Attonement House

 

This is the Dolls house from the film Attonement that orriginally gave me the idea of making a miniture Platt Hall. You can see from the picture below that it is a replica of the real house that is used for the set of the film. This is what I want to do with Platt Hall by making it as accurate as possible. I really love this house as well as its pretty and symmetrical.

Another Re-created House

 

Another house I found on the V&A Museum website that was made as a replica of the house the little girl who owned it lived in. This house was made with all the new technologies of the time and is in contrast to the wide range of Georgian houses made.

 

Three Devonshire Villas - 1900

This house is a model of a house in Kilburn High Road, North London, which no longer exists. It was made in 1900 for the owner Mr Samuel Loebl, as a present for his daughter, Cecy. Both his daughter and his grand-daughter played with the house. His grand-daughter donated the house to the Museum in 1972.

This dolls' house was made by a carpenter and would have cost a great deal to make. It is decorated and furnished in the very latest style for the time and many of the features, such as the fitted bathroom and the double sink in the kitchen, were very modern for the time. The bathroom walls have 'sanitary' wallpaper, which is coated to be washable - a new invention at the time. Cecy made the carpets, lampshades and upholstery in the bedroom and drawing room.

The house reflects in miniature an actual nursery which would have been the domain of the children and their nurse. It is well-stocked with toys, the frieze and pictures provide visual stimulation and it includes the very latest in technological innovation - a telephone.

The house was exhibited at a Toy Fair in Frankfurt in 1925.

Mrs Bryant's Dolls House

Mrs Bryant's Pleasure - 1860

"This house is a good example of a dolls' house which was not a child's plaything. Instead it was made for a lady called Mrs Bryant in the early 1860s. Mrs Bryant lived in a house in Surbiton, Surrey called Oakenshaw and wanted to make a miniature record of the interior of her home.

 

She commissioned a professional cabinet-maker to make the pieces of furniture, which were made with remarkable skill and accuracy. The rooms are furnished in exactly the same way as a middle-class home of the time would have been. The wallpaper is the same pattern that Mrs Bryant would have had on her walls at home. Bathrooms became more widespread in the 1890s, so here, the bedrooms are equipped with wash-stands and basins.
The kitchen is surprisingly small. A real kitchen in a middle-class household would have been considerably larger in order to accommodate the wide range of kitchen equipment needed. Among the miniature china are some well-known designs such as the famous Willow pattern."

I found this on the website for the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, I thought it was a really good example of a Dolls House that has been commisioned to resemble a real house in the same way that I want to recreate Platt Hall.

Albums

Here are a couple of photo albums for sale that I found on the internet. I like the ties on the side of the bottom one and the seal on the top one. I think I might look into seal's with wax more as they also relate in history to families , with crests of arms being used as seals. I could make and put my own crest on my family album.

My Room

Me and Tom agreed that we would need to make a test Dolls house smaller than Platt Hall as if we make  the entire of Platt Hall exact it will be very large for a Dolls House. We desided to make our own houses but as I'm living in a student house and can't get pictures of my home I decided to make just my room at uni. It is a bit of an odd shaped room so this was my first challenge and then there were the large windows with the window cill. Here are some pictures of what I have done so far, I aim to finish it by the end of the week and make a start on at least the exterior of my house at home.

Dolls House Book

On the book stall I also found a Dolls House Book by pure coincidence. This was a great find as the day before me and Tom had shown each other our ideas for the Mary Greg project and realised that they are pretty much the same! We both want to make miniature Dolls House versions of Platt Hall. So when I looked in the book and saw it shows you how to make a Dolls House or to at least think about the different period houses and the scale of the furniture.

Books

I bought these two books from the book stall outside the SU last week, I wanted them not because of the story but because of the elaborate covers that I liked so much. I was thinking I would make them into photo albums thinking about the idea of a photograph album being a story of a family or persons life time, and so being inside the pages of the novel emphasise this point.

When I got them home I looked in the larger one and found two leaves that had been put in the book and pressed flat, I then looked at the last date written in the front of the book on the 'Owner's' label and found in said 1902. The thought that these leaves might have been in the book since then amazes me and I find the idea of them being a piece of history of someones life fascinating. I think it also links to my project of photo albums as these are records of people's lives just as the leaves are records of peoples actions.

Metal Induction

We did the metal induction last week-ish, ( behind on my blog still!) we got inducted into all the machines that we would likely need to use and in the afternoon we made a bowl out of aluminium. I really really enjoyed this induction and found the tap tap tap of hammers thereputic and satisfying  seeing the end result! I went back next day and learnt how to polish the bowl. It just so happens that the bottom I made for the bowl fits a tea light nicely and it looks really good with the light reflecting on the uneven surface of the bowl. It isn't perfect as some marks werent totally removed with the file, but for a first attempt I'm quite pround of it! It has even given me ideas about christmas presents!

Show and Tell!

 Above are some photographs of a album I made using photographs of my friends I had in my room, I sewed, cut and drew on photographs experimenting with the look of the album, whilst thinking about the idea of narrative, how an album has a narrative and by taking someones face out of a picture you have changed that narrative, the record of history.

I havn't done much work to be honest because I have been doing research and loads of inductions, so I only really have one thing to show, which is this practice sample album I made to hold some of my old family photographs. I made it using card and just followed the design of the Georgian albums with the space for the photograph and then the slot to get them in. I also put a gold edge on and wrote in the front who the people are. For the next one I will try and decorate the pages and use a more apropriate font for the writting i think, it didn't really go! The main two people that are in it are my Great Grandparents, Margaret Winifred Bennet and Clement Henry Watkin, all the photographs are from 1918.

Photography Induction

Here are my prints from my photography induction. It was really helpful and I enjoyed the process, I think I might take some black and white photographs of my family to make an album out of.

Wedding Bells!

Wedding Photographs from my Family box of photos.The large one was in a frame but has since been removed. I was thinking about this idea, is it because as children grow up they want their parents wedding photos? Or do people take them down because they don't know who they are any more? Or at least can't remember them?

Platt Hall Visit for Mary Greg

We Visited Platt Hall last week to have a look at the building and spaces available for the exhibition and also some of Mary's collection. I really enjoyed the OPUA draws with the glasses and hair slides which were really beautiful. 

 

I also happened to find a photo album from the begining of the last century in one of the gallery cases last year, as my other project is all about photographs albums I was really pleased to see this one had such an ornate cover, I'm not sure how its made, it seems to be carved or moulded, painted and varnished.Great Find!

Liverpool Biennial

We went on a trip to Liverpool a couple of weeks ago for the Biennial (I'm a bit behind on my blog!) the trip was really good and I especially liked to Bloomberg New Contemporaries, in particular the giant door that completely confused me! I don't have any pictures because i suppidly forgot my camera!

But here are a list of painters I liked from the Turner Painting Prize;

Nick Fox
George Sherlcok
G L Brierley
Steve Proundfoot
Jon Braley
Li Weizhau
Nathan Barlex
Sam Knowles
Keren Dee