Cleaning, trimming and reinstating

Schoolroom and the patient owl

(click on an image to view more clearly in full gallery and reach the link for larger image – below right of each gallery image)

I’d been using the left hand attic bay as handy storage for bits of wood for the boy’s room so things needed putting back in their rightful positions. And the owl looks on patiently.

Raven sits upon the skull on the floor and items are back on the table

In the last couple of days the front faces of the basic skeleton pieces of the two rooms have been rubbed down and re-faced with better wood.

Time now to stop messing about and work out the removable fourth wall for each room.

Playing truant

Peek-a-boo

Like a kid sulking over not having what it wants, I didn’t work on the middle attic today. The problem with Ms Moody here was I fancied an owl in the schoolroom sitting in the rafters (left-hand front attic) a little like Merlin’s Archimedes (“Once and Future King”).

(Three separate links there, sorry 😉 )

Saturday afternoon playing around

The ones I found online and really fancied were beyond my pocket so, instead of putting it out of my head I played hooky today and tried to make my own.

I studied as many pictures as I could find and printed out a few and then took photos of what I was up to until I got so involved in visualising what I was trying to make (and my fingers were sticky as well).  By then I was so carried away so there’s a gap in the photos with only the finished article to see.

I took a fine-grained cork (the sort that has a top) and eased it away from it ‘hat’

To mark out the legs I cut a V-shape across the bottom and shaped them all round

I gently cut a slit each side to indicate the front of a wing and wedged a piece of cardboard up inside to hold the slit open, breaking up barrel shape

Here’s a second cork hacked away into an approximate round and held in place by a panel pin

Dicing with breaking up the body here are 3 separate pieces of wire stuck in each leg for claws

Packets of natural coloured small feathers and a little sheep’s wool for covering the owl.

Outcome?

Both owl and I wondering why wing feather is set too far forward!

View of where the owl hides out in relation to rest of the schoolroom.

And then I broke the beam – again

Well, apart from busting the rafter set up, and with the luck and ignorance of the beginner bird builder, it’s better than I thought it might be, but I am a little peeved that I didn’t set the wing feathers further back.  The beam I can fix.

Missing info on construction

By the way, the eyes are a couple of bright beads with a sewing pin inserted to hold them in place and the head of the pin felt-tipped black.  (The tail of the pin was cut off as it emerged from the back of the poor owl’s head.)  The min beads and the natural feathers were bought from one of the doll’s house haberdashery websites.

Attic – one section at a time?

Schoolroom, chimney breast
and The Ambassadors are back

Where better than the schoolroom to put Holbein’s Ambassadors‘ table display (or my version of it) which I chucked out of the Great Hall a couple of years back.

On the left is Jean de Dinteville, aged 29, French ambassador to England in 1533. To the right stands his friend, Georges de Selve, aged 25, bishop of Lavaur, who acted on several occasions as ambassador to the Emperor, the Venetian Republic and the Holy See. (Caption obtained from the National Gallery site – link above)

But first a chimney breast

A gallery of work played around with this week.  Some taking days (fireplace and setting it in amongst the tangle of beams plus the inverted T section cross beams) and others went in place quite quickly (layout generally).  Click on individual images if you want to read the longer captions and access a possibly larger version of any image in the gallery.

Could have had brazier with no chimney. There’s a big chimney just there on this side so might as well fit one.

Ambassadors table through temporary window. Only head on view we’ll get once outer wall in place.

A little more detail of rough layout pre stick down. Distorted skull on floor not so bent and has raven as friend.

And through the rafters

Top shelf – no more Ambassadors but skulls. Some equipment made to match painting and others not quite in period eg globe etc

Over-large lute type instrument, music book and a few pipe shapes

Chimney breast needs some edging and the lintel is too low – heat goes up chimney!

Lights and beams and fireplace – OK in daylight, too dark alone.

The angle of the photo makes the space look crowded

Has a bit of the look of a schoolroom?

A school room looking more roomy from this angle

Turned off the lights and packing up noticed phantoms of light on wall

 A mix and match across the centuries

with a touch of Edgar Allan Poe

As the two ambassadors have long since died, the year now being 1616, we have not just a memento mori at floor level but an actual skull with a friendly raven perched on top, along with, rather sadly, two skulls on the table top.

The outer wall (left) is a mock up, so if  you think the window perspex is looking bent you’d be right – it’s all a try-out.

I don’t think we’ll have any figures in here, besides one of the boys who should be present is watching the fight in the street through the window down stairs.

 

Quick look see

between shifting full-sized bricks and mixing pug

(no cruelty to dogs involved)

Planning towards a 1616(ish) version of an homage to Holbein’s
“The Ambassadors”.

As court cupboard top is far smaller side to side than in the painting, I was concerned about just how big an item it might take and therefore what needs to be made and how small.  Shoving together what was stored away and holding up a badly crumpled piece of silk, I took a quick image to see if it’s ever going to get vaguely on the tracks I’d like it to be.

Well, lute’s are a bit big, but will ‘do’.  Might get some of whatever I can make or buy towards the nautical and other scientific instruments on the top level and at least add a pair of map reading calipers on the bottom.  Colouring is not too far off either, I reckon.  Might just be able to make something out of this.  Not good but can be made better.

Back to the bricks.

Holbein Ambassadors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related item:

• A blog with a different take on updating “The Ambassadors” 434 years later
• Holbein vs Habitat