Unhinged

Anyone good at hanging doors? How about doors on hinges which measure 7 mm (1/4") and using 3 mm (2/16") screws...? Happy task...

I built this door out of basswood cut into strips using a stanley knife (X-Acto blade) and assembled with wood glue. Take a look at the photos below to see the painting and decorating part. Aiming to fit it into the door frame of the cottage today. Some photos of the terrain in progress as well (taken just before Christmas).

Past links about this project:-
Cottage update 4

Cottage update 3

Cottage update 2

Cottage update 1

Window of Opportunity

It was months ago that I finished creating the miniature 1:12 scale cottage. When I can get the time I'll finish the terrain beneath it (wire mesh and plaster). More about that in a few days.

So here are some photos I took along the way last year. The roof was finished with Celluclay (I'll upload a video demo of that to Vimeo soon), I painted and textured the thatch, put in lattice windows and added moss and aging on the thatch and up the walls.

This is of course a whimsical fairy tale interpretation of a little English / Welsh cottage and is not historically accurate. It has the things you'd expect - it's cruck-framed, has thatch, oak timbers, wattle and daub walls... but then it also has things that would have been utterly inaccurate for the time, such as a stone base, chimney and glazed windows. If you want to know why those things would have been impossible then read my little history lesson about late mediaeval / early Tudor cottages below.

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Building in the Middle Ages
A thatched cruck-framed cottage built in the late mediaeval era (1400s / early 1500s) would have been constructed with an oak-frame and the walls made up of wattle and daub, then white washed with a lime plaster. (Wattle and daub was the way to build houses even into early Tudor times as stone, brick and even wood was expensive. Wattle is the mesh you made first with tightly woven sticks such as hazel. Daub was the 'cement' mixture you applied in damp workable balls known as 'cats' over the top. Daub was made of a mixture of clay, dung and sand mixed with straw, hair and flax to bind it.) My family home in Oxfordshire was built in this way in the 1500s. So far my cottage is accurate - apart from the stone I added to it.

A chimney would never have been seen on a tiny modest cottage. Chimneys were invented in the 1100s but were only for the extremely rich. Before this time the rich had braziers which were iron 'baskets' to hold fire and they stood in the center of rooms / great halls below a hole in the roof to allow smoke to escape. So, chimneys were not the norm even in modestly well-off houses until half-way through the reign of Elizabeth I when the affordable production of fireproof chimney materials meant you didn't have to use scarce stone. Chimneys became possible for the very well-off and allowed people to build a second and third storey to their houses. A chimney was a prime status symbol. My tiny cottage would have had an open hearth in the centre of it's one room and a hole in the thatch for the smoke to escape.

Fast forward another 40 years towards the end of Elizabeth I's reign and you'd start to see glazed windows - the new and very expensive way to show off to the neighbours. The poor - certainly anyone who lived in a packed-earth floor dwelling like my cottage would still have had small windows (holes in the wall more accurately) with greased paper / cloth or animal hides to allow in a little light whilst keeping out draughts. There's no way it had glazing!

But my whimsical cottage is coming from Tall Tales after-all...
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Lecture over. Take a look at some work in progress photos below. I'm busy on a commission these days but will make sure I update this blog again in a day or two with the making of the front door and other things...

Past links about this project:-

Cottage update 3

Cottage update 2

Cottage update 1

Along for the Ride?

Who wants to drive an SUV when you can have a ride like this?

The fact that I can write things like that just shows how many glue and resin fumes I undoubtedly breathe in a day. Rather reluctant to open workshop windows when it's 88 degrees outside though...

I made these brooms weeks ago but only just got around to taking some photos yesterday. Some are for 'Myrtle the Witch', some for private collectors. I made them using willow, silver birch, dark stained woods, dried grasses and horse hair bound with silk threads. I put a dinner fork in a couple of the photos so that you can see the scale. They're approx 5 inches in height.

As for the thatched cottage you see in the background - you've seen posts about that on here before. Well I finally finished it last month and in the process of re-building it as 3D model in Maya. I'm also working on the base (wire mesh, foam etc) and you'll see more about all this soon. Oh, and yes - it is a set for 'Myrtle the Witch', but no - it isn't her house. ;)

Past post about broomsticks is here. 

Little House on the Table

Paints, wood-stain and scenic scatter later.... the cottage is looking a tad more rustic and less like something made from foamcore.

I started on the roof  as well (see last photo). Once you scroll past all my cottage-in-the-making snaps you'll find photos of the great Harryhausen and his work.

Find previous posts about this miniature scale cottage in the links below.

Cottage update two

Cottage update one.

Miniature set pieces aside, I'd like to take a moment to remember a very inspirational man - Ray Harryhausen who died on Tuesday.

Here are some quotes by others who have influenced me - they say it better than I could.

"What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits." - Terry Gilliam

"Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars" - George Lucas

(He was) "a one-man industry and a one-man genre" - Peter Lord (Aardman)

"I think all of us who are practitioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we’re standing on the shoulders of a giant. If not for Ray's contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn't be who we are." - James Cameron

A Cottage Industry

Whilst making vast numbers of potion bottles to populate a scene, miniature squash and broomsticks, I'm also creating two tutorials (commissioned by a magazine and a clay manufacturer)..... and working on the thatched cottage.

Thank goodness there's a Tiki bar in this apartment and my partner knows how to make an Old Fashioned.

So, in case you missed it, my previous post about this fairytale cottage was here. 

It's in one inch scale, so it measures just over a foot in height. It's made using a foam-core base, wood, different types of clay, plaster and other mixed media. 

I'm happy to share some photos of it in the making here on this blog, but if interested in knowing more about technique and materials I'll be publishing a more in-depth 'how to' in my book and there will be a video tutorial on my YouTube Channel and Vimeo on how to use Celluclay. I'll post about it on this blog or on the Tall Tales Productions Facebook page, so don't forget to follow and 'like' to get updates. 

Note in my photos below that I began with a rectangular doorway and then changed it to be arched. Aside from that it pretty much follows 'design 3' in my sketchbook. 

I'm enjoying making this little thatched cottage because it puts me in mind of Helen Allingham's paintings, and two of my favourite films: Polanski's Tess (1979) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1967). 

My Sketchbook - Designing the Thatched Cottage

I'll never forget first moving to LA and marveling at the lack of thatched houses. A friend I made out here asked what a 'thatched roof' was. After explaining it to him he responded "so wait... it's like a house like made of straw.... like in the Three Little Pigs?!"

....!

I grew up in a mediaeval village in Oxfordshire in a cruck-framed redbrick thatched house built in the 16th century - a listed building. The village 'Clifton Hampden' has a cricket club and longbow archery society, two pubs (one built in 1352), a post office and a primary school with two classrooms which I attended. In the middle of the village, on a hill overlooking the River Thames stands the high-steepled church dating back to the time of King Stephen (grandson of William the Conqueror). Although much of the present church is the result of Victorian 'revival fever', parts of this church date back to the 12th century. Inside is a stone carving depicting a mediaeval boar hunt which was once above the original door. 

One of the pubs - 'The Barley Mow' was mentioned by Jerome K Jerome in 'Three Men in a Boat' (1889). He wrote:

Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village, old-fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the river scenery is rich and beautiful. If you stay the night on land at Clifton, you cannot do better than put up at the "Barley Mow."

Alright, alright... history lesson over - let's talk about film and set pieces... (can you tell that among my passions are English country life and mediaeval history?!)

I have embarked on a fun challenge which includes a miniature scale thatched cottage. Because of the nature of the project it should lean towards fanciful and fairytale as opposed to realistic. I have a wealth of thatched cottage inspiration from my life in Clifton Hampden to draw on, so I used this teamed with an image I found of the Gaul village in French comic books 'Asterix' to come up with some designs.

I'll post photos of this cottage process over the coming weeks. Below are my original sketches (finished cottage may change from final chosen design -3) and scroll past these to see images of my village 'Clifton Hampden' and an image from 'Asterix'. 

The house I grew up in