Diva's Houses: Waldfrieden and 1226 Cliff Drive

I had seen photos of Davidia Williams' creations, especially her Rose Seidler house, on The Shopping Sherpa's blog (and it was also written up in the Sydney Morning Herald, when it was displayed at the real Rose Seidler House).
This year she had two houses on display! One is an A-frame house, with this backstory:


Here's a view of the whole house:


furnished with lots of vintage pieces - Lundby, Tofa, Barton - as well as miniatures made by Diva. Isn't that a great spiral staircase? (Also a little scary, with no handrail!)


I love the crowded, lived-in look and feel.


Anna-Maria has much better photos in her post (taken while Diva was setting up, without the front which caught the flash. Also she's a better photographer than I am!).


While Waldfrieden is a 1960s house, 1226 Cliff Drive, Watsons Bay, is completely modern:



Here's a closeup of the backstory:


The front door:


And, as you can see, a very different colour scheme and vibe. The monochrome furnishings really let the artwork stand out:


Sorry this is out of focus - you probably can't see the Toblerone on top of the green crate:


More great artwork, and a lovely Mackintosh mantelpiece:


The stairs lead up to the bathroom (and I am obviously totally oldfashioned in liking railing or banisters on stairs - at least these stairs are against a wall!)


The bedroom, where the picture certainly makes me want to snuggle up in bed and keep warm:


Now I'm off to start photographing my finds!

The Swans decorate for Christmas

Narelle Swan has started decorating the house for Christmas.


With Mark's help, she's moved in another table and covered it with a Christmas tablecloth, so that the cold meats, seafood and salads which she prepares for Christmas dinner can be spread out for guests to help themselves from.


The Christmas tree is up, and Narelle has decorated it with baubles and candles. Now little Nicole is allowed to help drape the tinsel on it very carefully.


Only nine more sleeps until Christmas! Nicole is very excited.

Familiar Furniture, Unfamiliar Themes

In the library the other day, I discovered the book Hatched! The Big Push from Pregnancy to Motherhood, by Sloane Tanen - who also wrote Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same. Pubdoll and The Shopping Sherpa both mentioned Bitter in their blogs (though sadly I can't find TSS's post right now).
The furniture is very familiar:

and so is the topic, but not in this setting:


I also stumbled across a webpage about an exhibition called "Shrinking Childhoods", (Tate Modern, 2004-2005), in which children who had been sexually or emotionally abused depicted their experiences through life-size or dolls house-sized installations. I won't copy the images here, as they're pretty shocking, but I was pleased to see dolls houses being used to let kids act out not just sanitised or romanticised versions of daily life, but the gritty reality.

Carpets in the Swan House

Finally, new carpets have been laid in the Swan House! The Swan family were starting to think it would never happen. But now they've been able to move in the furniture they already possess, and think about what else they will need before they themselves can move in.

The dining table and chairs were a wedding present - they look very nice in the new spacious dining area.

The living room is starting to look more homely:

The bedrooms have beds and somewhere to keep clothes.













The bathroom looks good, with a Brio bathroom

intended for a Brio house on which the sale fell through:

The kitchen, however, still looks very bare:


The Swans aren't sure why there isn't even a sink in here - were all the kitchen fitments trashed by the previous owners? or did they intend to renovate, and didn't get past removing the old kitchen? Whatever the reason, the Swans need a functional kitchen before they can move in.






So, after taking a breather in the TV room off the balcony, they are off to Tim's Secondhand Shop to see what he can supply.















(Their carpet layer, Rebecca, has decided that she should not leave her current job to take up carpet laying. She would also appreciate suggestions from anybody who knows how to get photos lined up across the page, as hers will not stay where she tries to put them.)

Lundby Gothenburg / Göteborg 1960s

So far I have shown only one of the commercially made dolls' houses in my collection, the Lines No 17, and three of the home-made ones. I have other home-made ones too, but also quite a few commercially made ones. This Lundby house is one of my most recent purchases.
I loved the 1960s Lundby houses I saw in books and websites, with really funky wallpaper - and I especially wanted one because the house I live in now (built in 1974) has a staircase with a straight wooden banister very like the dolls' house staircase!
I found a really nice house with legs last year on Tradera (Swedish ebay); I wanted legs so it can sit under the real stairs. It was listed by a very friendly seller who was happy to ship it all the way to Australia.
This is how it looked on the auction:

Three great wallpapers, as well as the typical 60s 'woven' design paper on the side walls.

Once I had the house, of course, I had to buy furniture for it! I've bought a lot through Tradera, although I'm not being purist about furnishing it only with Lundby pieces - I've also used some Barton and Dol-toi furniture.

Here's how it looks now, with a lot more work to do.


In the living room, there's a family gathering. The dolls are from my Erna Meyer collection, of the right scale and vintage.















Grandma and the aunts and uncles and cousins are visiting. The beautiful red lounge suite is Lundby. The rug is made from a 60s tie, and I've made several pictures from 1960s stamps, or stamps of prints which were common then - the kind of pictures I remember having at home and at school in the late 1960s.

Downstairs in the entrance vestibule, more relations are arriving.
One of the kids has left the pink bag which holds their ballet shoes here - I had one just like this.
Behind is a glimpse of the bathroom, which has tiny toothbrushes in tooth mugs, and a tiny blue tin of nivea cream.

Here's the dining room - Dad has come downstairs to meet the new arrivals.


Because there are so many people, two tables (Dol-toi 'Continental', and Lundby) have been put end to end - but they do need more chairs. They have some wine, though - the tiny chianti bottle is a silver charm. I've just bought two more bottles of chianti, but I don't know yet whether they'll fit this house or a bigger one.
My cat likes to sit on the stairs and look through the banisters too:

The kitchen is quite crowded. One cupboard needs to be fixed on the wall above the workbench, and some bowls and containers need to be put away. There are also a Dol-toi twin-tub washing machine (not Barton; thanks for the correction, Sarah), and a Triang Spot-on dishwasher (we had a Colston dishwasher in the 1960s, which stood on a stand - no bending).


In the bedroom, lots of little cousins are keeping themselves amused with different things. Two little girls are entranced by the gorgeous toiletry set. Some little boys are looking at photos of Disneyland, which the family have recently visited, and one (invisible here) is sitting on the floor playing with a Donald Duck figure. The little girl on the bed at the back has brought in two of the kittens to play with. (And there are more pictures to be hung.)


I am really enjoying filling this house. This is a period for which I have some scraps of material, stored in bags from when my Australian grandmother made clothes for me and my sister and the rest of the family. (And I've bought a few more bits of fabric, too.) So I've got curtains, cushions, sheets, blankets, tea-towels, towels, etc, to make. I also want to make a little electric jug - the kind which was a ceramic jug with an element in it, and a plastic lid into which the electric cord was plugged. I've never seen this kind in miniature, so I'm going to try using a little jug, and making the right kind of lid for it.
I'd really like to get a cobra phone (ericofon) for this house, too - I love the ones in JennyMi's houses. There don't seem to be many miniature ones around.

I'll put up more pictures as I make the soft furnishings and hang the pictures and curtains and lights.