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

[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 :-)