“It’s a real escape and has helped keep me sane," Ann Holmes chair of York Miniaturist Association
You may think that dolls houses and their contents are child’s play, but you would be mistaken. For the serious miniaturist everything in their Lilliputian homes and shops is made to scale and with painstaking accuracy.
“I used to do one inch to 12 inch but now I do one inch to 48 mainly because I was running out of space in my house,” says Ann Holmes, who is now Chairman of Yorkshire Miniaturist Association, the club she joined 30 years ago. The 1/48th piece are so much smallerr and will fit on a mantlepiece.
The Yorkshire Miniaturists Association is one of the longest running dolls house clubs in the UK. Its inaugural meeting was in June 1981 and it has met monthly on Saturday afternoons in York ever since –even online during Covid.
"I’d always wanted a dolls house when I was little and even though my dad was a joiner and undertaker and could easily have made me one I never got one,” says Ann.
It wasn’t until walking past a dolls house shop in Fossgate York with her young daughters that Ann plucked up the courage to walk in .
"I’d had a bit of a windfall so we went in an hour later I’d come out having bought his six room house, but when I went to pick it up I couldn’t get in the car boot so I had to get my dad to go and get it. And then once I got it home I thought where am I going to start. The house was built and the hall was decorated but other than that it was blank canvas.” “While I was in the shop I’d seen a flyer for the Yorkshire Miniaturists Association. So I joined that and the rest is history. We share our skill and each month set a different challenge to make a particular thing. You name it we’ve made it.” Ann’s passion is sewing – miniature embroidery and patchwork, hats and clothes. “Those are the things I like doing most. More so than the woodworking side because you need the right tools. Buying a miniature piece of furniture can be as expensive as buying the full-size version.”
Ann only ever meant to have one dolls house but now she has a room at her home near Selby full of not only houses, but shops and gardens.
“There’s 30 years of club challenges and not long after I got the first house I saw this shop which the owner encouraged me to make to it myself from a flatpack kit and make myself. It wasn’t easy as it had curved windows and I made it into a hat shop. I love making miniature flowers.”
She now has six houses, a number of shops and dioramas.
Ann says she struggles to make dolls, most of them have been made other members of the club although she makes the clothes for them.
"We have about 30 members – at one time we had a waiting list – it's really nice to meet up in a group, although younger people seem to prefer to do it online.”
"What is becoming more prevalent is the use of 3D printed dolls house items. It is a lot cheaper and quicker but I hope it doesn’t take over as there a lot of talented craftspeople making things from scratch but it isn’t a cheap hobby.”
Ann now uses a magnifying glass to help her with her intricate miniature craftworks, especially the tiny embroidered pieces which take time and patience.
“Being so small it is very fiddly and I have to admit things have been thrown across the room if they don’t go how you want them to.” Although she says she does find it mindful and helps with her mental health.
"It’s a real escape and has helped keep me sane
And Ann’s house are definitely not for children to play with. “I don’t have any grandchildren but one of my grown up daughters has a little dog and it went in a chewed one of the items and I wasn’t best pleased.”
At the moment she is working on renovating a perfume shop which had been owned by an old member of the club who was going into a home.
Ann will be giving a talk at tomorrow’s Dolls House Fair about the history of the club and how she got involved. The club has a stand at the fair and they will be raising money for Community Bees (communitybees.co.uk) – a York based charity that helps people with the obsessive hoarding, something one of Ann’s brothers suffers from.
"I didn’t know where to turn and my daughter bought a flyer home about community Bees and Michaela has given me so much support.”
"I have given some talks before to WIs but the audience at the fair are dolls house enthusiasts so I am a but nervous.”
There will also be a talk on the history behind the dolls house collection at Newby Hall.
For more than 40 years, friends Caroline Hamilton and Jane Fiddick shared a remarkable passion for dolls’ houses, building an extraordinary collection of miniature treasures. In 2015, their collection found a permanent home at Newby Hall, near Ripon. More than a decade later, the collection is now complete and stands as one of the largest dolls’ house exhibitions in the UK.
Caroline Hamilton, who died in January aged 86, and fellow enthusiast Jane Fiddick amassed more than 60 miniature homes during their lifetime. However, Hamilton kept one piece, called Versailles, for her personal collection.
Now, following her death, the house has been reunited with the rest of the collection at Newby Hall.
Visitors to tomorrow’s Dolls House Fair will learn more about this fascinating story and the dolls houses in the unique collection.
They will also get the chance to browse the many exhibiters and purchase just about everything imaginable in miniature as well as talk to like minded people.
The Dolls House & Miniatures Winter Fair returns to York Racecourse on Sunday bringing together talented makers, specialist exhibitors and a huge variety of miniatures to explore.