Japanese Dolls House Project

Major apologies for my slack posting. I have so many images and ideas for posts, but real life has got in the way. I will do much much better I promise.

When I was little my very favourite book was Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, by Rumer Godden.  It tells the story of a little girl who moves from India to live with her cousins in cold and rainy England.  Life is horrible until she meets a kindly local bookseller and begins to build her own traditional Japanese Dolls House.   This is a magical book about being a lonely little girl and the wonder of dolls houses and the imaginary world one can create. The book even has (very old fashioned) instructions for building your own Japanese dolls house.  Inspired by this I have decided to build one for my daughter.


Here are two images I found which mine will be based on:

The brilliant thing about this is that it uses an Adams Dollshouse, a kit set, which I have now ordered and is on its way to me here.


As you can see the above tiny house looks amazingly like a real Japanese teahouse:

Here are some others (it is surprisingly hard to find any, as much as I have searched).  This is a 1930s Japanese dolls house. 

I found this on Pinterest.  It looks old and authentic.

To make it a challenge, I have set a budget of $150.  Excluding shipping. Because unfortunately most of these items have to come from US or UK. 

Costs so far:

• Adams Dollshouse kit - $27.
• Wooden Japanese teaset from Ebay - $24
• Tiny Mount Fuji print from Ebay - $1.50
• Two miniature bonsai, fishbowl, and bamboo plates from My Tiny World (you must check it out) - $45
• Porcelain japanese vase from store up the road - $10.
• Wooden shingles from Canada - $12.
• wooden floorboards (fake oak) - $7.

And I desparately want these two little porcelain mid century Japansese dolls which are on Ebay but am too scared to bid on them because they are listed at $8 which seems so cheap.

And try as I might I cannot find miniature tatami matting.

Wish me luck !!

xo

Scandinavian Mini House

(hand made miniature wooden storage boxes in the foreground)

Brinja, who lives in Copenhagen and makes jewelry, decided to make a mini home of her real apartment, which is divine and has featured in magazines. 

What could have come across as an act of decorative egomania is instead rather wonderful.

It is not an overly ambitious house, as it only has two rooms (for example she has not included a kitchen), but there is still a lot of detail, particularly in the wall of shelves you can see to the left of the photo below. 

It works because she has such special little pieces around her home.  Like this yellow cot, which has been faithfully reproduced (it was made for her by a reader in Poland, how sweet is that?)

Here is her dining area, in actual size and miniature.

And here is one of her chairs, sitting behind the miniature replica she made. 

Brinja began her blog in 2008, when she had already started her mini home, so it is a bit hard to work out why she began the project.   But now of course every time she buys a new item for her home she has to make a new mini one to match.. 

To see the whole project, visit her here.