How to Decorate Tudor Dolls House Ceilings in 1:12 Scale

A beamed and plastered ceiling in a Tudor dolls house

 In Tudor times, ceilings had hand-adzed oak beams exposed. These were sometimes stencilled or painted with the area between the beams plastered. Grander houses may have had decorative plastered ceilings in the main hall.
  I used several different types of ceiling decoration in my Tudor dolls house.

How to Make Plaster and Oak Beams in this bedroom and the kitchen.

• Make the beams from balsa wood or squared wood. Roughen the edges or attack them with a craft knife to make knicks and cuts to give the effect of hand adzing. Stain with oak coloured stain.
• Mark with a pencil on the ceiling where the beams will go.
• Undercoat the ceiling with white paint then plaster it with a fine mix of tacky glue, artists sand and white paint, leaving the spaces clear where the beams will go.
• When dry, glue on the beams with wood glue and dabs of super glue. Hold the beams up till the glue dries with strips of masking tape.
• If you are building the dolls house, you can do all this in the early stages by turning it upside down to make it a lot easier to work with.

'Painted' beams in a Tudor dolls house

How to Make Decorative Beams: in the parlour.

• I had used scrap booking paper in a faded pattern to cover one wall of the Tudor parlour and had enough of the paper over to do the beams as well. 
• I made and stained the beams then carefully cut strips of the paper and glued them on the sides of the beams. Once completely dry I trimmed them up.
• This gave the effect of hand painted decoration. If you are a better painter than me, you could paint them or even stencil them to your own patterns.

Using embossed wallpaper

How to Make Plastered Ceilings: in the Great Hall.

• Source some embossed wallpaper from home decorating stores. They often have free samples or left over rolls from ends of runs or out of date pattern books you could use. I've found that once I explain about making a dolls house, the shop people are very interested and happy to give me wallpaper pieces.
• Carefully measure the ceiling of the dolls house in the room that will be a little 'grander' than the rest of the house.
• Now you can go two ways here: 
• a) choose a suitable section of the paper so that the pattern is centred on the ceiling and glue the paper to the ceiling, covering it completely.           b) cut out shapes from the embossed paper, plaster the ceiling and then stick the shapes on. This is what I did.
• Once the paper has dried, spread a very fine layer of plaster over the paper. This makes it merge in so it doesn't look like 'bits and pieces just stuck on'!

Creating a ceiling

How to Make a Rush Ceiling: for the top storey of my Tudor dolls House.

• The top floor of a Tudor house was where the servants slept or supplies were stored. It wasn't a place that would be seen by visitors so there was no need to have a grand ceiling to impress others.
• Slats of wood or rush matting would be laid under the tiles or shingles. In theory this would keep out the worst of the weather and the worst of the vermin. I'm thinking rats here!
• To simulate this in 1:12 scale I used place mats like this one, made of very thin strips of bamboo. Be careful when cutting them to size so they don't unravel before you have a chance to glue them on.

I hope these ideas will be useful when you are making your own Tudor dolls house or room box.

Accessories for a Tudor Dolls House Kitchen

A well-equipped Tudor dolls house kitchen

I tended to think that kitchens in Tudor times were pretty basically equipped. But after reading some inventories of the houses of real people of that time I changed my mind. Tudor cooks had lots of utensils to help them make their pottages and coffin pies!
  Many of the items found in a Tudor kitchen were made of wood, clay, pewter  or iron. These can be made in 1:12 scale using wood, or polymer modelling clay or air-drying clay that can then be painted to look like metal or pottery. Patterns for making them can be found in magazines and books devoted to miniatures. You can also buy kitchen accessories from specialist suppliers of dolls house miniatures.
   Here are some ideas for accessories for your Tudor dolls house kitchen:

• buckets made of leather, or wooden staves hooped with iron
• cooking pots and pans made of pottery and metal
• iron fire dogs, roasting spits, griddles and cauldrons. Cauldrons were hung up over the kitchen fire on a hook attached to an arm that could be swung out and back
• forget about forks, the cutlery used was knives, shaped like daggers, and spoons. Much of the food was eaten with the fingers.
• plates, cups and tankards were made of pewter for the wealthy. The poor had cups made of wood or horn. For plates they used 'trenchers' - thick slices of stale bread. In later Tudor times, these were replaced with square wooden platters.
• a wooden salt box hung on the wall
• pottery jugs and platters
• a mortar and pestle
• flagons and barrels for beer and wine ( often kept in another room)
• long-handled perforated spoons and paddles for stirring the meal in the cauldron

And I put one cheeky little accessory in my Tudor dolls house kitchen that you may or may not like to copy - a little grey mouse!

A Resource for Tudor Dolls Houses

A Tudor Dolls House

I thought I must share with you this wonderful resource if you are making a Tudor dolls house and wondering what to put in it to give that authentic feel.
  In 1601, John and Jane Daniells and their family were living in Rectory House in Hackney in England. Unfortunately they fell foul of the law and their home and possessions were confiscated. Sad for them but for us, a fantastic look into their lives as a comprehensive inventory of their house contents in now available on-line.
  You can go on on a virtual tour of their house, peruse the picture gallery and read the room-by-room list of their possessions, furnishings and even their clothing.
  For example (and I've kept the original spelling) in a trunk in Mr Daniell's chamber there were:

• one nightcap wrought with black silke and gould and a purse imbrodered with goulde
• one ould riding hood
• one shirte
• one vellett Cappe
• one peire of Cloath rounded of a Cloake
•  5 fallinge bandes
• one girdle a paire of hangers of green silke and gould and a string of gould to hang his dagger on
• one Ruffle with purled lace
• twoe paire of Boothose
• one Flannell Wascote wrought with red Cruelle
• twoe Dublettes of blacke stuffe
• one dammaske Cloake with Sleeves garded with vellett
• one paire of Fuger sattyn hose payned with Velvett
• one peire of blewe cloth
• twoe peire of Tawnye vellett; old
• one greene quilted Cappe
• the Trunke wherin these goodes remayne

Does that make you want to whip out your needle and thread and stitch something for a trunk in your Tudor dolls house?

  I hope you have an interesting time exploring this website about the Daniells.

1:12 Scale Books as Accessories for a Tudor Dolls House

Accessories for Leisure Time in a Tudor Parlour

I've been thinking, when looking at my Tudor dolls house, what the people of that era in the 15th and 16th centuries did in their spare time. I imagine that, if you were poor and worked as a labourer or farm tenant, you'd fall into bed exhausted at nightfall! But if you had money and servants to do all the heavy, hard work for you, you would have time in the afternoons and evenings to relax with some entertainment.
  So in my Tudor dolls house I put an illustrated manuscript book on the settle with its blackwork embroidery cover, a mandolin to serenade the lady of the house, and a draughts board. The book is one of Barbara Brear's. You can read my interview with her if you look under 'Guest Interviews' in this blog's menu.
   Books were treasured possessions in Tudor times. They were kept in drawstring bags to protect them and when being read, placed on cushions so the covers would not get scratched or marked.
Sometimes they had embroidered and embellished covers with velvet or canvas bindings.
  Many of the books have survived so we are lucky to be able to read what they were reading six centuries ago. Some examples are:

• 'The Good Huswife's Handmaid for Cookerie in her Kitchen', a recipe book from 1588.
• Story books that featured sprites, fairies and nymphs, and romantic tales of chivalry.
• Embroidery pattern books published in Germany were available from 1550 onwards.
• Herbals and bestiaries illustrated with woodcut prints.
• 'How to' books for farming, gardening, and fishing.

So there is a lot of scope for you to make your own books for a miniature Tudor setting. What will you choose?

 

The Moving Around Goose!

The polymer clay goose

My daughter made this goose for me, the first time she'd made anything out of polymer clay. And it has proved to be very versatile.
  Most of the time it resides in my Tudor dolls house, in the kitchen. I made the chopping block out of a tree branch from our garden. The 'iron' hoops are black paper strips. The chopper is a metal miniature. You can't see it from the angle of this photo but there is very realistic looking 'blood' on the blade and on the block!
  And when the bird's not in the Tudor house, you can find it in the Edwardian house scullery. The Edwardians were partial to a bit of roast goose at Christmas time.

The goose in the scullery

  Here it is, waiting to be cleaned and stuffed with chestnuts and apples and served with apple, gooseberry and bread sauces for the Christmas feast!

The Authentic Tudor & Stuart Dolls' House

Published by The Guild of Master Craftsman Publications

I wonder if any of you Tudor dolls house enthusiasts got this book for Christmas. I referred to it constantly when I was building my dolls house, set, I imagined, in 1588, the year the Spanish Armada sailed against England.
   Brian Long has created a very detailed and wonderfully illustrated guide. Photographs of existing Tudor and Stuart buildings are shown as well as drawings and models. Historical notes add depth to the information and there are also 'how to' guides for making things as varied as a thatched roof and a livery cupboard and a water clock.
  All aspects of Tudor life are covered, from lighting to sanitation; from children's toys to cooking utensils; from furnishings to fireplaces. This really is the definitive book to making a dolls house authentic-looking for the 16th and 17th centuries.
  So if you didn't get this book for Christmas, you might like to drop hints or put it on your wishlist for your birthday in 2013!

Tudor Dolls House: More on the Interior

The Interior of my Tudor Dolls House

Here is a view of the interior of my Tudor dolls house. Kitchen, screen passage and hall on the ground floor; parlour and bedroom on the middle storey; bedroom, storeroom and chapel on the top floor. 

   The flagstone floor is made of cut-out rectangles of a stone effect formica, tedious to do but it gives a very realistic result. (Look under the 'How to Make' section of my blog to get instructions on what to do to make your own flagstone floor.) The other floors are of wood strips cut wider than normal as Tudor floorboards were about 10 inches wide. Once stained, the strips were stuck onto a cardboard template for each room and slid into place, then pressed firmly down onto the double-sided cellotape I'd put onto the dolls house floors.

   Some of the walls are plastered and beamed. For the hall panelling I glued horizontal and vertical lengths of stained stripwood onto the plywood carcass of the dolls house. Other walls I covered with suitable scrapbooking papers to give a hand-painted effect. In the parlour I also stuck the paper along the sides of the ceiling beams after I had seen a photo of a real Tudor house with painted beams. In the top bedroom I cut strips of a scrapbooking paper to use as a frieze around the top of the walls.

   My husband made the 'cartwheel' light. He got a wooden wheel and glued on five candle holders, rigged up a chain to hang it with, sprayed painted everything black and hey presto! The candles I cut from longer, very thin, real birthday candles.

   The ceilings varied: whitewash and adzed, stained beams in the kitchen and middle floor bedroom; embossed wallpaper to look like decorative plasterwork in the hall; bamboo placemats under the lift-up roof to replicate the woven screens put up under tiled roofs in Tudor times.

   I hope you get some ideas for your own Tudor dolls house from this.

Tudor Dolls House: Making the Furniture in 1:12 Scale

1:12 scale Tudor bed

Miniature Tudor furniture

I don't have any power tools at home, doing most of my work using only a craft knife and a mitre box and razor saw. So if I can buy (or swap something for) good quality kitsets of wooden furniture, I jump at the chance. Most of the furniture in my Tudor dolls house is made from kitsets.  

   The pre-dieu stand and the bench were kitsets made for me by a friend at minis club from patterns I supplied. The impressive fourposter bed with the laser-cut carvings is one I made from a kitset supplied by another club member.

Tudor furniture

   From a dolls house supplier I bought the kitsets for the settle (actually sold as a church pew, I put the panelling on the back), the bread dough trough and the cradle. That originally had a covered hood piece but I didn't put that on as in Tudor times the cradles were open. The simple two-level shelving unit in the kitchen is one I cobbled together from two little tables.

   I did make three pieces of the 1:12 scale furniture in my Tudor dolls house from scratch. The bed in the top storey bedroom is a concoction of verandah posts, a polystyrene block base and assorted pieces of wood for the top and head board. I also made the kitchen table and the refectory table in the Hall. Thankfully it's covered with a tablecloth and lots of food as the finish is not the best!

   Although I don't enjoy the building part of making dolls houses, I do like making kitset furniture. My biggest problem is having enough patience to walk away and let the glue dry!

Tudor Dolls House: Tudor Food in Miniature

1:12 scale Tudor food from polymer clay

I do enjoy fiddling around with Fimo, making miniature food. The books I've read on Tudor times gave me some ideas for the food I wanted in 1:12 scale. No boring old pottage and dark bread in this house. I wanted to make a 16th century feast.
   Lampreys were fish that looked like eels. With a mix of translucent and beige Fimo, I rolled short lengths, curved them so they were slightly wiggly and gave them poppyseed eyes.
   The Harlequin Tart was easy to make with a base of biscuit-coloured clay and tiny balls of clay in four different colours to make the berries.
   The Tudors were fond of Jumbles, knots of dough that were boiled then baked. I made very thin  lengths of beige clay, twisted them into knots, and brushed them with terracotta-coloured powdered chalk before baking them.
   The little pies are solid circles of beige clay with the same dusting of powdered chalk as the jumbles. In real life they would have contained mutton and vegetables.
  On the wooden trenchers are manchet bread. These were soft white rolls eaten by the well-to-do.  
The poor people got the dark, chewy bread or the bits of bread that had burnt on the bottom. The  wealthy got the nicely baked 'upper crust'.
  Of course, no Tudor feast would be complete without a boar's head. This one, in pride of place on the table, was made for me by a friend.

Tudor Dolls House: Miniature Embroidery

Tudor Rose embroidery in 1:12 scale

, I love doing embroidery and enjoyed stitching the bedcovers, wallhangings and cushions for my Tudor dolls house. It was fascinating to find, when doing research on the Tudor era, that metallic threads in gold and silver were used extensively in their embroideries. Some of the decorative work was extremely complicated and must have taken a long time to do. Not to mention the risk of severe eyestrain trying to stitch by candlelight. Embroidery these days must be much easier.
  In the main bedroom, the motif I embroidered on the counterpane, using some gold thread, is the red and white Tudor rose.

Dolls house Tudor bedroom embroidery 

  The other bedroom has a wallhanging done in fine wool from a kitset. It is a Persian design depicting the waters of life. Perhaps a crusader brought it back from the East!
  The bedcover in blue is stitched with curved bands of silver thread. The pattern was an integral part of the fabric so all I had to do was sew over the lines. Easy - like painting by numbers! 
  

Miniature blackwork cushions 

The Tudors were very keen on blackwork embroidery, and so am I. I like the crispness of the contrast between the white fabric and black thread. These cushions are made with designs featured in a dolls house magazine feature on Tudor times. Although they look intricate, they were easy to stitch as the motifs are repetitive.
   Next on my 'to do' list is a wallhanging for the parlour.

Tudor Dolls House: Decorating the Interior

Plastered and beamed interior walls in a Tudor dolls house

If you think whitewashed walls with timber uprights showing, beamed ceilings and wide floor boards, you'll have the decorating elements for most rooms in a Tudor house.
   In a dolls house, these are easy to recreate. I used the white paint/talcum powder/sand/ glue mix I did the outside with, to simulate the plastered walls. For the beamed ceilings I stained lengths of thick balsa wood, carving slivers and pieces out at irregular intervals for the hand-hewn adzed look. The upright exposed timbers are thinner pieces of balsa, treated the same way. The floorboard planking can be scored directly into the dolls house wooden floors with a craft knife or awl.

1:12 scale panelled walls in a Tudor hall

   The public areas of the Tudor house were posher than the domestic rooms. It was all a case of showing wealth and power by creating settings to impress visitors. So you could make a hall (the largest room, used for dining and entertaining) with a flagstone or tiled floor, panelled walls and a large fireplace. The ceiling could be elaborate plasterwork or beamed and painted with patterns or scenes. If you have a steady hand, you could paint a frieze around the edge of the walls to add to the imposing effect.
   If you were a rich Tudor merchant, you wanted everyone who came to your home to know it!

Tudor Dolls House - Decorating the Exterior

The roof of the Tudor dolls house

I don't know whose suggestion it was to use cardboard price tags to make Tudor roof tiles, but it seemed like a good idea at the time! As I shaped and glued more and more and more of them, the bright idea definitely faded. But when they were all stuck on and painted with various shades of brown and terracotta, they took on a life of their own and I was pleased I'd put in all that work.
   I stained the vertical timbers with wood stain. In between them, I made a white plaster effect by mixing white paint, PVA glue, artist's sand and talcum powder. It needed experimenting to get the right consistency but was really easy to apply.

Planked door and infill bricks in 1:12 scale 

   The bricks were made with paperclay as I explained in my last Tudor house blog.
  The front door is taken from a pattern in the beautiful book called Making Dolls' House Interiors by Carol and Nigel Lodder. It is balsa wood with vertical lines scored to give the illusion of planking. The hinges and door handle are metal ones, spray painted black.

The Tudor Dolls House - Work in Progress

1:12 scale Tudor dolls house 

My Tudor Dolls House started life as a two storey kitset farmhouse in a rustic style. I thought the half-timbered exterior would make a good Tudor house so the idea went from there. I added a third storey, a porch, a large chimney and an oriel window.
   But it is still a work in progress. The interior is done, most of the furniture and accessories are made and the exterior is almost complete. It seems to have taken ages but I've worked on it in fits and starts. In fact, at one stage, it was covered with a sheet for a year because I was feeling so guilty about not doing it! Out of sight, out of mind!
   Now the interior is divided into three storeys. A kitchen, screen passage and great hall on the ground floor; bedroom and parlour on the middle floor; and a bedroom, storeroom and chapel up top.
   One fun thing to do was to personalise the oriel window. I have a document with my family's coat of arms from 1672, so photocopied them, in a greatly reduced size, onto overhead projector film. I then used this to make the glass in the front section of the window, drawing on the black criss-crossed lines to simulate the leading around the diamond-shaped panes.
   Over the coming weeks, I'll post about the Tudor accessories I made and hints for doing the exterior and interior of the Tudor Dolls House.