watchmaker's cabinet for minis

[nid_dabeille]

My watchmaker's cabinet arrived, the one I bought on ebay!  It's so perfect!  I mean, perfect for me and my miniatures.  And so pretty!  It was really dirty when it came (probably with dust and dirt all the way back to 1875, the date that's stamped in the drawers) and as I cleaned it, I kept finding all sorts of little watch gears and hands and other parts.  So cute!  It was like it was shedding.  I would set it down on the table, then pick it up again and find a couple of little gears it had left behind, and found some little watch hands in the packing material...  I waved a magnet around and picked up tiny little screws and gears that had been hiding under the dividers, etc.  Then gave it a jolly good clean so the wood became lustrous.  And then put all my tiny bottles and bone saws and trephines in the compartments!!!  Every now and then as I walk past I'll just pull open a drawer to gaze at them in fondness.

And now my roombox is sitting on top of it, and they make the perfect pair.

Bigger pictures below...

In other miniature news - randomly on ebay I saw old dollhouse plans for building a house exactly like my mom's that her grandfather built her, and that my sisters and I grew up playing with!!!  The exact house!  I was so freakingly excited, and so was my sister Becca when I showed her.  (She has the house now, lucky thing.  She's older than me, and also has two daughters, so I guess that's to be expected.)  I bought the plans, of course.  When I saw the photograph, I thought it was an old photo of my mom and her sister playing with it - I mean, because I'm so used to seeing that old photo of my mom with the house.  It was totally foreign to see a DIFFERENT photograph of strangers playing with the same house!

 

  

  

So excited!  And I'm actually considering (in my insanity) building the house for myself.  Maybe in the future.  Or maybe half scale.  It's a huge huge house.

Comments

[latin-cat.livejournal.com]

*gapes at all the little gears and parts in envy* Oh wow, how cool is that? Not only a beautiful little cabinet, but loads of hidden curios as well.

I still have all my doll's house furinture and one homeless doll under my bed. I'm hoping that one day I will get around to having a house for them to go into.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Did you have a dollhouse when you were little?

Yeah, I'll have to do something cool with the gears! I don't know what. They're so cute and cool looking!

[snakey.livejournal.com]

Oh jesus, that's so perfect! Raven so needs one of these. *PLOTS*

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! She'd love one! For beads and tiny things she makes... I'd love to have more, MOAR!!! for all the stuff I've got. I've also looked at type cabinets, you know for moveable type and such, but they've been more money than I wanted to spend. We have a couple such cabinets at work though, and I WANT them. I joke about if we ever have a fire, they're the first thing I'll rescue (though, they're filled with heavy brass type, so it might be difficult for me.) But anyway, they too are good for tiny compartments. I did a regular ebay search for type cabinet, type galley, watchmaker cabinet, watchmaker drawer, watchmaker chest, as well as apothecary chest because they have some of those that have tiny compartments too (and others that have larger drawers, not quite what I need). Oh, and also spool drawers, spool cabinets - but those are even more expensive because people collect them.

[theshrub-eline.livejournal.com]

omg sweet jesus! you have hornblower books!!!! i'm so ttly jealous my face is turning purple!

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Of course! :D But jealous? Don't you have books too?

[theshrub-eline.livejournal.com]

nope run to the library for them but i have 1 book of the o'brian series michelle is buying al of them i found this one in new print for 6 euro's in a bookshop in Leuven where they sell books from the 18th century so very cool!

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Do you live in or near Leuven? tootsiemuppet used to live there (or was it her mom?) but now she's moved to a new city. I can't remember where.

I bet you could order cheap copies online, maybe second hand from amazon.co.uk (if you want to read them in English)! Still, you're lucky you have them in your library. I started out reading copies from the library, but they didn't have them all, and they also kept LOSING them. I don't know why, but my library is notorious for losing books. I just got fed up with it. :P

[theshrub-eline.livejournal.com]

i live waaayy to far from leuven just my big sister is in uni there and she inviteted me to stay whit her for 2 days
so lot's of shopping!!

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

ps - if you're not a member already, maybe you should join Horatians (http://www.horatians.org/)! A lot of my LJ friends are members there too, and they sound like a lovely group of people.

[theshrub-eline.livejournal.com]

i think i'm allready a member of horatians

[obeliamedusa.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that cabinet is perfect for miniatures!! *is so jealous* And that doll house is incredible. Wish I had one of those! :D

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

I know, I feel so lucky to have my little cabinet!!!

And oh, the dollhouse - how I LOVED it, and still love it. I wish it were mine. Though I'm also glad my nieces are enjoying it now. It's important to carry on the love in future generations. Plus my oldest niece (7) is SO much like me, so I know she'll love the dollhouse for a very long time.

If I had kids, I'd definitely make a replica, I think. I might do it anyway. Maybe. :D But it will be exciting just to look at the plans and the photographs!

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Oh, those watch parts! They're just beautiful! I've sometimes thought about trying to make something with little gears and such, but I don't know where to get my hands on 'em.

The re-filled cabinet with all its little partitions looks great. And so cool about finding that dollhouse. What an elaborate piece.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Oh, on ebay I've been watching watchmaker's cabinets (just so I could find an affordable one for minis) and I've seen many sold with lots and lots of old parts in them. I also see just the parts sold. Plus, I suppose you could always just dismantle a watch! Now that I see how many cute and useful things there are, I'm thinking to myself, "Do I have any old useless watches I could take apart...?"

I don't know what exactly I'll do with them, but they would be so cute for steampunkish dollhouse things.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

What were you thinking of making with them? I don't really know what I'll do with them.

[ldhenson.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...items that small, my first thought goes to jewelry, or to somehow use them in decoupage.

I never thought of dismantling old watches for parts (sometimes it's the most obvious ones that escape our attention :-)

[shipotl.livejournal.com]

It is lovely and it just looks great! That's amazing that it shed all those parts, they probably knew it was safe to come out because you would care for them. Wow!

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

I know, it was funny that little parts just kept coming out! There are probably STILL some hidden in there somewhere, just waiting to come out later. :D Aww... yeah, they knew i wouldn't just throw them away with the dust and dirt that I cleaned off, or vacuum them up by accident. I made sure to get them ALL out before doing anything else.

[commonreader.livejournal.com]

ooooooooooh

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

:D

[rosamundeb.livejournal.com]

How neat; an actual antique from eBay!

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Haha - of course! Did you think nobody bought those antiques they're always listing? :D

I've gotten several antiques from ebay actually, but just smallish things - nothing like big pieces of furniture. I like antiques, but I often dislike going to antique stores and looking through all the other STUFF before I find what I want. I like that on ebay I can search for things specifically, and regularly, and quickly.

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

Those drawers are absolutely perfect for sitting your room box on. And I'm certain you'll find a miniature use for all those little cogs and screws.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure WHAT to do with the cogs and screws though.

Say, are you the one who once wanted to find surgical and medical minis for Elrond? What were you wanting? (Not that I can necessarily help - I don't expect Elrond did amputations or trepanning of elven skulls.) I'm just curious.

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's me. :)

I was actualy looking for 1/12 scale surgical instruments. Not found anything yet but if you have a yen to make some I'm interested. I must say that what I've seen of your stuff is wonderful.

So far, poor Elrond's surgical kit consists of a scalpel, pair of scissors and boothook! Poor elf healer isn't going to get very far with those.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Well, if the surgery consists of pulling off someone's shoe, he should be fine! Though he might find use for a shoehorn...

What kind of surgical instrument though?

I have the Chrysnbon set of "ivory" vanity items, which includes a shoehorn (yay! just kidding) and a more useful button hook and nail file, both of which look like little tiny surgical instruments. For my naval surgeon I have knives (kitchen knives) and bone saws (adapted from regular saws) and two kind of trephine (for drilling the skull). Also in his collection are a nutcracker (oh dear) and some pliers and scissors. Or maybe the pliers are actually ice tongs - I can't remember. I'm planning to make some forceps out of bendy wire, which hopefully will be pretty easy.

What kind of surgery does Elrond do anyway? He's such a renaissance man! I could probably make you a bone saw and trephine, but I've never seen any stumpy elves. (Maybe some stumpy ents, ha ha...)

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

ROTFL! Nice to see you found new uses for other items too. Although I dread to think what a surgeon would do with the nutcrackers!

I'm figuring that Elrond would have a full surgical kit . . . surely there was the odd elf who didn't duck fast enough when an orc took a swing? ;)

I hadn't considered using an ordinary saw as a bone saw but it would work. The trephine sounds interesting and if you'd be willing to make me one I'd definately be interested. Let me know how much it would be. Email me via lj.

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Well I adapted a couple of ordinary saws to be bone saws. I actually became a bit addicted. Now every time I see a dollhouse saw, I want it, and start imagining ways to make it look more boney.

As for the other tools, I just started randomly buying tools that looked like they could become surgical instruments with stretches of the imagination and minor adaptations and the context of surgery.

That reminds me of a scene in 'Brazil' (one of my new favorite movies), a modern day interrogation scene where there are frightening instruments of pain on a table laid out for the prisoner to see - scalpels and drills, etc. But on close examination, there are a lot of really random things - a pair of wrenches, a pacifier, a little bouncy ball... :D

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

Ok, sent you a LJ message.

[boatercity.livejournal.com]

WOW!!! I have that dollhouse you have pictured at the bottom of your post. I purchased it at a thrift store about two years ago, and I've never seen anything like it. Mine's missing the columns though, but it's so cool to see some original ads for it!

[grace-poppy.livejournal.com]

What???? SHOW ME! I want to see!!! I've always sort of daydreamed that some day I'd see it for sale elsewhere. I even daydreamed that someday I would find the plans, but I never believed it would happen.

If you're interested, you can buy the plans too! I think they're actually just digital reprints, but I didn't mind paying for them since it's so special.

Here! (http://cgi.ebay.com/Plans-Build-Georgian-Mansion-Doll-House-Make-Money_W0QQitemZ170189480500QQihZ007QQcategoryZ2463QQcmdZViewItem)

Are you very much attached to your house...?