A really great place to get inspiration for unusual miniature scenes is the website for Gallery O which features both online and in their small gallery exhibits of truly fantastic miniature artists. Their current exhibit is by Marc Giai-Miniet whose work is amazing:
Check them out at:
Just had a huge thunderstorm here and it was a test of the French drains and the mini landscape. The drains kept the water from pouring down the hill toward the mini garden so they did their job. But the soil under the garden is solid clay so the parts that I tilled did better than the path which is still solid clay. I had planned to dig down about an inch and put marble chips on the path but I think I will also need to put in some holes filled with stone, maybe about a foot deep, to drain away the heavy rains. As you can see, I am also putting in edging to keep the soil off the path and that seems to have worked. One tiny step forward…two steps back?
When I was preparing my murder-in-a-museum scene for the 2012 Flower Show, I was lent a book on some miniature murder scenes by a friend from my Charlie Chan chat room (thanks GWS). The book was called The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (by Corinne May Botz) and it documented the work of Frances Glessner Lee who in the 1940s recreated in miniature vivid crimes scenes that were used for training in criminal forensic studies. The dioramas are still in existence and they are housed in the offices of the Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland. GWS and I decided to visit the dioramas and had a great time exploring each scene and trying to solve the crimes. But the biggest crime was that I never posted any of the hundreds of photos I took that day. So here they are, nearly a year later.
Some of us research our miniature settings extensively, making a point to understand the story and the people behind the scenes we are creating. This is actually one of the great pleasures of doing a miniature setting, the chance to research a place or character and then make it in a scale model for others to see. Here is my research on Annie Hayworth in The Birds. I will be creating Annie’s garden.
Annie lives in Bodega Bay because that is where Mitch spends his weekends. They are no longer  a couple but as Annie explains to the wealthy and classy socialite, Melanie Daniels, who is in town pursuing Mitch, she still wants his friendship:
A production memo describing Annie is quoted in the book The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. It describes Annie and her house in Bodega Bay:
Annie Hayworth is about 27, or at most 28. She taught when she was somewhat younger, at a private school in San Francisco. For emotional reasons, She has moved into Bodega Bay and has secured the job of teaching at the local school. Again, we have a literate person in a modest setting. Her one story home would contain a large number of (a) books that she had from home and school, (b) recently acquired paper backs, the reason for the latter is that economically she might not be able to afford to buy hard cover books in any great quantity. She has one or two prints on the walls of her living room. They would be Braque, maybe something Mexican from the Museum of Modern Art, and perhaps even, she might be catholic enough in her taste as to have a Grant Wood print. She might have on the mantel some pre-Columbian pieces. Her furnishings would be quite modest but very tasteful, perhaps a little chintzy. There ought to be a photograph on the wall of Annie and her parents when she was much younger. Then, perhaps, also in the room are again college pictures. Perhaps, even a picture of herself with the children at the private school in San Francisco.
The research of Annie’s interior should be sought:
(a) at the school teacher’s house in Bodega Bay
(b) a slightly up-graded teacher’s home in San Francisco, and perhaps,
(c) a female professor’s room at Berkeley or Stanford
and the setting should take advantage of the combination of these backgrounds.
One should add, of course, that there is a television set in both the Brenner home and in Annie Hayworth’s home.
Some thought should be given to music in Annie’s house. This should consist of a player and piles of records.
Some of these ideas made it into various drafts of the script and into the final movie. This conversation with Melanie Daniels  about her past in San Francisco was in one of the drafts of the script but was not included in the final film:
ANNIE:Â I came up here for two reasons. To begin with, I was bored with my job in San Francisco. I was teaching at a private school there… well, you know, you probably went to one yourself.
MELANIE: Â I did.
ANNIE: Â Then you know. Little girls in brown beanies. Deadly. Here I have a life. I’ll go into that classroom on Monday morning, and I’ll look out at twenty- five upturned little faces, and each of them will be saying, ‘Yes, please give me what you have.’ (pause) And I’ll give them what I have. I haven’t got very much, but I’ll give them every ounce of it. To me, that’s very important. It makes me want to stay alive for a long long time. (she sighs) That’s the first reason.
Annie is a transplant from city life and her home in the tiny hamlet  of Bodega Bay, what she calls a”collection of shacks on a hillside,” is filled with contemporary art, modernist furniture, and classical music. Several film scholars have noted, as Ken Mogg did in a book review on Hitchcock’s architecture, that, “Hitchcock seems to have vastly enjoyed making his characters lovers of the arts and then working out with his production designers and set decorators how to depict those characters’ lifestyles iconographically.” Steve Jacobs, author of the book on Hitchcock’s architecture, stated plainly, “…artworks illustrate personality and social position of the occupant.” In Annie’s case, both music and paintings are displayed in her living room. Reproductions of paintings, including what appear to be a Modigliani portrait of a woman, a Braque still life, a print of a cable car scene from San Francisco, an image of a knight on a white horse, a Mondrian abstraction, and a Cezanne still life, and perhaps a Diego Rivera. It’s hard to see any of them clearly and none show up in searches of these artists’ works.
What, you may ask, is the point. Since this is not a project about the interior of Annie’s house but one that will reconstruct her garden, isn’t it silly to spend any time on Annie’s history or art inclinations? The answer to that is that while Hitchcock paid attention to the interior setting, the garden seems somewhat neglected and poorly designed. But they should have the same personality that Annie’s interior has. So I plan to give Annie the garden that matches her interests, her life, and he fate. When Melanie and Annie first meet, Melanie is gorgeous in her trendy clothes, upsweep hairdo, and fur coat. Annie, on the other hand, is in her garden, a smudge of dirt on her face which she tries to wipe off before Melanie sees it.
They talk at the front of Annie’s house and the contrast between them is obvious.
Their conversation about Annie’s garden has always bothered me because Melanie comments that it is “a very pretty garden” but in fact the garden is rather plain, maybe even neglected or merely tolerated:
ANNIE: I’ve been wanting a cigarette for the last 20 minutes. I just couldn’t convince myself to stop. This tilling of the soil can become compulsive, you know.
MELANIE: It’s a very pretty garden.
ANNIE: Oh, thank you. Well, it’s something to do in your spare time. There’s a lot of spare time in Bodega Bay.
I think Annie needs a better garden than she is given in The Birds. She clearly is a passionate, smart, funny, and very sensuous woman and if she were to put all her spare time into a garden, what would it really look like? First I will create a 3D mockup of a garden, an ideal version that in practical terms would be impossible to do in miniature. But it will be a starting point that helps me avoid a cliche cottage garden or anything too cute. If I can figure that out, that is the garden I will give Annie, the garden she deserves.
Scale is so important in miniatures and no matter what scale you use, it has to be consistent. Check out Janit Calvo’s new blog entry on scale:
Miniature Gardening 105: Sizing up Your Miniature Accessories
It always helps to have someone else look at your work when you are trying to solve a problem in a miniature setting. I have to confess that I was so frustrated with my Bodega Bay scene that I started researching Frida Kahlo’s garden again as a backup idea. But then, Ron and Katy Hoess stopped by for a meeting and they brought fresh eyes to my mockup. Just by moving a few things around, changing a few angles, and suggesting some scale modifications, they were able to set me on a better path (to Bodega Bay, not to Mexico: sorry Frida). Thanks Katy and Ron (who is chair this year and next of the miniature settings class at the Philadelphia Flower Show).
I like miniatures a lot but would I be willing to go this far???
I was so proud of the fact that I cleaned off my rototiller and started defining the edges of my new miniature garden. The soil is better than I thought, just compacted. So I got about a third of the way through when the sky started rumbling.
Then the sky opened up and at least an inch of heavy rain (and maybe two) fell and washed it all away. Clearly I need to work on draining the excess water away from this area before I plant. Sigh.
I had to take down a tree in our yard. The tree, an oak, was about 70 years old judging by its rings but it was in bad shape so down it came (with much effort by the tree climbers. The tree cutters, perhaps inadvertently in their efforts to clean up the space under the dead tree, scoured the land and left a corner of our yard absolutely bare. Now, I see this as an opportunity…to put in a miniature landscape. So after I add the organic garden soil that will make for better planting, I will add the small scale trees I found at Home Depot today as a start. I don’t have a theme yet but that will come as I work in the space. I am also reading Janit Calvo’s new Miniature Gardening book which came from Amazon this week.
I seem to bump into miniatures where ever I go. But I was especially delighted with the unexpected miniatures I saw in the little town of Saint Michaels, Maryland, where I spent the weekend at a family wedding.
First, in the small and delightful local historical museum (St. Michaels Museum), I saw a set of miniature box scenes stacked to form what is alternately called “The Magic Mountain” or “The Glass Mountain.” Created by the three Graham sisters of Saint Michaels–Ermina, Josephine, and Annie—the little scenes depict realistic events as well as children’s stories. They are tiny and all hand crafted. It is thought that the scenes were created around 1875.
The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum also used miniatures to convey their history. There were models of different kinds of boats as well as some dioramas depicting historic scenes and techniques including this one on shipbuilding.
Check out this miniature work. Something to strive for.
http://www.ulusminiatures.com/dioramas2.html
Miniature gardening seems to have become the latest gardening trend. Here are two new links that show how extensive this activity is:
Miniature Gardening, a division of Winter Greenhouse
and
And don’t forget the gallery of projects on Two Green Thumbs
It really doesn’t get simpler than this. I have made a mockup of the scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds that I will try to recreate. My problem is that I have too many things to fit into a small space allocated to us (22 inches deep by 36 inches wide).
There’s Annie’s house:
And Annie’s garden at the side of the house:
And the playground that the birds land on:
And the schoolhouse next to the playground:
So this is what it looks like if you try to jam all those into one scene:
Clearly this will not all fit so I have to reinterpret the scene. I don’t want to cut out Annie’s house completely but maybe I can just show half of it. I can get rid of the garden gate or make it much smaller. The playground and schoolhouse have to stay fairly dominant but the schoolyard needs to be a lot bigger. The schoolhouse is just a wall on the side so that works as is. If I angle any of this I lose more space so I am tending to have things almost straight on.
Back to the setup board with a cutout of Annie’s house and its possible location as well as a picket fence that will dominate the front of the scene. I have to make my own because all the fences I have seen are off-scale.
Anthropology of the World's Fairs 
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