In the beginning there was an idea and that idea was “One day I will restore the dollhouse that my grandfather made for me”…
The idea floated around, bumping up against other ideas like “I would like to learn to kayak”, “Watching Das Boot could be interesting” and “I would like to find that recipe for Vension with chocolate sauce I saw on tv that one time”…
Sometimes the idea bumped into similar ideas like “I really have to get that dollhouse out of my Dad’s house”, “Gosh my dollhouse looks at bit dirty and neglected”, “I wonder if those amazingly cool miniature shops in Covent Garden and Kings Road, Chelsea still exist…I still have the catalogue from the Kings Road shop…” and “Wow, a fountain with water lilies and goldfish dammit only 60 pounds…why didn’t I buy it in 1996? Even though my dollhouse doesn’t have a garden…it’s still cool!”
For a long while…nothing much happened.
Then I went back to the UK in 2006 to discover the shop in Covent Garden doesn’t still exist and later that year (after my finances had recovered slightly from the trip and after a significant amount of wine) I dug out the catalogue for the Kings Road shop and googled the answer.
Turns out it doesn’t still exist (well I did pick the catalogue up in 1996), but in the course of uncovering this fact I also discovered the great and wonderful world of ebay where it was possible to purchase dollhouse furniture and accoutrements from such exotic locals as the Americas, the UK and…Willeton in Western Australia.
Unfortunately I have yet to discover where I can find the fountain with water lilies and goldfish which so enraptured me in the Kings Road shop’s catalogue.
Casting that minor point aside, in the course of my journeys I have purchased:
- Two lounge room sets (discovered the perfect one cream satin set after I had already bought a pink damask one because it was cheap but cool.)
- Three fireplaces (discovered the perfect set of two wood ones having already purchased a white metal one…it’s a continuing theme)
- A master bedroom suite
- A billiard room suite (who could say that a billiard room is not more important than a kitchen?)
- Three kitchens (long story, will explain in a post about my discovery of the different scales that exist in the great wide world of miniatures)
- A nursery set (it had a toy dollhouse in it, a dollhouse in a dollhouse - geddit!)
- A cocktail tray with a bottle of gin and two glasses (for the billiard room, mais bien sur)
- A trundle bed
- A miniature working pull train for the nursery
- Silk persian rugs
- Paintings (Some nice pre-raphaelites for the walls. A picasso and some statuary are being considered too…)
- Vases of flowers (only the essentials in life)
There are probably other miscellaneous things I have purchased on the way plus there are the pre-existing miscellaneia that I already possessed…more about these later.