Miniature Monday - Half Scale Chateau!

Wouldn’t I love to live in my ½” scale chateau! 

I made this structure in a 4 day workshop with Bill Lankford.  Here’s a link for more information about him:  Bill Lankford Designs

He was an incredible instructor and had a way of using the most unusual materials to create art. I took almost every workshop he offered in the NYC area.  So glad I did because in 2008, he officially retired from teaching classes.  You can still catch him at Miniature Shows with his detailed structures and his line of landscaping items. 

Although it is ½” scale, the cliffs are made from dental plaster, and this structure is super heavy.  I needed a truck and two strong boys to carry it home.  It’s cleverly designed to open in the middle.  I finished the inside with wallpaper, flooring, curtains and furniture.  The landscaping materials are mostly from the model railroad store and Bill.

There’s a “secret” opening under the house, between the cliffs.  It goes from the water, up the stairs to the lowest level which I made into a wine cellar. The resident’s have a boat there for a quick escape.  The water is made from 2 part resin. 

A few years ago, the Daily News had a full page article featuring a picture of this mini chateau and a few of my other pieces.  They also featured the only remaining dollhouse store in Manhattan.  You can read the article in their archives here: NYC Daily News Article  The funniest thing about the experience was my oldest brother, who reads the paper every day, telling me that he saw a lady that kind of looked like me in the paper who also did miniatures. (He was serious!)   He hadn’t read the article and had not seen that it was actually me, DUH!

My friend, Anna, also took the workshop.  She finished hers as a haunted house, complete with dusty furniture and a cemetery:

I’ve had some questions about miniature scale and thought I could answer them today with this post.  Miniaturists are all about getting things “just right.”  It’s often an insane love affair with the ruler. 

Scale is the proportion that a model is to the real thing that it represents. A proportion of 1/12th scale (1:12) means that 1 inch the model equals 12 inches in the real world piece, where 12 inches is understood to be the real world size. If a person measures 5 feet 5 inches tall in the real world, their miniature version in 1/12th scale would be 5 ½ inches tall. This scale is the most popular in the miniature world and when a dollhouse is referred to in general conversation this is the scale most often and usually assumed to be the scale of the discussion.

Scales commonly used in Dollhouses, Ship, Plane and Railroad Models are:

Scale		Number of inches to the foot	Scale Name
1” Scale	1/12th	1 inch = 1 foot	1 inch scale
½” Scale	1/24th	½ inch = 1 foot	G Scale
¼” Scale	1/48th	¼ inch = 1 foot	O Scale
1/8” Scale	1/87th	1/8 inch=1 foot	HO Scale
144th Scale	1/144th	1 inch = 12 Feet (Trust me it’s easier this way!)	Insanity

I’ve completed two 1/144th scale projects and was fortunate that I didn’t end up in the looney bin. I donated one to our club raffle fundraiser, and the other is put away because I don’t want to lose it! This scale is considered a dollhouse’s dollhouse! If you’d like to see lovely examples of this work (NOT mine - LOL) click here: http://nell-miniminis.blogspot.com/

If you have any questions, please let me know and thanks for looking!

Ketsia