Almost a year to the day after I found The Cabin, I wandered into a favorite Antique shop and saw this:
Just as stunned as I was last year – maybe a bit more – I stopped and stared. It was sitting in my friend’s booth, a dealer who has three booths in three different antique shops that I frequent. I’ve found many of my putz sheep in her booths, as well as the grand find – the egg cup cubby. I had just been in this booth less than a week before (buying putz sheep) and I found out that Sydney had come into the shop the next day to display this house. It was $150.00. Handmade. Folk Art. Huge.
I discovered that the sides came off, as well as part of the roof. Some rooms were a bit hard to see, but it was BIG. The details, like the siding, were hand painted. The stonework was hand painted. And the interior fireplaces were hand-painted. Definitely folk art.
I sat down on the sofa. I took pictures. I texted my sister. I posted on Instagram. My sister told me I had to buy it. Everyone on IG screamed, once again, “GET IT!!”
I went home. I talked to Don about it on the phone. It was a chunk of money but it was one-of-a-kind! I would never see anything like it again. I called the shop and asked them to put it on hold.
The next morning, Don and I talked about it in detail, the biggest question being, where the heck would we put it in this small house? We had a couple of possibilities; the kitchen table or up in the office on my work table. Don told me he wanted to buy it for me for Christmas. But we held off on the final decision until we visited the shop later that morning. Don fell in love with it. It was a done deal. And we got 10% off, so it was $135.00.
It sits on the kitchen table as a piece of folk art. It’s about 3/4 size, not quite 1:12. As with the other vintage house, I will not do anything to the outside. After all, that’s what charmed me initially. I will decorate the inside, but I will retain the fireplaces (I’ll just put a cover of sorts over the original. I won’t mess with the windows except to clean them up. I’ll put down wood floors, but I’ll put them on cardstock, so they can be removed.
One of my readers told me that she saw a house at an antique show where the sides and roof were removable and the dealer said that often the house being build was a miniature version of the house the recipient lived in, so in order to maintain the reality of the interior rooms, the only way to access the house was through the sides and roof. It confirmed what I suspected, that it was modeled after a real home. If only we knew where!
The Folk Art House has now moved from the kitchen table to a French Bistro table by the big kitchen window.
And I’ve been playing around with furniture. 1:12 scale is too big. ¾ scale, as in these pieces from the Petite Princess furniture line from the 1960s, works.
I know I could simply keep the house empty and display it as the piece of folk art that it is, but it needs some life. So I’m slowly going to add pieces when I find them.
Here are some posts on the ‘new’ house.
A Tour of the Folk Art Dollhouse
