The Summer House,
project #45, 1990

Sitting out a thunderstorm in Atlanta on our way home from teaching the Airplane Café in Maine, I suggested we go back to the ABC’s–come up with a simple project for our students. As fun as the three roadside stands were, the wonderfully painted signs and false fronts gobbled class time and energy. By the last class day everyone was bleary-eyed and only able to watch demos of the work they had to finish at home. And, because we only taught the exteriors, students were also left to design and build custom appliances for the interiors. For many of these people, workshop week was their vacation, and they didn’t have a lot of home time to finish their projects.

“For next time,” I said, “let’s come up with a simple cottage, give ‘less is more’ a whirl.” Noel, zonked from the long class week, agreed. This was the perennial plan—let’s make something the students can come close to finishing in class, with less pressure and angst– but somehow over the months, in Noel’s mind, “simple” always morphed into slap-your-granny dazzling(-ly complex). But he needed a challenge, and the students always wanted something new.

At home we pulled out a favorite, but so far untapped source book, Tiny Houses, by Lester Walker. There we found the ground-plan for a narrow, wooden mid-19^th century campground cottage, designed for the Methodist camp meetings on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Hungry for more details, we then found the book that chronicled the houses and camp meeting lifestyle—City in the Woods, by Ellen Weiss. What began as narrow, one-and-a-half-story tents on platforms, cheek-by-jowl, arranged so that all front doors faced the main preaching tent, eventually sprouted plank walls, and double doors to mimic the open feeling of tents. Small, full of charm, and perfect for a workshop.

View into the porch

The design of our Summer House is, as always, eclectic. Its shape and basic proportions derive from the camp houses, which traditionally measured just 11’4” wide X 19 ½” deep. Because of their proximity to neighboring houses, their white-painted gingerbread trims were predominantly on the front, making them perfect for a miniature project. But then we deviated. Where the Oak Grove houses had open balconies on the second floor, ours was roofed, inspired by a beach cottage near our home on the Washington coast. Local architecture also provided the models for the Carpenter Gothic trim in the front eave, as opposed to the ornate curlicues of the camp houses–a nod to simplicity. And, Noel made the upper half-story of ours shorter, to work better as a class project, as well as fit in our shipping boxes.

Featured on the cover of the Spring 1992 Hammacher Schlemmer catalog

Inside cover (and, no, it didn’t sell for the astronomical amount they asked).

View up the upper and lower decks and doors

Bowing again to workshop limitations, Noel designed ours as a partial structure–just the front rooms, upstairs and down. Handily, this meant the staircase would have been in the next room back. The open back gives you an illusionary connection, a glimpse into a traditional family retreat. It is up to you to fill in the other rooms and their inhabitants. And what would a summer house be without screen doors for children to slam, and shingles to weather and age along with the adults? These details would also heighten the fun of the project, and the difficulty factor.

The kicker to the Summer House was the inescapable number of hours needed to make two porches with railings, three screen doors (from scratch), a storm door (upstairs), and double French doors during a 5 or 6 day class. Not to mention the windows with screens, upper deck floor cloth, gingerbread trim, plank porch deck, shingled walls and roof, and brick front walk.  However, the accumulation of these details was necessary to create the illusion, the charm of the original houses, the thing(s) that made it all dazzle.

Main room with white-pickled walls, painted floor and grass mat.

Upstairs with balcony door, beaded wood ceiling and speckle-painted fir floor

The project turned out to be more time-consuming and frustrating than ever. People adored it and signed up in droves, but many hit the wall about day three after struggling with screen doors from scratch, and the fact that almost every shingle had to be custom-shaped.

Porch detail

The last time we taught it was in Colorado—a game group, but two students wound up in tears, and walked out of class. They did return, but we decided the frustration factor wasn’t worth it, and retired the workshop. It was back to the drawing board to find that elusive, “simple” structure.

Student projects on graduation night at the Guild School

The Airplane Cafe, #44, 1989

In the late and frivolous 1920s, Americans loved flying aces, motion pictures, and automobiles. America was motion crazy. We idolized the daring breed of ex-fighter pilots who flew the U.S. Mail Service by the seat of their pants. On the silver screen our romantic hero was WWI “pilot” Buddy Rogers, better known than most real-life flying aces. And, our developing system of highways beckoned those of us on the ground out in our new cars to picture shows, roadside restaurants, and the countryside. By 1927 we were primed for Lindbergh’s trail-blazing solo flight from New York to Paris in The Spirit of St. Louis. We wanted to be thrilled! Lindy thrilled us, sprinkling us with his stardust, and we in turn lionized him with awards, celebrations and parades. He piloted The Spirit throughout the U.S. on a barnstorming tour to encourage “air-mindedness,” leaving in his slipstream cheering crowds, popular songs and roadside attractions. Soon airplane-themed restaurants and filling stations decorated the American landscape. If we dared not fly ourselves, we could drive to an airplane for lunch.

One such tip of the hat to Lindy was the original Airplane Café, built in 1927 on U.S. 101 in Los Angeles. Noel and I found the original Café in the book California Crazy (Heiman and Georges, Chronicle Books, 1985). At the time I was working in a bookstore, and had first access to all the crazy architectural books the owner ordered to feed our hunger for the quirky and clever. Noel adapted the design for our 1989 Guild School miniatures workshop by downsizing the original 12-window, 2-door eatery to a more teachable 4-window, 1-door project. In the process he had to maintain the proportions of the original to accommodate the highlight of the structure–its wonderful signage. The café, basically, is its own billboard.

The body we made from ¼” mahogany ply. Before assembling the wall sections, we scored them to resemble individual tongue and groove boards. In the process we grayed them with Bug Juice. Before painting the body colors, we brushed on a thin coat of rubber cement, which would allow us to later remove areas of paint to reveal weathered wood, enhancing the building’s aged look. The photograph of the original was in black and white. To choose colors for the miniature, I decided to try for the rich hues found on the labels of our collection of old cigar boxes. I experimented with several combinations before coming up with the green, orange and gold.

Noel hand-lettered the signs, first on paper, then transferred them to the wood using carbon paper for the light areas, and white fabric transfer paper for the dark sections. We would later transfer them back to paper for our students, who “merely” had to trace them onto the rough wood, and hand paint them.

Exterrior detail

A number of building supplies came from non-miniature sources. The balloon tires came from a science and surplus catalog—those irresistible pages of what-not that some of us thrive on. These we aged by sanding down the pronounced tread, and then applying acrylic dirty-water washes. The hubcaps are domed upholsterer’s tacks, sanded, then rusted with alternating layers of dirty washes, highlighted with dabs of out-of-the-tube burnt sienna. The rusted look was enhanced by sprinkling rust dust, sanded from an old tin can, over the wet paint. Before rusting the rims, we popped them out of the tires and soaked them in Patina Green, which corroded them nicely. The front handrail is made from ready-aged old bicycle spokes.

Front detail with prop

The wooden propeller came from a hobby shop. It was made of exceptionally hard wood which we aged with everything we could think of—furniture Strip-eze, sanding, lifting out grain with an Exacto, and a painter’s wire brush.  This too was grayed with Bug Juice and aged with more paint washes. In turn we put our poor students through all these steps, too.

The “engine” consists of another mish-mash of supplies and finishes, beginning with layers of wooden disks and metal washers, primered and spray painted to conceal the wood grain. Noel then carved sockets out of the back, and strung tiny lights (which we frosted with glass etching acid to tone-down the light) through them. He then layered on a few more aged and rusted disks to give it more heft, and the whole unit was glued and bolted to the nose of the airplane.  To create period atmosphere, like the old lighted movie marquees, we decided all the bulbs shouldn’t work. We kept at least one slightly unscrewed until some actually burnt out.

Engine diagram for students

Unfortunately we have no good photo of the wing and roof structure, which we built like a real airplane wing, complete with wooden ribs over which we stretched white-glue-and-water-saturated muslin to fill out the wing shape. Once dry this was painted with more dirty washes, plus Payne’s Gray and Thalo Silver to look old and airplane-ish. The final touch was to stud the wing edges with rusted ¼” nails.

And then there was the interior, but at least we didn’t have to teach it—students were on their own to come up with their own interpretations at home:

Interior layout

Cooking area. By the details, you would guess correctly that we each worked as short order cooks in our early years.

Coffee warmer. Hand-made by Noel, but the convincing detail is that readily-available coffee can to the left.

Gas hotplate detail.

Deep fat fryer

Double sink–basswood structure covered in pressed-out wine bottle leads

More details on the interior are available in my column in the September 1992 issue of Nutshell News.

It’s one thing to create something like this once. We later built two more for collectors. But the mystifying part was how we recreated all those parts of all those puzzles for every student, who then aged, finished and put it all back together, painted all the signs, in 5 days, as well as eating and sleeping. Admittedly those were marathon weeks, and we were all young, but the energy and enthusiasm required remain astonishing to me. Even more that some students dared to come back for more, and some even remain our friends today. We must have all harbored some of “Lucky Lindy’s” spirited stardust.

Fish & Fries, 1988

1988 was a leap year, and the year we took a leap of faith on how funky a project our students would sign up for. Noel was always pushing the edges of the miniatures world, while I was trying to maintain a steady flow of income. We were both smitten with roadside architecture of the 20s-30s–kitschy stands painted up like movie sets and tending to smell of rancid cooking oil.  The miniature versions weren’t any more elegant, but they were romantic and iconic to a certain ilk. Pine Lake Park, the previous project, had been popular with enough to fill a class, but not enough to fill a second or third, which we needed in order not to burn ourselves out coming up with new work.

Counter view

The stands were still new ground in miniatures—some thought it was fun to take a stab at, but many could not envision them in their collections next to their Victorians, Colonials, and British cottages. Funk was fun, but was it art?  Historians had jacked up the genre to Vernacular Architecture, but few were familiar with the term. Plus there was the difficulty of students finishing the interior on their own.

Deep fat fryer & grill

The grills, fridges and deep fat fryers were not found on the greater miniature market, and our teaching focused on exterior aging. Still, we were fixated. As gas prices hit a shocking $1.00 a gallon, we rolled along into roadside stands, hoping to hook enough students aboard for the ride.

The Big Fish. Erie, PA

Another milestone for 1988 was that wonderfully silly movie, A Fish Called Wanda. Perhaps fish were in the air when we delved once again into John Baeder’s  delightful Gas, Food and Lodging, finding his postcard reproduction of The Big Fish, a long, pike-ishly shaped drive-in on the shores of Lake Erie, remembered for serving up a grocery bag of fries for $1.00, along with the local fried fish.

Designing the prototype

The Big Fish was too big a stand for teaching, but we loved the fish idea. To size it down, we turned to a collection of the beautiful watercolors of Frank Stick, in the book, An Artist’s Catch. In it Noel found a little sunfish called a pumpkin seed, that came much closer to a class-size project. From pike to sunfish, whatever the magic was, we were on our way to a new roadside stand.

Right side view

Orange Crush sign, made from paper

The world spun on. We worked our way through late winter, building the prototype while watching the Calgary Winter Olympics and the aftermath of the Lockerbie crash. Our teaching deadline wasn’t until the end of May, but we would be breaking for another mini cruise—this one the Nutshell News (a longtime miniatures magazine) Caribbean Cruise—in March.

Rear view with wine bottle lead garbage cans

Noel’s coke cooler, built of gelutong wood, wine bottle lead and a lot of paint

To extend our working hours, we resorted to dining on Lean Cuisine in the studio. Our tables were the cutting boards that slid out from under the work table adapted from the defunct Kitchen Queen (aka Hoosier) we’d resurrected years before from the dump. We worked into the nights, spurred on by thoughts of the warm beaches and Caribbean sun we’d soon be basking in.

Boarding ship after 16 hours of travel

The cruise was restful and fun, except for the fact that our luggage didn’t catch up with us until two weeks after we returned home. We arrived on the ship after 16 hours of travel, a tad disheveled, each with nothing more to wear than a pair of shorts, a change of shirts, and our bathing suits–the important clothes. For the rest, our fellow miniatures passengers opened their closets to us, and for the next week we lived as very well-dressed people quite different from ourselves. There is photographic evidence of Noel in a borrowed madras plaid jacket and pink tie, and me in a beautiful white crocheted dress and shawl, dining at the ship’s doctor’s table with Sybil Harp (the magazine editor) and the Arnells. I think we wore the same thing every night. I have no idea what we taught, if anything.

Closed for the season

Guild School (Castine) class photo

Fish & Fries was well-received in Castine, and despite my concerns, the class re-booked several times afterward, and was mourned when we stopped offering it. Everyone did well in the first class, with a minor blip. Late in the week a tearful student discovered she’d inadvertently flipped the front flap and lettered it (Gone Fishing) upside down. Luckily it was on the back of the flap, only visible when (and if) the stand was “closed”, not the normal way of displaying it. I think we convinced her it was okay just to leave it open, and all would be well—the rest of her work looked great. After all, this was a recreational class, and the only thing at stake was to have a good time. Hers is the one hidden at the bottom.

Class fish facades

Despite the students groaning and hours of hard work, I was always amazed at how well everyone took on the daunting bunch of lettering and painting styles Noel cooked up. The stands were popular–we and our students were on the road, so to speak, toward building ever more offbeat structures.

Fish & Fries, left side view

Pine Lake Park Lunch, 1987

1987 saw me running a little faster than time. That year my sister and I threw a 50^th wedding anniversary party for our parents, across country in Massachusetts. It wasn’t until the invitations went out that an aunt noted that this was only year #49. Oh well, the plans were in motion, so we forged ahead with the 3-day Memorial weekend festivities, wedged between the NAME Hawaii cruise and the Guild School (at that time held in July). In the interstices we built Pine Lake Park, the middle of three 1987 teaching projects, along with time spent on the Greene & Greene, the big project-in-the-works.

Pine Lake Park Lunch, project #40, was plucked from the photo pages of Gas, Food, and Lodging —A Postcard Odyssey, Through The Great American Roadside, by John Baeder. We took the postcards one step further, plumping them into 3-D miniatures. According to my brochure (yes, we had those, written as if by the poorly-paid copywriter I once was) the project was an interpretation (designs modified for miniature workshops) “of the roadside cafes and curiosities that became popular when Americans started touring the country by automobile. Pine Lake Park Lunch, circa 1930, is the archetypal hamburger stand, offering sustenance to travelers and visitors to the nearby beach or lake. Five wooden stools, in varying states of disrepair, provided seating at the food-stained outdoor counter, and signs advertise Ice Cold Drinks, Cigars, and Candy, along with the more substantial fare.”

Noel worked the original design around so it would fit on our standard 13” X 18” base (to fit the shipping boxes). I remember him having fun with the signage—recreating period Coca Cola and Orange Crush signs, plus adding directional signs to Restrooms, Bait, and Boats. Time-consuming as they were, these were the kinds of details that kept us excited about the work. For us, these vernacular structures were great trips through the imagination–how to create the feeling of summers past, when time went on forever and skies were always blue. Our conjured luncheonette under the fragrant pines included hot sand, hot feet, hot dogs dripping mustard down our arms.

Back View

Roadside architecture was a great way to teach weathering techniques. Most were seasonal buildings, closed up for the winter and left to the elements, which accelerated the effects of weather. They warped and tilted. Rather than being repaired on an annual basis, they might have been touched up with a little paint, the leak over the grill plugged with a spatula-full of Quick-Patch. One of the challenges was how to create the look of cracked, peeling paint–coats of paint layered over another. For this series of projects we experimented with rubber cement, painting it on the bare exterior walls, taking some off, and re-painting, sometimes with colors that didn’t quite match. Or maybe it was white now, but used to be green.

Spigot detail

Plus, the students got to paint their own signs (in those golden days when everyone stayed up until 3:00 a.m. working on their projects). Noel laid the lettering out on paper, they traced the design onto the wood, then practiced that childhood skill of painting between the lines. It was all right if they weren’t perfect—these were imperfect structures, the finishes thrived on interpretation and personal quirks.

The real challenge in class was to get far enough long to hinge the front and side flaps, and show off the winter signage on graduation night.

The wavery black tar rolled roofing was made from emery cloth, cut in strips, glued with Elmer’s white, and overlapped. This messy process usually added sufficient wear and tear. I believe we made “pine needles” for the roof from dried plant matter we ground up and sprinkled over glue, under the imaginary namesake pine tree that must have shaded the back of the building. Over all, we applied a thin, dirty water wash (lots of water, 2 dabs of Mars Black, 1 dab Raw Umber tube acrylics, well stirred) to add the final weathered look.

The stools were not included—no time in class–but the plans were, for those who chose to make their own (they took me weeks, I did not recommend the process). Also, as always, our students were left to their own devising on the interiors–we wanted everyone to add their own touches. Noel’s deep fryers, fridges, and grills were never mass produced, though he did make a few on commission. As it was, just to get the basics done by the end of the week we raced through each day of demos, work, procedural hiccups and project pieces checked off. But we were young then, we knew the magic of how to fly, how to inflate time to fit the space.

Tradewinds Fruit & Veggies, 1987

About a year into our work on the Greene & Greene house we had to take care of some other assignments for our teaching schedule. The first was a project for the NAME 1987 cruise around the Hawaiian Islands. The result was the Tradewinds Fruit & Veggie Stand (the precursor to our 1988 Seaview Farms Fruit & Veggies). We worked our way through the Oct. 19 stock market crash, and Baby Jessica falling into and being rescued from the well. Eggs were .65 a dozen, and our favorite movie was Good Morning Vietnam. The Hawaiian theme was easy—on our first trip to Hawaii, as guests in a Kaui condo, the fruitstand down the road–full of freshly picked pineapple, coconuts and brilliant sunset papayas–was our favorite daily stop.

We built the weathered stand from our supply of rotted wood, striving to make a simple enough structure for the limited amount of class time aboard ship. The corrugated, rusted tin roof was essential, as it defined the outer island indigenous buildings. We had plenty of rust from our garage “metals department,” but it wasn’t corrugated, so the search began. We found a miniatures supplier of tin sheeting in the right thickness, but couldn’t figure out how to corrugate it. Somehow we ran into a guy who said he could do it for us, and the whole class, a someone whose name is lost in memory—whomever you are, thank you. I do remember him saying it took a lot more work than expected. A year later corrugated tin was available on the mini market.

Rear view, with corrugated tin roof.

The other trick was to teach rusting. On other projects we had used our Bug Juice in class, but rusting tin sheets took a lot longer than a handful of mini-nails—there would never be time enough on board.  After more experimentation we found that ocean water did the trick—we’d sprayed it on the tin and let Mother Nature take over from there. At home it worked like a whiz. On the ship it wasn’t so easy—we started with salted water (forgot to bring sea water) which didn’t work at all, then the next day tried ocean water we bottled while ashore. On went the spray, out came spots of rust blooming all over the tin. It looked like leprosy. We’d spray again, and all the previous rust washed right off. It took a while to realize the tin had to dry thoroughly between applications, and that many applications were required. That wasn’t so easy due to the limited class time—in port our students clearly preferred exploring Hawaii over making a fruit stand, and at sea there was so much motion in our workroom, tucked just inside the USS Constitution’s bow, that many were too queasy to work, teacher included (yours truly)—Noel was born with sea legs.

Dinner on board the USS Constitution with NAME luminaries–when we are all young and beautiful.

Delightful as it was to be housed and fed in the tropics, working a cruise is not the same as taking a cruise. The night after the first class Noel jolted awake in a panic—we’d had the students assemble the framing backwards, all ten projects had to be re-done before class at 9:00 a.m. It was 3:00 a.m., but there was no dissuading him. We had to track down the purser (he was not amused) for the key to the workroom, then figure out what to do. As it turned out, all we had to do was turn the frame around, and all was well. I think three students showed up next morning for class, the same stalwart three who attended most classes. Then there was the storm at sea, and another late night of getting back in the room to repair projects that had been thrown about. Our nightly worries over our students being dissatisfied with their progress were for naught–they were on vacation, and far more concerned about what tours to take in the next port of call. It would be a while before we learned how to chill, island style.

Our unwinding time came in Honolulu, after the cruise. We did a demonstration class for the miniatures group there, spending a few days touring and learning aloha with collector Jill Friedman, who also added the Tradewinds to her collection, though I can’t remember if that was planned in advance, or not. I do remember lying in bed in Jill’s home on the Pali, high above the city, lulled by the sweet smells of plumeria riding the morning breeze and thinking, “I could get used to this.”

Lunch at Jill Friedman’s with Sarah Salisbury

We spent another few days with Sarah Salisbury in her downtown condo, a spectacular 12 floors above Waikiki. Just below was one of those funky beachside Tiki bars, where we could sit at a table with our feet in the sand, sipping wonderfully numbing rum-and-umbrella drinks, enjoying our luck at having such accommodating customers and friends.

Thanks, Kathleen, that’s one of those big squashy questions—how did we part with all those houses? So big I’ll devote a whole entry to it. Plus, in December, WordPress (our Mother Ship and the blog host) gives me another nudge to write by providing cyber-snow falling on the page.

Cycling back to the 70’s, I’m seeing the first three houses we sold (on consignment to FAO Schwarz).  After we, the dog, and our VW camper towed them down to SFO, we watched them disappear under the street, down into the bowels of the building in FAO’s freight elevator. I felt that sweet sorrow—there went our babies, our work of so many months, the products of this crazy thing we were doing to avoid office jobs. But our babies were also our cash cows. Our work. They paid the rent and put dinner on the table. In that sense the partings became a matter of business–we made something to sell, and sold it. And, we got to enjoy that our work gave  others pleasure. In the artistic sense, it came to mean that by the time we were done with one house, the next was already taking shape in our heads. Like knitting an intricate sweater, or building a rocketship, it was always a matter of next time, what can we do differently, or better? As attached as we became to our work, when a house was done, it was done. What’s next was exciting. The Greene & Greene drained us, perhaps in the best of ways, by helping us create something at the very highest levels of our consciousness,  and abilities, but we were ready to move on. Charles & Henry were dictators. We had been working to emulate genius, their genius, rather than pursue our own quirks of creativity. It was thrilling brainwork, but we were ready to find out what new stuff was lodged in the wrinkles of our own minds. We were lucky enough to have a string of customers waiting their turn, and many mouths to feed.

Our cat Tweed waiting for us to decide what’s next.

Have we visited it in the museum in Tucson? Not yet. Over the years we visited other works of ours, and were shocked–either by how primitive they were (the earliest houses, when we knew nothing), or, later, at the scope and complexity of detail—how did they DO that? How long did it take?  Who were these strangers? It was the shock of un-recognition. “They” were/are us, of course, but they seem more like two other much younger people we once knew but have lost touch with. We wonder what happened to them, and hope they are well.

Please stay tuned–in this blog I’ll continue to explore what “they” did next. Meanwhile, ask more good questions, and enjoy the snow!

The Greene & Greene miniature house

The final months of the Greene & Greene were reminiscent of preparations for a large family wedding. Deadlines were set and broken as “final” alterations compounded and time calculations protracted. Lists of furnishings and exterior details were trimmed at breakfast, only to be added back at bedtime. In July of 1988, just before we closed up the first floor, we decided to exhibit the house at the NAME National in So. California as a work-in-progress. The excitement generated there convinced us we could deliver by Thanksgiving.

Living room with main rafters in place

The second story went together relatively quickly. It consisted of a master bedroom, dressing room, closet, bath and sleeping porch—living quarters without the showcase aspect of the main floor.

Finally the 2nd floor walls go up

The sleeping porch was off the master bedroom. The porch deck on the full-size house was covered in a pleasantly worn and slightly moldy floor cloth—a project right up my alley. I made it from muslin stiffened with watered-down Elmer’s white glue and painted it a neutral red-brown. As I had hoped, the colored dried unevenly, looking faded in spots. The thin layer of Washington State mold that formed on the surface added a minor but not insignificant sense of reality to the porch. I spray-fixed it and glued it down.

Looking down into the master bedroom

Laying 2nd story floors

            The unexpected travail was the roofing; there were nine different sections overhanging the first floor, at angles not shown on ordinary protractors. When I gave up and went to bed, Noel stayed up later than usual, arguing aloud with Charles & Henry. It wasn’t so bad when we were both wrestling them, but two against one was a bit much We saw our deadline slipping out from under us and postponed delivery until January.

Graveling the roof

As the rooflines took shape, we discovered how graceful they were, and, once again, how each design element complemented the whole, helping to bring together all the pieces of the puzzle The second story was a present; just two pieces comprising a simple peaked roof. The oddity was that the roof of the full-size Gamble House was covered in a rather large white gravel presumably to deflect the California heat. I faithfully recreated the look with white bird gravel over tarred muslin. On the original house, the effect was not particularly apparent from ground level, but on the miniature, even after toning-down the white with aging paints, it was more eye-catching than we had hoped. Months later, when we stopped at the Gamble House on our way to delivery, we found it had been re-roofed in a subtler material since our last visit. Charles & Henry hadn’t breathed a word.

Creeping thyme detail

A more gratifying exterior element was the landscaping. In Pasadena, creeping fig, a neutral green, small-leafed vine hugs the walls of the Gamble House terrace. Several years before the Greene & Greene, my front garden had evolved into a miniature research plot. One of the more prolific plants was the herb creeping wooly thyme, an excellent miniaturization of creeping fig. It dries well, and its fuzzy, grey-green foliage and woody stems provided the needed color and texture. The green turned out to be another echo of the Greene’s signature aged-green copper rain collectors and downspouts—yet another example of their masterful sense of balance and color.

Noel adding some final touches of aging

The excitement of the final weeks was underscored by our not wanting to let go, along with trepidations that this project, this all-consuming love story/ghost story, would never, could never end.

Upstairs bath

On January 7, 1989, the bride was ready–the house was officially completed, 80 years less one day after the original was finished. We made an 11^th hour decision to celebrate by inviting friends to view the house and donate some money to a pet project—the restoration of the local school district’s Steinway grand piano. I began to sense trouble when the newspaper called to verify the date for the Community Events Calendar. I declined, explaining we had a tiny home and this was not a public event. At 4:00 p.m. on a stormy Sunday, two hundred people and a string trio crowded in to see the house and contribute $1200 to the piano project.  On January 11 we left for delivery in Tucson, via Pasadena by invitation of the curator of the Gamble House Museum.

Noels & Pat with Randell Makinson, curator of the Gamble House Museum

   We drove quietly from Pasadena to Tucson, nervous about the delivery, but also wondering how we could ever start a new project. We knew this was the peak, the best and most complex house we would ever make, and now our part was done. It was late afternoon when we arrived. To beat the dark, we quickly moved the house to the clients’, Pat & Walter Arnell, then-small museum. They then took us out to eat and relax after the long drive.

Walking back from their car to the house, Walter showed us his English garden, complete with a pond, and swans. An enormous swan wandered our way, causing Walter to chuckle, “Watch out for that one—those wings could break your leg!” We all laughed. Much later, while we were settling in to our guest bedroom, Noel, still a smoker, decided he needed a cigarette–his last pack was in our van, parked across the property by the museum. Off he went into the dark, unsure of the relative geography. Cigarettes in hand, he started back for the almost dark house, walking a little faster when he noted the whereabouts of the swan. The swan noted Noel, and began to charge. Noel ran for the house. Searching frantically for a way in, he grabbed the first doorknob with a light behind it, yanked it open and ran straight in to Pat Arnell’s bedroom. Wish I knew which one screamed louder.

The Greene & Greene epic would not have come into being were it not for the Arnells, the instigators, supporters, and now owners of the house. We are ever grateful for having had the chance to create such a thing, and that it is now housed in a beautiful museum, the Tucson Mini Time Machine. On the way home we stopped for the night at a Mom & Pop motel in the desert, with a small Japanese restaurant across the highway. There was nothing else around. The restaurant was a family affair, with Pop waiting tables, Mom and Grandmom cooking, and the kids doing their homework at an empty table. Over sushi and hot saki Noel said he wanted to start painting again. I said I wanted to write more than miniatures how-to’s. We shook on it–from then on, weekends belonged to painting and writing, weekdays for miniatures. At home,  party was over, the bride gone–we felt like the parents after the reception. Not only was the worktable empty, but the ghosts of Charles & Henry were gone, presumably back to the Gamble House library to haunt the architectural students and museum staff.

A handful of the many stained glass fixtures in the house

The Godzilla Factor developed as a further aspect of the miniature Greene & Greene/Gamble House interpretation saga—the monster/s (reincarnated as the architect/designers Charles & Henry Greene) that held us in their thrall, nibbling away at our sleep, our lives, our very souls.

First floor walls are up, exterior finish continues

We repeatedly cancelled social engagements. I blinded myself to the accumulating household beach sand, and dog and cat hair, and decided to take piano lessons. Noel disappeared into our captors’ brains, sitting up until the small hours, absorbing. We were also committed to design and teach workshops, for which we had to escape the monster and re-focus on smaller pieces. Our life morphed into a juggling act. In ways we looked forward to escaping the grip of the big house, in others we regretted losing the thread of concentration—it always took time to retrace the threads back into the main work and re-fire our passion. Plus, each incursion meant our finish date was pushed back one more time.

Building the inglenook surrounding living room using basswood to simulate
the original fine hardwoods

Completed living room with inglenook

Texturing vinyl floor tiles to match the terra cotta tiles surrounding the dining room fireplace

There were nights we’d worked so long we’d get slap-happy and take on the roles of Charles–Noel/Charles the dreamer/designer and crazier of the two, and Pat/Henry, the more business side of the duo.

More light!

We’d argue along in that vein, sometimes feeling as if we were, actually, them. We’d work and blather until we couldn’t see. Both our progress and frustrations are reflected in my work notes: “Dining room light fixture, even sitting on the floor, shows how the Greene’s textural designs all fit together; woodwork, metalwork, glass, tiles all complementing each other”…Can we finish by June/July for the NAME National Show?…”Were aging as rapidly as the house.”

 It wasn’t until July 4 that we admitted to ourselves we couldn’t make the show, 3 weeks away.

Dining room completed

Kitchen

Library and back of staircase

1988 marked the beginning of the “last” phase of construction on the 1909 Greene & Greene/Gamble House interpretation.  The deadline for completion was again extended into the unforeseeable future. It also marked the time when we admitted we were over our heads financially on the project—we needed our classes to support the balance of the work, which would prolong the project even more. As fate would have it, one more time, we got a break in the form of an invitation to join a miniatures group on a cruise as their guests of honor. The Arnells, the ever-flexible commissioners of the house, were among our shipmates. Their encouragement and excitement for the work-in-progress rekindled our fervor for the job ahead, as well as making it possible for us to continue at the snail’s pace we deemed necessary. Once we knew we wouldn’t go into debt on the project, we enjoyed the sun, the beaches, life-jacket drills, and the labors of all those who cooked and served us fine food, and made our beds. Our dreams again filled with “what next?” and returning (willingly) to Godzilla. We returned to seeing life through Charles & Henry’s eyes.

On to the second floor.

Note: A more detailed record of the project and how we did it is available in reprints of  January, February and March  issues of Nutshell News, where I wrote extensively about the project. If they aren’t available through the Dollhouse Miniatures archives, mini people on chat lines like The Camp, and Small Stuff may have copies they’d be willing to copy for you.

Doorway to the Greene & Greene Miniature House by Noel and Pat Thomas, 1986-89

That October day in 1983, the warmth of the “ultimate bungalow” coaxed us through the doorway like an old friend. Muted light radiated through the stained glass entry doors, reflecting off the oak floors, lustrous teak and mahogany walls, tiled fireplaces, the Tiffany-style light fixtures and windows. The fireplace inglenook, large, airy rooms, deep chairs, and hand-loomed carpets promised comfort in the winter months, as well as shelter from summer’s heat. The house was a work of art designed for people. There was a tranquility about it that was palpable.

The house is the Gamble House, now a museum in Pasadena, CA. Designed by Charles & Henry Greene as a home for the Gambles (of Ivory Soap fame), right down to the carpets, it was completed in January, 1908, a mere 11 months after the start of construction. Grover Cleveland was President, and the first Hershey’s Kiss had just rolled off the production line. The Gamble House is dubbed the ultimate bungalow because it is considered their finest and most unified architectural statement. Our surrender to its charms marked the beginning of the love affair, and the ghost story, culminating in our completion of the Greene & Greene miniature house 6 years later. The ghosts would be Charles & Henry Greene, glowering or chortling over our shoulders as we worked, not telling us we were making mistakes until they were complete and staring us in the face. And it would be years before we understood the scope of their genius.

Like our full-scale predecessors 80 years before, history was propelling us away from Victorians, toward simpler and more horizontal lines, generous interior spaces, and details more functional than ornamental. In 1983-4, we dipped our toes in the Greene’s pond with the smaller house we called The Bungalow,

The Bungalow

and knew we wanted to wade in deeper. As fate would have it, a customer was waiting. At the 1985 NAME  National miniature show, Pat & Walter Arnell asked if we’d like to build another Greene & Greene, maybe even the Gamble House. We were elated, but also a little anxious about rekindling our affair with the Greenes. There had been so much trial and error on the first, so much hair-pulling, and we knew there would be more. Somehow we lulled ourselves into believing a second house would be easier.

In February 1986 we returned to the Gamble House, and discovered we were even more knocked out by it than before. It was the 20^th anniversary of the museum, and most of the visitors were architects and students–Greene devotees. We all padded around in our socks, speaking in hushed tones, as if in church or at a golf match, pointing out this scarf joint, or that cloud lift. Noel and I got so fired-up our brains went into overload–we vetoed continuing to the second and third floors and drove the 1000 miles home with more than enough food for thought and conversation.

   In October 1986, while Reagan was President, Noel began putting the Greene & Greene on paper. The house wouldn’t be complete for another 3 ½ years, just before George H. W. Bush was sworn in. We had come home from Pasadena armed with books, slides, and postcards, each providing us with more details, another look at the house 1000 miles away. We spent the ensuing months poring over them, deliberating, planning, juggling all the information. The original structure covered 8000 sq. ft. Noel’s most crucial job was to determine what the Greenes would have done if they’d made the house smaller—what would they have left out while still maintaining the integrity of the design? It was like trying to figure out what Shakespeare or Beethoven would have left out of their finest works. He let it all filter through, and what emerged was a design for a modified, condensed version of the Gamble House that most people never suspected was not a copy of the original. It didn’t fool Charles & Henry (as we had come to refer to them), who had returned to haunt our waking and sleeping hours.

Noel’s final drawing of the project