Dollhouse for the Evergreen House Silent Auction

shot showing the corrugated card board roof tiles and faux limestone bleocking.

looking into the dollhouse between the middle two columns.

using some molds we have on hand, as well as making several new molds to cast some original  new pices.  

My dear friend Jim Abbott asked me if I would be willing to take on a project for the Evergreen House and Museum, a fantastic place here in Baltimore, located on Charles street between the Notre Dame and Loyola colleges.  Jim is the curator there, overseeing an incredible gilded age mansion built by the Garrett family, who made their money from the railroad industry.  The mansion has 48 rooms, has one amazing library,  is on 28 acres, and is filled with many of the Garrett families' original belongings.  Jim provided me (along with several other artists, designers and talented people) with a stock, plywood dollhouse from a local craft store, with the idea that we each decorate the supplied house in our own taste.  The completed dollhouses will be on display at Evergreen, and will be sold at a silent auction to raise money for renovation projects at the museum.  When I received my stock dollhouse, my mind immediately went racing around all things neoclassical, as it is one of my favorite styles, and seemed fitting for a project destined to be in Evergreen, a wonderful neoclassic structure in its own right.  Thinking classical architecture, I next thought of one of my favorite architects, Sir John Soane, whose home in London, which he turned into a museum, still operating as one today.   Soane made famous the concept of collecting and displaying artifacts, fragments, architectural bits and pieces on walls, tables, ceilings and floors, creating still-lives, if you will, of all these wonderful scraps of stuff.  I didn't want to do a strict copy of Soanes' museum, but instead use his ideas as a springboard to come up with my own version of a classical structure, filled floor to ceiling with examples of classical art, sculpture, and architecture.  I rebuilt the stock house to have a more classical profile, tore out all the interior walls and floors, deciding to make it one large space inside.  I turned one column on my lathe, then made a mold of it so I could cast the other 3 I needed more quickly.  The roof tiles are fashioned from corrugated cardboard, to simulate terra cotta tiles.  The limestone block construction look on the outside was made from a thick card stock, cut and glued down individually.  Turning to the interior, I used photoshop to create my mosaic floor, then did a crackled glaze overtop of the printed paper to carry the mosaic look even further.  The interior walls were also done on the computer, finding images of carrera marble, making it look bookmatched, and laminating it to the inner walls.  All the interior furnishings and decorations I cast, lathe turned or cut out of raw stock.  Lucky for me I collect lots of small objects relating to architecture, making my job a bit easier.  The best part was the arranging of all the reliefs, bust, miniature buildings and fragments in the dollhouse interior, building a still life of objects to delight the eye.  If you'd like to see all the wonderful dollhouses together, please call The Evergreen Museum for times.