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Wednesday 5 August 2009

Close ups of inside the Triang House

I realised that the photos I posted of my earliest dollshouse are not very close up. They were taken over 25 years ago with a very simple camera and were the closest I could get without blurring the images. Now that I have a rather better, digital camera, I have tried experimenting with taking close up photos of some of the furniture in situ, though the photos still aren't great but do give some idea.

Bedroom with beds over quilted!

You will see from these photos that the layout of the bedroom has changed a bit. In the earlier photos, there were plenty of little inhabitants of the house, and they all needed beds. The Triang house is very cramped (it was one of my earliest desires to enlarge it, I dreamed of a staircase) and for a family this size, bunk beds were necessary. The earlier photo has reminded me that I actually made a simple bunk out of pieces of wood in my father's garage (where the house had been reassembled by my grandfather some years before), and I now realise why the two remaining beds have so many quilts - because I made quilts for all 3 bunk levels of the rather chunky bed which no longer survives.

In the bedroom, the two beds and the bureau came with the house when my grandparents brought it over, I assume they were the furniture that my mother owned. I adored the bureau as it is lined with red inside the top for the writing desk, and the drawers really come out and in. My sister once found a tiny white feather and we poked this in a bead for the inkstand, to fit the writing desk. The beds and bureau are nicely made of plywood. I bought the wardrobe in an antique shop in Bath during a visit to England in 1985, along with the little bedside table. The jug and bowl were made by fay of Cape Town, there is a similar green one in the sitting room. These items delighted me as a child. Also upstairs is the ancient lead bath, which as you will see from the photos is very scratched, revealing the lead.


The detail of the bath also made it special
to me despite the fact that lead isn't a safe material for a plaything.

In the sitting room are the original chairs that came with the house (re-covered by me), along with the fireplace and coal scuttle, which are made of metal (cast iron I think). These are truly lovely and detailed and I am so relieved we didn't lose them when we were small (though I notice the central bar of the fireplace is broken off), like we did the black plastic (but very elegant) grand piano that my grandparents brought over with a little lamp when the house was rebuilt. They also brought a family of 4 dolls, sadly long since lost. I subsequently bought lots of little plastic baby dolls with sweet faces and moving limbs from the local shop, I've still got these, but they are currently in storage, so I can't photograph them.

The fireplace and coal scuttle - if you can help identify the maker
of these, I'd be very pleased.

The red piano is the treasured replacement for the plastic grand, as my mother visited England without us in 1981 and brought back a collection of items for the dollshouse, including the new standard lamp and the wonderful piano with a lift up lid and smart little stool. The grandfather clock is actually a pencil sharpener cover, but is nicely to scale for this house and seemed to fit the other furniture in this room.

The red piano with the yellow plastic telephone,
and the green jug and bowl by fay.

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

I love the chairs!
Are there any marks on the fireplace and coal scuttle? Some manufacturers stamped initials on their goods, which can help identify them.

DollMum said...

no markings unfortunately, I had looked before but have looked again to double check.