“Ah! You know, those early dollhouses had a very rough notion of scale.” She chuckled and shook her head. “They didn’t worry about the typical one inch to one foot. Many old examples look ludicrous when you compare objects in the same room.”
Ardine’s eyes darted from side to side as if it was hard for her to look directly at me. “They’d have a two-inch-scale cup on one-inch-scale table, and so on. The important thing to remember is that it isn’t so much what the scale is, but that everything is in the same scale.” She waved her mitten-covered hands for emphasis.
Jasper came over to check in with me. Ardine reached out gingerly and patted him on the head. He sniffed her in a friendly way, but without his usual enthusiasm. I ruffled his ears and he galloped off again to crash into the pack of canines.
“Sometimes you look at the size of the bed, and you realize the person would have had to be a high jumper to get into it.” Ardine giggled, and I chuckled along with her. “Chairs reach halfway to the ceiling, and chandeliers were so low, a person would bang their head every time they stood up.”
Now she was gasping for breath because she was giggling so hard. I felt my smile becoming slightly frozen.
She glanced at me and quickly composed herself. “But for a child, you’re creating something that will be fun to play with, not like the dollhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, which were intended to be seen and never used.”
“Do you want to sit down?” I gave up on my plan to ingratiate myself with the wine club. I could learn a lot more right here.
“Okay.” Her face lit up and my heart ached for her. It was the same pain I’d felt when I’d encountered students who were bright, but came from such hideous home environments that their surroundings obliterated their potential. As a teacher, you could only do so much to change the world, but I’d certainly tried.
Even though Eleanor had been a geek in high school, she’d developed confidence as she got older, whereas Ardine Smalls never had.
There was a bench in a sheltered spot by the wall and we made ourselves comfortable.
“You see, there are different schools of thought in dollhouse construction,” she continued. “Should they exactly duplicate full-sized versions? Should drawers and doors open? Should mortise-and-tenon joint construction be used?” Ardine was talking faster now, as if I was a mirage that might disappear at any minute. “Some people say yes—miniatures should be formed down to the minutest detail whether visible or invisible. Others, like Mrs. Thorne and Eugene Kupjack, say it’s not necessary.”
I had no idea who these people were, but from the reverent tone of her voice, I gathered they were icons in the field and I didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.
Intrigued, I watched as she warmed to her subject. She was a good teacher. I could recognize the quality in another and found myself thirsty for knowledge, hanging on her every word. I wished I had a notebook with me.
“Miniatures are a wonderful way to preserve settings for all time. I know people who have recreated their house, say, before they moved, down to the exact detail, even the wallpaper.”
“The wallpaper?” I said.
“Oh yes, there are companies that make custom wallpaper. You could replicate the antique wallpaper in your dollhouse if you wanted.”
The wallpaper. Was there some kind of clue in the design on the walls? Like a treasure map or something? Some kind of hieroglyphical clue? I’d go over to Cyril’s first thing tomorrow and check it out.
“What did you think of Harriet Kunes?” I asked. “What kind of collector was she?”
“Harriet was fanatical about being accurate in every detail. She was very scornful of those who mix and match items from different time periods.”