A SMALL PERSPECTIVE

Horrified, I watched my friend dip her empty jelly container into her water glass and wipe it clean with a napkin. Incredulously, I asked, “What in the world are you doing?

“I need a sink,” she replied.

“That container is too small for a sink,” I replied in disbelief.

Reflectively she turned the container around in her hands, nodding as she replied “Yes, It, is the perfect size. I am constructing a keepsake room box of my mother’s kitchen. Show casing her special sugar cookies cooling on the counter.”  A glint of mischief in her eye she said, “Come with me and I will show you around this special shop I have visiting.”

We arrived at a small cottage-like store with neat white curtains hanging the windows. As we entered through the doorway, I smelled a combination of wood and freshly baked cookies. Tea and cookies were offered as incentives to browse the wonders of the shop.

Questions poured from my lips like water running in a stream, as I moved rapidly from display to display. Detail by detail I came to realize that my friend’s project was not Just a Doll House…. proportion is everything in the making of miniatures.

According to my friend, early standards of size varied greatly…ranging from dollhouse size…child size items…to cabinet maker’s samples (five inches to forty inches), made in every style from Renaissance to Late Victorian. Today the excepted standard is on-twelfth of a foot or one-inch equals one foot.

Bemused by my antics and out of answers, my friend asked the shop owner to share her extensive knowledge of this Miniaturized world with us.

The shop owner began with a question, “What is used in technology, architecture, scientific projects, art, hobbies and has been around since ancient times?”

My friend and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.

She replied, “The making of Miniatures, a long-established art form. “The word Miniature originated from the Latin word Miniare, meaning to dye, paint, or color with red lead.  The Italian’s meaning was Miniatura which transformed into the word Miniature: meaning the painting of small detailed illuminated manuscripts.

The first known miniaturized figures and room displays came from the Egyptians.  Meketre, a powerful Egyptian official of the Eleventh Dynasty, created the first display. The display depicted his comfortable lifestyle and labor force  needed into the next world .”  To view these miniature’s, go to this site: https://cdhm.org/news/member-articles1209.php.

My respect and curiosity of this craft grew significantly, and I asked, “When was the first Dollhouse constructed and for whom?”

The shop owner replied, “The first house was constructed in 1558 for the Duke of Bavaria as a gift to his daughter.  The poor child never got to enjoy the house on completion instead became part of the Duke’s private art collection because he thought to delicately detailed for a toy.”

My friend asked the Shop Owner if…Have there been any dollhouses that were famous or widely known?

The first is Queen Mary’s Dollhouse given to her by her subjects in 1924. Lavishly detailed right down to elevators that traveled from basement to the top floor and a working Piano with ivory keys.

The house took four years to plan, construct and supervised by Sir Edward Lutyens, a famous English architect;  completed the house measured one hundred and sixteen inches long, seventy-two inches wide and thirty-nine inches high (approx. 9.5 ft high by 6 ft wide by 3.25 high). The dollhouse has electricity, running water for the sinks and toilets. A stocked wine cellar…. over one hundred bottles line the walls. The Strong Room, safe house, Crown Jewels and Kitchen boast a wooden block floor containing 2,000 tiny sections of oak.

The second house is our nation’s White House. The vision and a lifelong project of John Zweifel…he believed the White House stood as a symbol of democracy…. what was right…not wrong in our land of freedom. His vision conceived as he toured the White House for the first time at the age of twenty, in 1956.

Disappointed, the tour only showed five of the One hundred and thirty-two rooms, wondering what the other rooms looked like, fueled his imagination and desire to know more in-depth detail about the Nation’s house. John Zweifel had collected large amount of information , he was viewed as a security threat by the White House security. When he requested to take pictures and measurements of the remaining rooms they were denied repeatedly.

In nineteen hundred and sixty-one an in-depth article appeared in National Geographic of the White House with the measurements and pictures…the next year a TV Special by Jackie Kennedy aired. These two events inspired John Zweifel to start work on his dream.

Hampered by the death of John Kennedy and National Security Politics, it took John Zweifel fourteen years to complete his vision. The viewing of the White House on our Nation’s Two Hundredth Birthday in Nineteen Hundred Seventy-six, fulfilled John’s lifelong dream and patriotic gift to all of America.

The miniaturized White House has toured Overseas and all Fifty States. And viewed by approximately forty-three million people. In nineteen-ninety the sixty feet long, twenty feet wide and ten tons replica John Zweifel moved the replica to its present home to Clermont, Florida in the Presidents Hall of Fame, where it resides today.

CLERMONT, FLORIDA– One of the main features at the Presidents Hall of Fame attraction at 123 N. U.S. Highway 27 is the 10-ton, 1,200-square-foot White House replica that owner John Zweifel and his wife, Jan, built in the 1970s.

The shop owner pointed out the different items she displays in her shop. The shop offered books on old homes, making furniture to scale… wallpaper, bricks, tiles, and lumber scaled to size and monthly magazines like NUTSHELL NEWS, and MINIATURE WORLD to name a couple….numerous assorted decorative items:    rugs, curtains, mirrors, pictures with or without frames, lamps, and food items.

For four centuries of its recorded history, Doll Houses have contained every item that a full-scale establishment of its period would contain… except dolls.

Dolls were used sparingly or non-existent in the earlier doll houses.  Dolls were the possible vehicle of destruction to the valuable and hard to replace items located in and about houses. The use of dolls to compliment a house is now in vogue again.

We thanked the owner of this marvelous shop for a lovely and informative talk. As we went out the door I promised to return. The owner just smiled.

In my friend’s car, on our way home, something caught my eye, and I said to my friend “This could be a…” We looked at each other and started laughing.

What will you see the next time you use a container-jar-piece of plastic? Will you envision a bathtub, window, green house? Where will your imagination take you?