Today...28 years ago...

I married the love of my life.

Wow, we look so young, well I was... scarcely 20, and Greg 25.

We celebrated a day early and went out scouring around some of the secondhand bookshops in Johannesburg yesterday, something we both like to do.

First stop was a charity bookshop, where at first I only found the booklet on Queen Mary's dollhouse. Hubby was still busy while I was busy getting bored and itching to go on to the next shop.....when I happened to see one of the staff bringing a new pile of books, I went and looked and found the bargain of the year, the book on the right. It was printed in 1980, is out of print, rare and normally quite expensive, out of my reach in any case, they charged me a mere $3, oh, happy day.

At the last bookshop hubby bought me this book as a gift, it has all the history on the old 18th century kitchens in the Cape, the layout of the kitchen, the furniture in it and all the other items necessary for a kitchen of those days, this is going to help a lot in planning the kitchen for the Cape Dutch house as most other books doesn't mention the kitchen at all, with time as I work on the house I will show you some of the photos in the book.

Next we went for lunch at a tea garden that I haven't heard of before, it is at a house that were build in the 1930's and loosely based on Cape Dutch style.

It was really hot yesterday, 35 (95) degrees, this is a typical summer's day in December and January, our two hottest months of the year in SA, just love the contrast of the green lawn and bright blue sky.

Hamburgers with a delicious homemade meat patty, I liked the tomato on top, first time I got a hamburger served like this.

The main entrance of the house, the house was gifted to the municipality in the 1980's and houses a library in the left wing, the rest of the house is used as a recreation center for the local community, ballet, karate, art classes, etc, they were busy painting etc, I would love to go there again in a few months.

The back of the house.

The house fortunately still has some of it original features, like this bar in the shape of a Viking ship, the guy who built the house was of Norwegian decent, his father was born in Norway, his mother was from Scotland and the house is called Norscot Manor.

The windows in the Billiard room, I wonder if they hanged the curtains in between the windows and the part that juts out in the front, I have never seen something like this. I loved the air vent above the window, they were in every room of the house.

The beautiful view from the lounge, when the house was built this area was way out of the city and a farm, now it is in the suburbs.

A lovely fireplace in the bedroom, there were quite a bit more to see but impossible to photograph with all the renovation work going on at the moment. All in all we had a wonderful day celebrating our anniversary.

Enjoy your weekend
Elga

Building on the Cape Dutch House has begun

I have started to build on the Cape Dutch house over the last two weeks or so, I started with the back wall of the entrance hall. Before I go any further, I should say here that when hubby and I carried in the base for the house, I realized that I would have to build the house in two halves, otherwise it would never be able to come out of our house again as it would be too wide to fit through the door, with a bit of thinking I figured out how to do that and you will see the details of that as the build unfolds.

Here is a scan of the real wall with it's beautiful screen door.

And the beginning of my wall, these houses had very thick walls and I didn't want to lose it in the miniature house, so I decided to use plywood with pine strips for the walls.

The walls are a bit thinner in the attic part of the house, so on the one face of the wall I only took it up to ceiling height.

The first wall almost completed, the small cutouts that you see in the top of the wall is where the ceiling beams will slot in after painting the room. The side walls will slot onto the pine that isn't covered by plywood. That door opening is big enough for a real cat to fit through, mine already went through it, I will have to watch him.

When you look at the door and window opening thicknesses in this real house, you can see why I want to keep that in the miniature build, it adds so much character and charm to the house.

This is the scale drawing for the screen door and it's molding.

Making such a big molding on a small drill press are no joke, it took me days to slowly cut away the excess wood in thin little layers.

The shape is emerging nicely.

The finished molding.

I also made the door panels last week, I wanted to be sure that I would get the curved top right before I made the door stiles. I am using Rhodesian Teak for all the woodwork in the house, Burmese Teak was used in some of the real houses of the time but the wood is scarce and very expensive and I just happened to have quite a bit of the Rhodesian Teak on hand, we bought it about ten years ago to make a book rack with it but that never happened.

I am still busy doing research as to how the houses were decorated in the late 1700's, the real house was built in the early 1700's, but underwent quite a few changes by the end of the century, by that time the British were in control of the Cape, I found a nice book with letters and extracts from a journal that were written by the wife of the secretary to the Governor of the Cape, she mentions quite a bit of the domestic arrangements of the time. The book starts off with a bit of her history, I found it very interesting, she was about 47 when she arrived here with her much younger husband (15 years in fact), she came of a good Scottish family, knew the Prince Regent personally as well as Sir Walter Scott, a famous English writer of the time.

Elga

2014

May 2014 be a great year for you all both in the happy and sad times, as I grow older I know that each year will bring it's own joys and sorrows, I believe a positive attitude towards each situation makes a huge difference in our experience of life, so grab next year and what it holds for you with both hands and make the best of it. I pray for God's blessing on each one of my family and friends :-)

Elga

Third and final floor plan

Well....after my last post, when I started working out some of the furniture sizes....I realized my house was still too small. One of the issues being that with a dollhouse you kind of loose your fourth wall since you have to look in from somewhere, and with all the doors and windows the wall spaces in between wasn't wide enough, with my husband's encouragement I made the house deeper and added the stoep (veranda). The front gable will open and the rest of the opening doors will be on the side walls.

The final plan, the rooms are now exactly to scale as they are in the real house.

The stoep adds so much character to the house with its build in seats.

They had so much space in the houses, notice the build in cupboard next to the double doors on the left hand side of the photo, I plan on putting one into my dining room.

A built in fireplace with doors to keep it closed during summer.

I want to make an armoire similar to this one, they are huge and the reason for needing wider walls.

Have a wonderful day
Elga

A Mock-up and some Changes

I decided to build a mock-up of the Cape Dutch home to make sure that I am happy with the dimensions...well, I wasn't, the rooms were just a bit cramped, I wanted to put a stoep (verandah) around the house but have decided to sacrifice that idea for big enough rooms.

The first mock-up, you are looking at the house from the back.

The kitchen.

The dining room.

And the bedroom, although the rooms aren't small, they are just not big enough for the furniture I want to put in them. I added only a few centimeters, but it made a huge difference.

The new floor plan, I also decided to put the dining room in the back as it was in the real houses, I didn't like the idea of having to walk through the entrance hall to the dining room.

The kitchen is wider and deeper and now have space for a concealed staircase up to the loft just as the real house had it. I am thinking of making storage space underneath the stairs for food, it would have been nice and cool in there.

The extra space in the bedroom means that the bed won't be crowded by the big armoire and four seater settee I plan on making.

Josje, how do you like the kitchen's stable door and those hinges?

And for all my Dutch friends who were surprised by the Dutch interiors and architecture, settling the Cape of Good Hope were the brainchild of the VOC, they needed a place to stock up on fresh food and water during the ship voyages to the east to bring back all those lovely spices, silks, etc to The Netherlands. So all the first Governors and farmers in the Cape were Dutch people, they set their mark on the Cape for the first 150 years from 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck and his wife Maria came to the Cape with three shiploads full of people and supplies with instructions from the VOC to build a fort to protect them against the at times hostile natives and to start farms to supply the passing ships with fresh vegetables, fruit and meat. The VOC ruled the Cape for many years with an iron fist, it was quite difficult for a free man to start a farm or business in those first years.

Have a great weekend
Elga

A long Absence....And a New Dream

Wow, it is more than two months since my last post, life has just been very busy and although I am continuously working on orders, there is nothing much new to show you.

I have always wanted to build a Colonial house and want to start on that next year. About two years ago I thought that it would be nice to build a typical South African Colonial house of the eighteenth century and when I stumbled across two very rare out of print books on the subject, one on the architecture and one on the locally made furniture of the time, I decided that I must have these books, well, I finally found copies in a good condition and ever since they arrived on Friday, I have done nothing but, dream, plan and scheme. During the Eighteenth century South Africa was very much under the rule of the Dutch and they had a big influence on the architecture and furniture of the time and the style is aptly called Cape Dutch, only the Cape province excited in those years, most of the others came in the next hundred years. Our family's first ancestor on my father's side Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen came to the Cape of Good Hope in 1702 as a twenty four old from Germany, he had three wives in succession, the first two died young and the third survived him for about 40 years, he had 18 children, many of them died young and at the time he was one of the richest men in the Cape, alas, none of that fortune has filtered through to me, although he was German, most of my blood line is Dutch. My middle brother loves family history and traced us all the way back.

Well, on to the houses, the townhouses was based very much on the ones you find in Amsterdam, but oh the country houses are just so different and magnificent, due to no lack of space, they generally only had a ground floor with a loft that was used for storage. To replicate this in miniature is going to need lots of space and building only a few of the rooms.

I am basing the general outlay of my house on this one, Stellenberg, a house that is in one of the suburbs of Cape Town and I think still privately owned.

The front of the house.

The back, showing the courtyard. You can see nicer photos of the house here and here.

The beautiful entrance hall.

The floor plan of the house from my book.

And my floor plan, with most of the back of the house gone, I need to fit this house on a table I have, as it is it is going to be huge, I had to reduce the rooms as it is a bit in size, but I didn't want to lose too much, as I don't want to lose the sense of space and grandeur. I might compromise and put a bedroom in the loft, I still have a lot of reading to do and it is quite possible that they did use the loft space as well, lots of the houses were build in a H shape with only six big rooms.

I will use other elements from other houses too, like this gorgeous gable from Morgenster.

The scale drawing of the gable in my book.

And I love the front door of yet another house Rust en Vreugde, my Dutch friends will understand all the names well.

Here are two more links to enjoy on Cape Dutch Houses, first up Groot Constantia and a variety of houses on this blog. Many of these houses are either museums or part of wine estates and so easily accessible to the public, only problem, I live 1600km's away, hopefully I will be able to visit there sometime next year.

In my next post I will show you some of the furniture from the other book.

Have a great week
Elga

Federal Sewing Table and a Padlock

I have been working for quite a few months now on another sewing table, it is similar to the one I made last year.

Here is a photo of the original antique table that inspired my miniature table. I have researched many of these tables and this is the only one that I have seen with this shape table top that follows the leg shape, all other tables with six sides has the leg put in at an angle like this example here. Getting the table shape correct was quite tricky especially doing the inlay.....

but I think I managed fine : )

For this table I had to make a silk bag as well.

The screen slides in the back legs.

I am making a total of eight of these tables, for one of them I had a special request, to stitch the petit point as well, thank goodness most of my clients wants to do the stitching themselves.

And then, I told you in my last post about the chest I am making, three of my friends and I am working together once every fortnight on the chests, one of them is making a chest with a latch, well, a latch needs a padlock.... now, doesn't it, so I set out last weekend to see if I cant make a padlock based on the lock we made in Bill Robertson's class in Castine.

Remember the key from my last post, it has lost a bit of metal over the weekend, the padlock is far from finished, it is stuck with lace pins into the wood. I still need to do some final filing, polishing and putting it together permanently, in this photo it is locked.

Unlocked, this was great fun to figure out and make.

Have a great week!
Elga

Petit Point, Turning and Carving

Lately I seem to function best when working on more than one project, as far as orders go I am working on caskets, I still have about seven of them to make. I am also busy with some sewing tables, different from the one I made last year, I will show them to you in another post. In between working on the orders I snatch a bit of time here and there to work on a few miniatures for myself.

I finally finished the back-stitching on the third casket panel, I only stitch on it in the evenings, for some reason I see it best then with my magnifying lamp, I think it is because the electric back-light is softer than the sunlight in the day. The panels are stitched on 90 count silk gauze.

Here is the link again to the original casket that I am copying, I am rather pleased at how close my panels represent the full scale casket.

I also do a bit of stitching in the mornings.

I started this rug about two years ago, at one stage I put it aside because I just had no time for it, I have picked it up again since Castine, it is stitched with French Knots on 40 count silk gauze and the chart is an original Victorian chart that I found on the Antique Library website.

I found a gorgeous little ivory pincushion on the internet the other day and couldn't resist copying it in miniature.

The top is actually a lid, there is storage space inside for more pins.

The turned ivory part of the pincushion, the original pincushion is oval, I made mine round.

I cut the lid out of a bigger piece of metal that I had prepared for hinge making with a syringe needle silver soldered to the metal. Because it is so tiny I decided to drill two tiny holes 0,3mm into the ivory for the hinge pin, it worked very well, by the way the squares on my cutting mat is 1cm square.

And here it is open on my sewing table, now I must just stick a few pins into it, I have an idea on how to make a few tiny pins, but haven't had time to try it yet.

And lastly I am busy making a Spanish Colonial Chest, I am practicing all the new skills I learned in Castine this year on the chest, hand cut dovetails, carving, metal work and a working lock.

Here is the back of the chest with a V-groove gouge that I made out of oil hardening drill rod, something that Bill Robertson showed us how to make in Castine.

The back and one side joined with hand cut dovetails, not perfect but not too bad for a first try in wood. The wood that I am using is South African White Pear, an ornamental tree and no relation to the European Pear. It was used a lot in South African Colonial days for wagon building and gun-stocks, it is a protected tree now so the wood is scarce.

In order to make a working lock, I needed a key, in Castine Bill Robertson gave us each one that he had cast. I turned mine out of brass with a big fat part on the end, which I then grounded flat with my Dremel and then drilled two holes next to each other to form the oval hole. Lastly I silver soldered a small piece of flat brass on to form the blade of the key, this part may still need a bit of trimming to fit nice and tight into the lock. Here is the link to the original chest, still a lot of work to be done, but it is a fun piece to make.

Have a great week.
Elga