The Tudor House Revisited, Part 3

The kitchen/living area is the most crowded in the Tudor House. The table, benches and dresser shelf were all made from instructions in Making Dolls' House Interiors, mentioned in the previous post, as were the salt box (seen on the fireplace mantel in the kitchen picture) and the three-legged stool. The green box is a dough box; you mixed the bread dough in the inverted lid, then put the bread to proof in the box, out of drafts. I believe this design came from a magazine, likely a UK one! A decorative, carved wooden box on the dresser holds valuable spices.

Pottery in this setting comes from a wide variety of sources, some of them on the secondary market, and a couple of pieces imported from Mexico and Portugal. The dead bunny was a purchase at Birmingham Miniatura a couple of years ago, while the superb tripod kettles came from Earth & Tree in New Hampshire (Old Mountain Miniatures). The buckets are hardware store finds, stained and with rope handles. There are also some small Mexican copper bowls with handles on the shelf.

There are also food items made by me, some of them for the Christmas season, although in Tudor times ordinary people didn't make a great fuss over the holiday, except as a religious one. The setting also has tiny turned wooden bowls, gorgeous baskets from the UK, pewter, glassware, and a tiny, hammered silver bowl I made at Camp MiniHaHa some years ago, under the tutelage of John Meacham, an IGMA artisan.

There is also a tiny hedgehog in the kitchen; these were kept to help keep down flies and vermin and this practice continued into the 19th century in parts of Europe. This hedgehog also came from Miniatura, one of the items on my long list that I was able to fill during that trip. And a broken egg lies in front of a tiny basket of eggs in the bottom section of the dresser shelf. Also on the bottom shelf is a small barrel with a spigot, sitting in a barrel cradle; I believe it contains Madeira....

Among the food items are a Stilton cheese, pears in wine sauce, gilded gingerbread Tudor rose, Christmas pudding, bread loaf, garlic string, and onions in the basket. There is also a dead chicken, made by me many years ago; it is somewhat primitive; the cleaver next to it is a British find, and it is sharp as the real thing.

The next visit will be to the shop area of the Tudor House.