Duchamp - to make replicas of their works for the sisters’ dollhouse. Probably nowadays it makes The Stettheimer Dollhouse the world’s smallest museum of art? You can see the dollhouse’s interiors here and here and here.
Last but not least, and not particularly in the fanworks line, but most certainly in the line of More-Than-Just-Dollhouses, Frances Glessner Lee (Wikipage, museum) in 1940s went beyond the realm of art, creating Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, that is eighteen dioramas presenting actual crime sites. The Studies are a significant piece of the modern forensic science’s history. You can read about them here and here, and see a detailed analysis of some of them here. There is also a documentary Of Dolls & Murders (official site) and a book by Corinne May Botz.
~*~*~*~
Of course, there’s much more to see under all the links above, and still it’s barely a pinch of a fraction of the tip of the iceberg. If you’re really interested, you can find more and much more here:
Mini Mansion’s Linklist
A huge private collection of links, with descriptions.
Imagination Mall
Mostly sites of miniaturists of all the world.
British Miniature Directory
What it says on the tin. You can browse by artists’ names or by their specialties, everything from miniature books to animals.
The Dolls House Directory
Another British one. This one’s better for planning trips. You can browse by locations and see if there’s some miniature museum or fair or shop near the place you’re going to visit. Or you can browse by categories - Fairs & Shows, Makers & Artisans and so on.
Dollshouse-Info
British again, serves mostly for advertising (dollhouses for sale and such), but it’s worth to check out the links page, with descriptions.
Small Stuff Link Page
Lots of links in a few of categories.