My Dolls' House At Christmas - And A New Project

The house with the dolls going about their business!

The nursemaid at her sewing machine.

 There's been a very long silence on The Scottish Home for which I apologize. Before Christmas, I was busy with a couple of writing projects which took up almost all my time.
They still are taking up a lot of time, but one of them is particularly relevant to The Scottish Home, of which more in a moment. Just between Christmas and New Year, we succumbed to a nasty virus which seems to have floored most of this village. We became couch potatoes for a while and spent most of our time watching old movies on the television. Fortunately, we were well supplied with them! We're on the mend now, but it meant that our Christmas holidays weren't as vibrant as they might have been and we had to turn down one or two nice invitations.

You may remember that last year, my 'big' Christmas present from my husband was a magnificent Georgian style dolls' house. I had wanted one for a long time. Alan had made one for me many years ago, but it wasn't quite the style I wanted and it was rather big.

Eventually, I gave it away to a young family member, but I stored up all my miniatures, some of which had been brought back from Vienna by my late mother when she and my father lived there for a year. I knew that sooner or later, I would find the house I wanted.

Maybe Mrs Dolls House Doll is feeling a little unwell too? A doily makes a nice mat.

And then I found it, online, in time for Christmas 2011: the house I had been looking for.
I made an offer on it, and it arrived, carefully packaged, in a huge cardboard box. As soon as I could, I dug out the box with all the lovely furniture and miniature items, and installed them in the house.

The cook takes a welcome break in her kitchen.

I've been 'playing' with it on and off all year. There is quite a bit still to do. I think it already looks lovely but I want to make curtains and stair carpets and more decorations for the walls which still look a little bit empty to me. The house has a couple more dolls now, too. At first, the family consisted of a mother, father, little boy and baby. Now there's a nursemaid and a cook, too. I like to pretend (well, I am a writer, after all!) that the house is really much bigger than it appears, that there are rooms you can't actually see.

Mr Daddy Doll reading. No Kindle in evidence though! 

I took quite a lot of photographs of the house trimmed up for Christmas, so here they are! We even included a Christmas tree with a little bough from the lodge pole pine which was our own Christmas tree. And I took the three tiniest dolls out of my big Russian doll and put them on the mantlepiece in the drawing room.

So what about this new project? Well, for some years now, I've been dealing in antique and vintage textiles as a way of helping to buy a little more time for my own writing. Now, though, the balance has shifted a bit. I'm not abandoning the textiles altogether, but thanks largely to Amazon, I can now spend more time writing. I have, however, learned a huge amount along the way, so I'm currently working on a guide to dealing in collectibles, mostly online, as a way of making some extra income. It strikes me that many people would find it useful. It should be ready for publication as an eBook in the first instance, by the end of January. That's the plan, anyway. Watch this space for more information.

The Nursery

Embroidering Lives - Researching Costume History for Novels

When I'm not buying and selling antique and vintage textiles (or deciding to hang onto them, because I love them so much!) I'm a professional writer and these days, I mostly write novels. You can read all about me and them on my Amazon Author Page, here.   A lot of what I write is historical. The Curiosity Cabinet is partly set on a small island in early 18th century Scotland while The Amber Heart is a big romantic family saga, set in 19th century Eastern Poland.

I often find costume and embroidery figuring in my fiction. Central to the Curiosity Cabinet is a little raised work cabinet, such as can be admired in Glasgow's Burrell Collection. The heroine of that novel, Henrietta Dalrymple, finds herself having to alter and wear another woman's clothes, and they are described in some detail. I can remember having to point out to my editor that yes, bright Indian cottons would have been imported at the time, and might well have been worn by a lady of quality. Similarly, in The Amber Heart, Maryanna's mid nineteenth century clothes are described in some detail and on one occasion at least become quite central to the plot. Such details - so long as they aren't overdone - bring a scene to life and for me, are part of the joy of writing fiction.

In fact, for me, one of the chief pleasures of writing historical fiction is the research involved. I love finding out about things, how people lived and what they ate. I particularly love finding out about how they dressed and how things were made. One of the best books I ever found at a library sale, was a volume called Costume in Detail, 1730 - 1930 by Nancy Bradfield. It is stuffed full of detailed line drawings of the way men, women and children dressed over 200 years, from underwear outwards - an absolute gift for a writer and I've used it more than once.

A few years ago, I attended a session at the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh, designed particularly for writers. The curator of costume at the time allowed us to see various items at close quarters and even to handle some of them. It's always a revelation to me to handle these items, to see how they were made and to realise that sometimes dresses which appear beautiful on the surface are cobbled together underneath! They have a sort of theatrical quality to them. The curator also pointed out that the wealthy were cleaner than we might suppose and changed their 'linens' - their shirts and underwear - often, as can be seen from the inventories of possessions, including clothes. It was the top garments which weren't washed (and sometimes had to be unpicked for cleaning.)

Also interesting for me is when I buy boxes of old textiles at auction, and realise just how treasured some of these possessions were. I'll find little baby gowns, for example, which have been mended and patched, carefully and beautifully, over a number of years.

The picture above (and detail right) is an embroidered christening cape, dating from the very early 1800s. I bought it years ago with the intention of selling it and then couldn't bring myself to let it go. It is so very beautiful, in silk and satin, embroidered with tiny, delicate but wholly realistic flowers. I found myself wondering all the time about the woman who might have made it. Who she was. What became of her. The result was a new novel called The Physic Garden, set in early 1800s Glasgow: a story of friendship, love and betrayal, much of it set in and around the 'physic garden' - the medicinal garden of the old college of Glasgow University. It will be published as an eBook before Christmas 2012 and as a paperback some time in 2013.

Antique Textiles, Scottish Islands and eBooks on Amazon Kindle

When the gorse is in bloom, kissing's in season.

As many readers of this blog probably know by now, I have two jobs although I'd find it hard to say which is the  'day job' because I'm fairly obsessive about both of them. I buy, collect and sell (when I can bear to let them go!) antique and vintage textiles of all kinds - and research and write about them whenever possible. But the other half or more of my time is spent writing mostly fiction, mostly novels as well as the occasional stage play. Two of those novels are set on small Scottish islands and in both of them, the landscape of the novel is an essential part of the story.

The first of them, The Curiosity Cabinet, was published in the conventional way first (you can still find the odd paperback copy on Amazon) but when it went out of print, the rights reverted to me, and last year I published it on Amazon's Kindle Store. You can find it here, if you're in the UK and here if you're in the US.

Gorgeous cover art by textile artist Alison Bell

This is essentially a historical novel, in which the troubles of the past are in some way resolved in the present. The gorgeous cover was made for me by my friend and mentor, Scottish textile artist Alison Bell - it's as beautiful as a piece of lace, and I'm eternally grateful to her for it! The Curiosity Cabinet will almost certainly be of interest to textile nuts like me, because the 'cabinet' in question is an embroidered, raised work Jacobean box, and there is also a certain amount of description of period costume within the novel.

My other 'Scottish Island' novel is called Bird of Passage. (Or look here, if you're reading this in the US) Dealing sensitively with the shocking realities of state-sanctioned physical abuse and its aftermath, this is a powerful story of cruelty, loss and enduring love. In 1960s Scotland, young Finn O’Malley is sent from Ireland to work at the potato harvest and soon forms a close friendship with Kirsty Galbreath, the farmer’s red-headed grand-daughter. But Finn is damaged by a childhood so traumatic that he can only recover his memories slowly. 
What happened at the brutal Industrial School to which he was committed while still a little boy? For the sake of his sanity, he must try to find out why he was sent there, and what became of the mother he lost. As he struggles to answer these questions, his ability to love and be loved in return is called into question. 






Why am I posting about all this on The Scottish Home now? Well, if you're reading this blog during the week beginning 7th May, you can download Bird of Passage to your Kindle - free - on Thursday 9th and Friday 10th May. And if you fancy reading The Curiosity Cabinet as well, I suppose that means you could get two novels for the price of one. Other books are available, especially my big new romantic historical novel set in Poland. It's called The Amber Heart and there's lots of lovely period costume detail in that one as well. I'd be grateful for any reviews, especially if you enjoy what you read. And please do spread the word to anyone else you think might be interested in these novels. And if you want to read a bit more about my 'other day job' have a look at my website: 

www.wordarts.co.uk. 

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Who is this Elegant Edwardian Gentleman?

This is a departure from my usual Scottish Home posts which tend to be about textiles, my other passion in life along with writing. And as regular readers will know, I quite often manage to combine the two, as in my novel The Curiosity Cabinet! As an interesting aside (well, interesting for textile and vintage nuts like me) when the Curiosity Cabinet was being prepared for its first publication as a paperback, rather than the Kindle edition, the publisher's editor queried my reference to 'bright Indian cottons' as anachronistic. It wasn't. It was about right for the time and place of the novel. She was fully entitled to query things she didn't understand, but this was one area in which I had done my homework, mostly because I'm fairly obsessed with such things!

However, this isn't a post about antique textiles, for a wonder, but instead, it's a post about antique and vintage... er... people. I buy lots of my textiles at auction, in various salerooms, as well as at antique markets, car boot sales and charity shops. But sometimes, I get a little more than I bargained for. This handsome chap - a head and shoulders portrait in oils - came with a bundle of very beautifully embroidered pictures - not hugely old, but well executed.  There is no name on it, and no signature either, but you can tell from the back of it that it's rather old and very nicely done. I mean he's a real person, isn't he? Unfortunately, I have no idea who he is - a Scottish Edwardian gentleman. He could be a politician, I suppose. He seems like a gentleman of consequence. Maybe he was an artist or an architect. Maybe he designed some of those splendid Glasgow buildings. If he was my great grandfather, I would want to know, but somebody cleared him out along with various household possessions, and put him up for auction in among a heap of other things. I'll probably try to 'rehome' him on my eBay shop. There are people out there who collect portraits even if they don't know who they are - although he's sustained a little damage over his years spent in somebody's attic, and could probably do with some professional cleaning. I like him though. I like his wide set eyes and that fine moustache!  Writers like this kind of thing - we're free to invent whatever we want, and that makes him intriguing. What do you think?

An Antique Honiton Lace Handkerchief

Isn't this beautiful? I knew that it was hand made bobbin lace, but thought at first that it came from Belgium, until a lace expert pointed out that it is, in fact, old hand made Honiton lace. I should have known, because I've been to the lovely lace museum there - on my honeymoon, a long time ago! It is as light as a feather and just as delicate, a will o' the wisp of a piece which must have taken a long time to make. The details of flowers and leaves and ferns, with tiny wheat-ears among them, is just stunningly lovely. I'm privileged to have been able to admire it for a while although I'm in the middle of 'rehoming' it now.

I love lace but don't feel that I know enough about it. If somebody in Scotland would organise a day's hands-on lace identification workshop, I would definitely sign up for it. There is nothing quite like seeing and touching the real thing. You can read a dozen reference books, and gaze at photographs until your eyes ache, but what you really need is somebody who knows all about a particular textile, the work itself and the history behind it - and you need to see and handle examples.

Some years ago, the Society of Authors in Scotland, of which I'm a member, organised a visit to the textile department of the Chambers Street Museum in Edinburgh - with a talk from the textile curator at the time. She had got a number of items out of storage and - as a very small professional group - we were allowed to look closely at them and handle them carefully. The linen shirt in particular made a huge impression on me. It was some 200 years old and as beautiful as the day it was made. Historical novelists like me often need to describe clothes and other textiles and researching these is - for me, anyway - one of my greatest pleasures in life.

Years ago, I also attended a talk about Ayrshire Whitework and now - with a small collection of this wonderful embroidery myself - I'm occasionally asked to do talks about its history to local and family history groups. I take a number of examples and allow people to handle them. The talks always go down very well, even with men, who generally arrive reluctantly, dragged along by their wives, and then realise that they are enjoying themselves. I don't want to do a lace making course. But I would really love to know more about bobbin and needlelace - not from a book, or a website, but from a real live expert!