For five consecutive years of my childhood, I asked Father Christmas for a caravan. I had a clear vision of waking up on Christmas morning to a charming new home in the garden, where I could relocate to enjoy the twin pleasures of solitude, and a jovial decorative paint job. It never materialised. Instead, eventually, my Christmas stocking included a token nod to this obsession – a “make your own caravan” kit, featuring thousands of matchsticks and a depressingly thick book of instructions, all of which stayed firmly in the box, while I harboured spiteful, unseasonal thoughts about Santa. And while I still haven’t entirely forgiven him, I do now recognise that if I’d had any idea about the glorious potential of 1:12 scale model making, I would have fired up my glue gun on Boxing Day 1994 and never looked back.
When I was a kid, it was always Christmas in my doll’s house. Wreath on the door, dusty turkey on the table. I was especially proud of my pullable crackers (which I never, ever pulled even though I was tempted every single day). All children want it to be Christmas all year round and a doll’s house is the perfect place to play out that fantasy. Having just tested this theory again, it’s comforting to know it’s still true.
Following the joy we had when we photographed Bunny’s doll’s house for House & Garden in the summer, I had the idea of creating a new house to celebrate Christmas. And this time, it would be a renovation rather than a new build. I found the house on eBay and insisted my boyfriend bid hard and buy it. I’ve a firm policy of not having an eBay account myself, due to my lifelong love of other people’s stuff and an addictive personality. It’s just safer to have a buffer; he’s my eBay butler. It means I pause before impulse-buying a Victorian letterpress printing machine, or church chancel gates, or a family of taxidermy badgers.
Once he’d sealed the deal, I was so raring to get my hands on it, that I didn’t do the sensible thing and look for a courier who could cuddle it all the way home to me. Instead, I rush shipped it via DPD and when it arrived on the doorstep, the roof fell off, making a messy puddle of broken slate tiles, terracotta fragments and my tears.
So, I did what any sensible person would do when a roof collapses, and phoned my builder. Fortunately, because the Fullers team are familiar with my often-eccentric requests, they sent a van around without asking too many questions. The house spent a few months in Lewis’s workshop, being carefully restored to its former glory.
The label on the back reads “The Italianate Villa by Trevor Cook”. I know these houses are rare, beautifully crafted, and full of the period features I include in all my projects, made by Sue Cook, who specialises in glorious architectural details. If this were a real house, you’d say it had good bones. I bought it because it reminded me of those dream townhouses on Clarendon Road in Notting Hill, only obviously an awful lot smaller.
Unlike my last doll’s house, this was a more manageable size and all the structural stuff had been done (expertly) for me. But it was missing elements (due to violent transit) and was in need of complete redecoration. The rooms are nicely proportioned, the cornices are deep, and the layout makes sense. It’s actually my perfect real-life home (if I didn’t have a toddler, a teenager, a puppy and a burgeoning miniatures empire emerging from my basement). But if this was a simple renovation job, why did I feel so tentative? Why did it seem slightly aggressive to waltz in and strip out someone else’s décor when I’ve done that many times before in full-sized homes? Perhaps it’s because real houses don’t tend to come with another person’s name on them, unless you’re very posh, and there’s a blue plaque on your façade…
Anyway, I put my qualms to one side and got my paints out. How to make these interiors feel fresh but equally fabulous? Did someone say jungle bathroom? And for a festive feel in the drawing room, Harlequin wrapping paper on the walls, with microscopic golden highlights. My mother upholstered the sofa in a 1940’s silk jumble sale scarf. Gryphon tiles and Farrow & Ball India Yellow in the hallway and framed Alpine prints cut from a Sotheby’s catalogue, found in Oxfam. The bedroom features a Claus Porto soap wrapper on the wall and a working, spinnable carousel on the bedside table. I’ve used two Bradbury & Bradbury wallpapers – one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen (the 1940’s flowerpots feel right at home behind the bright green Aga). The kitchen walls are done in humble graph paper and I was quite pleased with the dresser, inspired by Marin Montagut’s book Timeless Paris and the Brambly Hedge larder. I was happily affixing a set of apothecary labels on the drawers when my son glanced over my shoulder and said “Hmm, Cannabis. Is that Christmas Cannabis or an everyday stash?” Always read the label.
You’ll notice there’s no loo, I felt it would spoil the rather cramped bathroom. And when have you ever met a pretty WC? I’ve decided that, in miniature, they’re surplus to requirements (especially in a jungle room where, let’s be honest, you could just squat behind a palm tree).
Next, it was time to add some sparkle. At the risk of stating the obvious, making tiny Christmas decorations is really very fiddly. The paper chains, which should have been a breeze, were made through gritted teeth and occasional yelling. I was like a pre-epiphany Scrooge with a craft knife. The bunting was marginally less frustrating, mainly because I outsourced it to my mother.
Some of the presents under the tree are gold foil-wrapped chocolates, finished with green enamel earrings from M&S in the shape of bows. You might luck out and pick one of those, but other presents might be more underwhelming (dental floss, a pen lid, a stock cube). In the hallway, there’s a giant pie, which must surely have been delivered fresh from Fortnum’s? Because who doesn’t want to see a pie on arrival? The wooden sledge has a little brass bell borrowed from the neck of a Lindt Chocolate Reindeer. I really wanted mistletoe but my attempts to make any, looked disturbingly like something you’d find in a petri dish. Not very kissable. So instead, there’s brass holly in an urn. The fashion for brass decorations has proved easy to translate into miniature, because unlike fir and foliage, it’s possible to get the exact same level of refinement, if you don’t mind spending hundreds of hours trawling through bead suppliers’ websites. I used beads, more earrings and sequins throughout. But the Santa weathervane is my favourite flourish.
The sack of presents includes a golden crown (which started life as a ring) a teddy bear and a Penguin paperback copy of The Great Gatsby. A perfect replica of a Moritz Gottshalk doll's house (made by Keith Bougourd) sits, resplendent, on the kitchen table.
I struggled to find the perfect miniature Christmas tree. Honestly, they all looked a bit pathetic. In the end I found the best version (from the world’s greatest garden centre in Burford) and pimped it up. I needed to combine faux and real greenery, so I took some scissors to the garden square and snipped tiny cuttings while whistling casually like a criminal doing stealing. It would have been better to set up a trestle in the garden and make the whole lot there but instead I had to run back and forth inefficiently while wearing a balaclava which meant it took several days…it’s more exercise than I’ve done in nearly a decade. And then, after all that, I found the loveliest real tree (technically it’s a Chamaecyparis Thyoides), in a supermarket for £6. Some people decorate their doll’s houses for Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure I have the energy for that. No, I think that this is firmly, and forever, a doll’s house at Christmas.
