Welcome to the deeply immersive world of miniatures, a hobby that's enjoying a renaissance of sorts due to the pandemic. Not necessarily for kids, it's unapologetic fun for adults.
Over lunch one day, Chris Dodds' niece saw a photo of the magical cardboard dollhouse Chris had made her granddaughter and coveted one for her own young daughter. Maybe they could get together over the weekend to make it, she suggested.
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Chris had to laugh. A dollhouse isn't something you knock together in a couple of days and, if the little girl hadn't been standing with them at the time, staring up at her with big hopeful eyes, perhaps that would have been the end of the conversation. But how could Chris resist that sweet little face?
So this Sunday, a year after she agreed to make the dollhouse, Chris will travel from Towradgi to the Southern Highlands to deliver the finished project - a three-storey Tudor-style fairy cottage with faux-stone turret that looks straight out of a story book - to one supremely lucky and excited seven-year-old.
Chris tinkered away on the cottage for hours a day, four days a week, creating a light but sturdy design made of reinforced cardboard, balsa wood and a few unexpected pieces lying around the house - a bath towel repurposed as a thatched roof, egg cartons dabbed to resemble stonework, paper towelling crumbled to give the outside of the house that perfect rough texture.
"There are some miniaturists who see something and make it exactly the same, like if it's a thatched cottage they would actually use thatch and everything's got to be perfect and to 1:12 or 1:24 scale, but that's not me," Chris said.
"I'm a bit of a higgeldy piggeldy person who just grabs a box and comes up with an idea. It's a fairy house so it's meant to be a little bit rough around the edges."
The dollhouse sits on a set of wheels so it can be easily turned from front to back, revealing humble but beautiful rooms, fitted out with tiny pieces of furniture, all painstakingly made from more cardboard and balsa and robust enough to withstand some vigorous child's play. The house is move-in ready, with a basket of firewood by the hearth, books lining the shelves, cork-top bottles tucked into the kitchen bench and stacked rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom.
Miniatures are a fast-growing hobby in the Illawarra, and across the globe, as more and more people turn to new and long-discarded pastimes to get through pandemic-induced lockdowns and restrictions.
But unlike Chris, the vast majority aren't making their dollhouses for a child, according to Lorraine Robinson, owner of Fairy Meadow Miniatures, which is now based in Wentworth Street in Port Kembla.
In fact, the bulk of Lorraine's clientele are 50-plus women who labour over these little worlds for months and years on end, in whatever style they like, for nobody but themselves. She calls it unapologetic fun for grown-ups of all skill levels and personal tastes.
"We've got to that point in our lives where our children are gone, we may very well be looking after grandchildren and we've got a lot more time and a bit more money available," Lorraine said.
"Very often I get ladies come in that are in their 60s and 70s and they say, 'Oh, I wish I had a granddaughter' and I say 'why?' They say 'so they can have a dollhouse' and I look at them and say, 'Well, forgive me, but they're not my clientele, my love - you're my clientele, you are the person who I sell all this to.' And they look at me and go 'but what do they do with it?' Well it makes them happy."
After 16 years in the business, Lorraine believes she has figured out why miniatures are so appealing to herself and others: mastery and fantasy.
"I believe it's that I have full control over that environment - if I put a little cup and saucer and a book just so on the coffee table, nobody dribbles all over it, nobody moves it, nobody puts a pair of slippers on the coffee table, nobody puts a cup mark on there. It's exactly as I want it to be and it stays that way.
"On top of that, our miniature environments are often what we want for ourselves but can't have - it might be a finance situation or it might be the fact that we don't live in the right era, or don't have the right house, so if you produce it in miniature you can have it, but it's just a reduced size."
Lorraine's shop stocks everything you'd need for a teeny-tiny home build, from eye-wateringly expensive bedroom suites to a budget range of laser-cut, flat-pack kits - a "mini-Ikea if you like" - that she designed herself. It's a one-stop mini-DIY, hardware and furniture store, stocking cups and saucers, cutlery and linen, as well as wood, architraves, skirting boards, picture rails, doors, windows and more.
"I have a bedroom set that's $2500, but then I've got another set you can pick up for $30, so I cater for every pocket and I encourage people to personalise things," she said. "Just because it turns up a mahogany wardrobe doesn't mean it has to stay a mahogany wardrobe. You can turn it into a bookcase and it can be painted so it all comes down to your creativity and how much you want to spend."
She calls this "kit bashing" - where you buy a kit, open it up, look at it and think "how can I change this and make it uniquely mine".
"You might add different handles to it, remove one door from the unit or both doors, it could be the way you paint it, or you might take a shelf out and put a rail in it," she said.
Lorraine's long-time customer Sam Knotek, of West Wollongong, took the concept of customisation and ran a mile with it.
"I don't make dollhouses for other people, I just create for myself," she said. "I might buy a shell of a house and completely gut it or change it altogether, and then come back with a vision I like. I'm very weird; I'm currently building a witch's house which is two-storeys high."
Sam spends every Saturday working on bits and pieces for the multiple dollhouses and room boxes she has on the go, enjoying her own company. It's a time of both mindfulness and escapism - and one long lesson in patience.
"The one thing it's taught me is patience. For me to create a door, or do wallpapering, painting and brick layouts with bags of miniature cement, it takes time, so for someone to build a house can take over a year.
"But it's like when people get a hobby like trains or painting, the time flies. I love it because it allows me to slow down, think of problems that are happening in my life, whether they be personal or work, and I think about weird things - like I've stuck all these tables on the wall today as an art piece and there's no stairs, there's ladders - so I like being different, and I like that I can show that through my miniatures.
"Miniatures are a bit like pets, because they don't judge you and they still like and love you and listen to you and you can shower a dollhouse or a room box with such love and attention to detail because you want to take your time with it and really do it well."
Sam's witch's house is a madcap mix of the spooky and comical and, like all her elaborate constructions, has a rich story to tell. It's occupied by sisters Flossy - the good witch, who likes to keep a tidy, spell-free house - and Broombitch, the wicked one with a penchant for making things explode, and the keeper of a dungeon to tease and torture hapless victims.
Brooms, potion bottles, gumboots and mirrors are assembled on the walls like art, a Barbie doll has been cut in half to make it look like her legs are falling through the ceiling, hands emerge from coffins, and teacups are glued together in an arch like like they're floating between two teapots.
"You have a story in your head, like if you did a children's book, and you start describing what it's going to look like and it's so vivid in your mind. I turn those funny thoughts into my witch's house, so it's different from other people's."
While Sam will hold onto her large and ever-growing collection of miniatures forever, Chris is ready to let go of the cardboard heirloom creation.
"I don't have any qualms in giving it up," she said. "The fun is making them and seeing this little girl's face, that's my joy. I think it's the process for a lot of people. Starting off with a bit of cardboard and turning it into furniture, a doll's house, that to me is the fun, it's the creative side that I really enjoy."
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