THE HOUSE: DISCOVERY.
discovery • renovation • worldly goods • textiles • the library
I first saw the house on a high shelf at a thrift store.
A helpful staff member brought a ladder and fetched it down. At eye level, it was a mess. Not merely dusty, but dirty. Derelict, in fact. The windows were broken and missing, as were some of the floors. The roof was warped and front hung askew on rusty hinges.
And yet…
What remained was surprisingly sturdy. The original builder–a carpenter with perhaps more ambition and ingenuity than formal training–had done a neat job with the most important joins. Under the grime, the exterior details were charming. The elevator, for there was indeed an elevator, creaked–but it worked.
It looked to me like a homemade attempt at a townhouse by Gottschalk, the famous turn-of-the-century German purveyors of dolls’ houses and furnishings.
The price was shockingly low.
I bought it and carried it home, grinning idiotically, contemplating tiny wallpapers and fireplaces and kitchen fittings. I cleaned off the greater part of the dirt and then put the house on a shelf, where it sat mostly untouched for the better part of five years.
I didn’t know what to do with it. I was too intimidated to begin. Since early childhood, a dolls’ house had been my dream toy above all other dream toys–but boys weren’t allowed to play with dolls. Now that I had one, all I could do was stare at the unfinished interior and vacillate.
On a trip to Rome, I was window shopping in the Piazza Navona when I spotted a display of so-called “Vienna Bronzes.” These pricey, whimsical painted metal figures were produced in Austria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their style–akin to Beatrix Potter, perhaps with a touch more urban sophistication–hit me squarely in my sweet spot.
I went inside and inquired about a few of the pieces.
The price was shockingly high.
I am still not sure what possessed me to go ahead anyway and buy four of them, including a dandified fox and dog with walking sticks and jaunty coats. Possibly it was the giddiness of being in Rome, in springtime. Possibly it was having drunk very good wine at lunch. Probably it was both.
Back home, and sober, I found that the fox and the dog fit into the 1/16 scale of the dolls’ house. Fit perfectly, in fact. It might as well have been built with them in mind.
And then–suddenly, joyfully–I knew what to do.